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Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata, soon to be a saint,  is such a world figure, she needs no introduction.   Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu‎ of Albanian parents on ‎August 26, 1910, in Skopje, in what ‎is ‎Macedonia today, Mother Teresa came to eastern India’s Kolkata city, formerly Calcutta, in 1929, as a missionary nun. Affectionately known as the "saint of the gutter" for her unconditional ‎love ‎for the poor and the abandoned, she founded her Missionaries of Charity congregation in 1950.   She earned numerous national as well as international honours for her works of mercy, including ‎the ‎Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.   She died on September 5, ‎‎1997 at the age of 87 and ‎St. ‎John ‎Paul II declared her Blessed in the Vatican, on October 19, 2003.  ‎ And now Pope Francis will declare her a saint on Sept. 4  at a ceremony here in Rome’s St. Peter’s Square.   To know about the preparations taking place in Mother Teresa’s ‎adopted hometown of ‎Kolkata for this great day, we talked on the phone with Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta.  He first explained the significance of this canonization for his city.

Listen: 

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(Vatican Radio)  Bishop Giovanni D'Ercole of Ascoli Piceno, one of two Italian dioceses worst hit by a 6.2-magnitude earthquake Wednesday morning, was present in Pescara del Tronto and Ascoli to comfort his flock and dig through the rubble for survivors.

In an interview with Vatican Radio's Debora Donnini on Thursday morning, Bishop D'Ercole said: "The word which keeps returning most often is this: 'Don't abandon us, because we now have nothing left.'" 

The bishop said he remained among his people in Pescara del Tronto until midnight Wednesday before returning to Ascoli where people were sleeping outside for fear of further aftershocks.

Bishop D'Ercole added he dug through the rubble of the ruined church of Pescara del Tronto for an unexpected surprise. "I was able to recover a Crucifix from the rubble with my own hands, and I found that the only image left intact in the church of Pescara del Tronto is that of Our Lady of Perpetual Help."

On Wednesday evening, he celebrated Mass in the chapel of Hospital Mazzoni in Ascoli Piceno. "The celebration of Mass for the bodies had a strong emotive impact... It was a celebration which recalled the death of Jesus and the suffering of seeing these people holding on to their [deceased] little ones."

Pope Francis postponed the catechesis of his Wednesday General Audience and prayed the rosary with pilgrims for the victims and survivors of the quake.

Bishop D'Ercole told a related story he witnessed with his own eyes. "Yesterday a mother spent the entire day with a Rosary in her hand, hugging one of our volunteers. This woman had lost her mother and son under the rubble. She was desperately hoping that they would be found alive. When the miracle for which she had hoped did not occur, she told me: 'That's how God wanted it; that's how Jesus wanted it.'"

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(Vatican Radio) Rescue teams from all over Italy are working around the clock in the hopes that more survivors will be found under the rubble following a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit the Lazio, Abruzzo and Marche regions on Wednesday morning.

One crew that has been sent to Amatrice, one of the worst affected areas, is the Italian Relief Corps of  the Sovereign Order of Malta.

An assessment team made up of five volunteers, including a doctor and a nurse has joined the staff of Italy’s Civil Protection in the rescue effort and is providing medical care to survivors.

One of those volunteers is Giorgio Minguzzi who spoke to Vatican Radio about the Order’s relief activities and the devastation he witnessed.

Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Giorgio Minguzzi

“Now we have 64 volunteers, managing the local sports hall where we host 230 persons during the night”, Giorgio said. “In the sports hall we are also managing all the stocking of spontaneous donations, food stuffs and basic necessities and so on...” “On the rescue side we have several search and rescue dogs in action right now.”

He also explained that entering certain areas and reaching certain structures in Amatrice was still very dangerous and that people need to be well trained for a situation like this.  …“helping is a very tricky task, good will is absolutely not enough…” Giorgio also said, that the aftershocks are very dangerous. “Amatrice is like a worst scenario and every shock can generate a new collapse…”

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(Vatican Radio) The Catholic development Agency CAFOD welcomed the peace deal between the Colombian government and the nation’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, calling it “an historic moment.” At the same time, CAFOD warns that there are still a number of obstacles lying ahead on the road to lasting peace.

The agency paid tribute to the key role of the Catholic Church in Colombia: both as a mediator between the two sides during the negotiations and in a new role of helping people understand the implications of this peace accord and promoting reconciliation. As head of the Latin America Desk for CAFOD, Clare Dixon has visited Colombia many times and closely followed the peace process. She spoke to Susy Hodges about her reaction to the peace accord.

