Catholic News 2

Fargo, N.D., Jul 6, 2016 / 03:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Homeless Jesus statue is at it again.

Since its installation in front of First Lutheran Church in downtown Fargo, N.D. last month, emergency crews have responded at least twice to calls from concerned residents who thought the statue was a real person.

The Fargo Fire Department told a local news station that it treats every call as an emergency, even if they think they are being sent to the statue.

“It’s not a common call. It just shows we have concerned citizens who are willing to make the call,” Fargo police Sgt. Kevin Pallas told local news station WDAY Channel 6. “That’s encouraging.”

The bronze statue, created by sculptor Tim Schmalz, depicts Jesus as a homeless man lying on a park bench, covered in a blanket, with the crucifixion wounds on his feet. “Homeless Jesus” is based on the “Judgment of the Nations” scene from Matthew 25 and signifies Christ in “the most marginalized in our society,” according to Schmalz’s website.

The statue has been installed in cities all over the world, including at the Vatican.

Almost every time the statue is installed in a new city, it inspires unique responses.

In April 2014, when a Homeless Jesus statue was installed in a wealthy North Carolina neighborhood, at least one woman called emergency crews, thinking it was a real person. Another resident wrote a letter to the editor of a local paper, complaining that the statue “gave him the creeps.”

When the statue was unveiled outside St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Buffalo, N.Y., people started leaving donations for the homeless by the statue. Every day, the church collects the offerings of money, food, books, and even Buffalo Bills sports gear, and donates them to a local organization that helps the homeless.

Last winter, a Homeless Jesus statue in Canada sparked several calls to emergency services during particularly cold and snowy nights.

Thanks to those who reported someone laying out in the cold, thankfully it's the "Homeless Jesus" statue. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/8c7QsAep3X

— Hamilton Paramedics (@hemsparamedics) January 20, 2016 Schmalz, a full-time sculptor and Ontario resident, took eight months to create the life-size statue. The first cast of Homeless Jesus was installed in 2013 in front of the University of Toronto’s Regis College.

Earlier this year, the Homeless Jesus statue was installed in the Vatican outside of the papal charities office. Pope Francis blessed a small model of the statue in 2013.

During his papacy, Pope Francis and the papal charities office have reached out to the homeless in new ways, including the addition of free showers, haircuts and shaves for the homeless at the Vatican. Additional shelters have also been built in the Vatican during Pope Francis’ papacy, bringing the Vatican’s total capacity for housing the homeless up to 84.

Full Article

London, England, Jul 6, 2016 / 03:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Robert Sarah on Tuesday appealed to priests throughout the world to begin saying Mass facing the same direction as the faithful, suggesting that the season of Advent would be an opportune time to do so.

“I believe that it is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction – Eastwards or at least towards the apse – to the Lord who comes, in those parts of the liturgical rites when we are addressing God,” the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship said July 5 during his opening address at the Sacra Liturgia conference being held in London.

“Dear Fathers, I ask you to implement this practice wherever possible, with prudence and with the necessary catechesis, certainly, but also with a pastor’s confidence that this is something good for the Church, something good for our people. Your own pastoral judgement will determine how and when this is possible, but perhaps beginning this on the first Sunday of Advent this year, when we attend ‘the Lord who will come’ and ‘who will not delay’ may be a very good time to do this.”

Cardinal Sarah's encouragement to priests to say Mass ad orientem was part of an address on how the Second Vatican Council's document on the liturgy can be more faithfully implemented.

He began by recalling that “God, not man is at the centre of Catholic liturgy,” and that “we must be utterly clear about the nature of Catholic worship” to be able to read correctly and implement faithfully Sacrosanctum Concilium.



The cardinal recalled the intention of the fathers of the council, including a limited use of vernacular languages at Mass and appropriate inculturation. Speaking of proper inculturation, the Guinean noted that “ the liturgy is not the place to promote my culture. Rather, it is the place where my culture is baptised, where my culture is taken up into the divine.”

He presented the liturgy of the Anglican Ordinariates “ now in full communion with the Church” as a “beautiful example” of how “cultures and other Christians bring gifts with them into the Church.”

Cardinal Sarah urged looking again at Sacrosanctum Concilium and the intention behind it saying that “I do not think that we can honestly read even [its first article] today and be content that we have achieved its aims.”

He examined the implementation of the Council's directives on the liturgy, noting both its positive and negative aspects, and then presented “ practical considerations on how we can implement Sacrosanctum Concilium more faithfully today.”

“First of all we must examine the quality and depth of our liturgical formation,” he exhorted. “The liturgical formation that is primary and essential is … a question of living the liturgy in all its richness, so that having drunk deeply from its fount we always have a thirst for its delights, its order and beauty, its silence and contemplation, its exultation and adoration, its ability to connect us intimately with He who is at work in and through the Church’s sacred rites.”

To this end he recommended that seminarians should “live the liturgy” as fully as possible, and moreover, that “the full and rich celebration of the more ancient use of the Roman rite, the