Listen to the interview of Clare Dixon of CAFOD:  

Describing the peace accord as an “historic moment” Dixon said the people in Colombia are now “living with great hopes” but warns that “the real work (on building a lasting peace) now has to start.”

She said the first obstacle on this path towards a final peace is a planned referendum on October 2nd when the people of Colombia have to cast their vote on whether to accept the peace deal or not and noted that the nation’s political opposition has already pledged to vote against it. 

Turning to the role of the local Catholic Church, Dixon said the Colombian Church not only played a key role as a mediator between the two sides during the peace negotiations but will now play an equally important role in promoting peace by helping people “to understand the implications of the peace accord” which will entail former guerrillas and former fighters being integrated into society.  She warned that Colombians will need “to put the past behind them” and “this can’t be done without a process of reconciliation.”

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Vatican City, Aug 25, 2016 / 07:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday Pope Francis appointed Mexico native Fr. Jorge Rodriguez, former professor and Vice-Rector of St. John Vianney seminary, as a new auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Denver.

“Father Rodriguez is a passionate pastor and teacher of the faith, and he will serve this archdiocese well in the role of auxiliary bishop,” Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila said in an Aug. 25 press release announcing the priest’s appointment.

Fr. Rodriguez, 61, has been pastor at Holy Cross Parish in Thornton, Colo. since 2014, as well as an adjunct professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. The announcement of his appointment as auxiliary bishop came in an Aug. 25 communique from the Vatican.

Asked about his first-hand experience with the growing Hispanic Catholic community in Denver, Fr. Rodriguez told “Denver Catholic,” the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver, that it is not about numbers so much as it is about their “vitality and live expressions of their Catholic faith.”

The challenge, Fr. Rodriguez said, is in helping the Hispanic community integrate into the U.S. Church without losing the values of their cultural and Catholic religious identity.

“My experience with this community is that the faithful have a great love for the Eucharist; a tender devotion to the Mother of our Lord, Our Lady of Guadalupe; show sincere support for the Holy Father and the priests; they are very generous in whatever the church needs, and their faith is sincere and uncomplicated,” he said.

The bishop-elect was born March 22, 1955, in Mérida, Mexico, in the state of Yucatán, where his family still resides. He joined the Legionaries of Christ after high school and was ordained a priest Dec. 24, 1987.

Fr. Rodriguez was awarded a doctorate in Sacred Theology by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1994. He also received a licentiate in philosophy from the same university and a diploma in Mariology from the Marianum in Rome.

From 1994-1997, he was dean of the Theology Department of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and taught theology at several different pontifical universities and institutes in the city.

The priest first came to Denver in 1999 at the invitation of Archbishop Charles Chaput to teach at the new St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, and to serve as associate pastor of St. Therese Parish in Aurora.

He returned to Rome from 2002-2006 to serve as an associate pastor of the Roman parish Stella Maris. Fr. Rodriguez then returned to Denver again to teach at St. John Vianney and from 2007-2014 served as Vice-Rector of the seminary. He was officially placed as a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver in 2008.

Fr. Rodriguez will be ordained a bishop Nov. 4, likely in Denver’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

“I would like the Catholic community of the Archdiocese of Denver to know that my only wish is to serve the cause of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to serve them according to this new mission and grace I am about to receive, Fr. Rodriguez said in his interview with Denver Catholic.

“It is the Lord’s work and not ours, even less mine. So the best support – and this is what I beg from them – is to keep me in their prayers.”

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Washington D.C., Aug 25, 2016 / 09:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With so many saying they have abandoned their childhood faith because of science, the Church in the United States has an urgent mission to engage the culture, said one expert.

“The new evangelization is as needed as ever,” Dr. Matthew Bunson, EWTN Senior Contributor, concluded from a Pew Research study on “Choosing a New Church.”

“As Catholics we need to be very much aware of the immense dangers that are emerging, culturally, when we lose a sense of God,” he added, saying that “dialogue with culture is absolutely essential now.”

The Pew study, released Tuesday, shows that among the “nones” – those currently not a member of any religion – around eight-in-ten were once raised in a particular religion. About half of those explained their departure from their childhood faith by saying they simply didn’t believe anymore, and some mentioned “science” as a reason for their unbelief.

“I’m a scientist now, and I don’t believe in miracles,” one respondent was reported as saying. Others cited “common sense,” “logic,” or “lack of evidence” as reasons for their unbelief.

The “nones” have been growing in number quickly, from an estimated 36.6 million in 2007 to an estimated 55.8 million in 2014, Pew reported in 2015. “35% of Millennials (those born 1981-1996) are ‘nones,’” Pew said. Some identify as atheists or agnostics, others say their religion is “nothing in particular.”

Tuesday’s numbers showed the “mainline Protestant” ecclesial communions in a “state of total collapse,” Bunson noted, especially among “young people in particular” who said they stopped believing in their religion because of reasons such as they “discovered evolution in college.”

“All of us need to be much more aware of how susceptible young people are to what is now a relentless cultural message of scepticism, of cynicism, and outright hostility,” he insisted. “And it cuts across all areas of life today, from morality and sexual identity to science, to the basic perception of how the world functions.”

“And we need to have a much stronger Catholic ethos that prepares young people for that level of hostility,” he said, “especially in college.”

Overall, the numbers of people dropping out of institutional religion show that many believe there to be “an apparent, irreconcilable conflict between faith and reason, between science and the Church,” Bunson said.

“So it’s incumbent on us then, in the area of apologetics but also in evangelization, to help people in what is the age of not just skepticism, but the age of cynicism, to understand the faith, to explain the faith, and to live the faith.”

Among other findings of the Pew report were that, among Catholics who were searching for a new “congregation” to attend, 36 percent admitted to considering another denomination or religion.

That number, while high, was actually the lowest among the different religious identities, Bunson noted.

“There is a certain fidelity to remaining Catholic while looking,” he said, but the overall numbers of people considering a change in religion “ties into the wider phenomenon of the spiritual quest that we see across the board” that “people are much more open to changing denominationally, which I think from a Catholic standpoint is very disturbing.”

Among Catholics who were looking at changing to a new parish, the important factors listed were “location” (76 percent), “feeling welcomed by leaders” (71 percent), “quality of sermons” (67 percent), and “style of worship” (63 percent).

Among those who listed “quality of sermons” as an important factor in their decision, Catholics were actually much lower than Evangelical Protestants (94 percent), Mainline Protestants (87 percent) and Historically Black Protestants (92 percent), Bunson said.

This may be because “Catholics seem to have either lower expectations regarding sermons, or because as Catholics we are much more sacramentally-oriented, that they are willing to put up with a sermon that’s less than stellar,” Bunson said, especially since the Protestant communities traditionally “place a greater priority on that.”

However, Pope Francis has specifically exhorted priests to make sure their homilies “are not boring.”

“Homiletics,” Bunson said, “is something that has been stressed for a while now.”

“Pope Francis is absolutely right, and I think Pope Francis has his finger on this very neatly, that when we’re creating an environment that brings Catholics together, where they feel welcome but they feel also that they’re receiving a nourishing form of preaching,” he added.

More than seven-in-ten Catholics listed location as an “important” factor in looking for a new parish. The numbers showed “the relative ease that Catholics have in finding a new location to worship,” Bunson continued, that “even in the face of parish closings and clusterings, Catholics still feel a ready access to a faith community, to worship, and obviously, then, to the sacraments.”

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By Cindy Wooden

ROME (CNS) -- When it comes to the Christian life, too many seminaries teach students a rigid list of rules that make it difficult or impossible for them as priests to respond to the real-life situation of those who come to them seeking guidance, Pope Francis said.

"Some priestly formation programs run the risk of educating in the light of overly clear and distinct ideas, and therefore to act within limits and criteria that are rigidly defined a priori, and that set aside concrete situations," the pope said during a meeting with 28 Polish Jesuits in Krakow during World Youth Day.

The Vatican did not publish details of the pope's meeting July 30 with the Jesuits, but -- with Pope Francis' explicit approval -- a transcript of his remarks to the group was published in late August by Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed at the Vatican prior to publication.

According to the transcript, the pope asked the Jesuits to begin an outreach to diocesan seminaries and diocesan priests, sharing with them the prayerful and careful art of discernment as taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

"The church today needs to grow in the ability of spiritual discernment," the pope told the Polish Jesuits.

In his spiritual exercises, St. Ignatius provided steps for helping people recognize -- or discern -- where God is working in their lives and what draws them closer to God or pushes them further from God. For St. Ignatius, knowing what is moral and immoral is essential, but knowing what is going on in people's lives helps identify practical ways forward.

Without "the wisdom of discernment," the pope said in Krakow, "the seminarians, when they become priests, find themselves in difficulty in accompanying the life of so many young people and adults."

"And many people leave the confessional disappointed. Not because the priest is bad, but because the priest doesn't have the ability to discern situations, to accompany them in authentic discernment," the pope said. "They don't have the needed formation."

While some laypeople also are called to provide spiritual direction, priests are more often "entrusted with the confidences of the conscience of the faithful," so seminarians and priests particularly need to learn discernment.

"I repeat, you must teach this above all to priests, helping them in the light of the exercises in the dynamic of pastoral discernment, which respects the law but knows how to go beyond," the pope said.

"We need to truly understand this: in life not all is black on white or white on black," he said. "The shades of grey prevail in life. We must them teach to discern in this gray area."

Pope Francis did not mention his apostolic exhortation on the family, "Amoris Laetitia," ("The Joy of Love"), in his talk with the Jesuits in Krakow, but the document repeatedly referred to the importance of discernment for families and for their spiritual guides.

Father Salvador Pie-Ninot, a Spanish professor of ecclesiology, wrote in the Vatican newspaper Aug. 24 that the pope referred to the need for discernment 35 times in the exhortation.

Especially when dealing with individual Catholics who have been divorced and civilly remarried, Pope Francis wrote, discernment recognizes that, "since the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases, the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same. Priests have the duty to accompany (the divorced and remarried) in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the church and the guidelines of the bishop."

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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden

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By Junno Arocho Esteves

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Retired Pope Benedict XVI said in an interview that he felt a "duty" to resign from the papacy because of his declining health and the rigorous demands of papal travel.

While his heart was set on completing the Year of Faith, the retired pope told Italian journalist Elio Guerriero that after his visit to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, he felt he was "incapable of fulfilling" the demands of another international trip, especially with World Youth Day 2013 scheduled for Brazil.

"With the program set out by John Paul II for these (World Youth) days, the physical presence of the pope was indispensable," he told Guerriero in an interview, which is included in the journalist's upcoming biography of Pope Benedict. "This, too, was a circumstance which made my resignation a duty," the pope said.

An excerpt of Guerriero's book, "Servant of God and Humanity: The Biography of Benedict XVI," was published Aug. 24 in the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica.

Pope Benedict said that although he was moved by the "profound faith" of the people of Mexico and Cuba, it was during his visit to the two countries in 2012 that he "experienced very strongly the limits of my physical endurance."

Among the problems with committing to the grueling schedule of an international trip was the change in time zones. Upon consulting with his doctor, he said, it became clear "that I would never be able to take part in the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro."

"From that day, I had to decide in a relatively short time the date of my retirement," he said.

Guerriero noted that while many believed the pope's retirement was a defeat for the church, Pope Benedict continues to seem "calm and confident." The retired pope said he "completely agreed" with the journalist's observation.

"I would have been truly worried if I was not convinced -- as I had said in the beginning of my pontificate -- of being a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard," he said.

The retired pope added that while he was aware of his limitations, he accepted his election in 2005 "in a spirit of obedience" and that despite the difficult moments, there were also "many graces."

"I realized that everything I had to do I could not do on my own and so I was almost obliged to put myself in God's hands, to trust in Jesus who -- while I wrote my book on him -- I felt bound to by an old and more profound friendship," he said.

The retired pontiff spends his days in prayer and contemplation while residing at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Vatican City. For 19 years, different contemplative orders took turns living in the monastery with a mission focused on praying for the pope and the church.

Benedict said that upon learning that the Visitandine nuns would be leaving the residence, he realized "almost naturally that this would be the place where I could retire in order to continue in my own way the service of prayer of which John Paul II had intended for this house."

Among the visitors Pope Benedict receives is Pope Francis, who "never fails to visit me before embarking on a long trip," he said.

Asked about his personal relationship with his successor, Pope Benedict said they shared a "wonderfully paternal-fraternal relationship" and he has been profoundly touched by his "extraordinarily human availability."

"I often receive small gifts, personally written letters" from Pope Francis, he said. "The human kindness with which he treats me is a particular grace of this last phase of my life for which I can only be grateful. What he says about being open toward other men and women is not just words. He puts it into practice with me."

Pope Francis, who wrote the book's preface, expressed his admiration for the retired pope and said his spiritual bond with his predecessor "remains particularly profound."

"In all my meetings with him, I have been able to experience not only reverence and obedience, but also friendly spiritual closeness, the joy of praying together, sincere brotherhood, understanding and friendship, and also his availability for advice," Pope Francis wrote.

The church's mission of proclaiming the merciful love of God for the world, he added, has and continues to be exemplified in the life of Pope Benedict.

"The whole life of thought and the works of Joseph Ratzinger have focused on this purpose and -- in the same direction, with the help of God -- I strive to continue," Pope Francis wrote.

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Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju.

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Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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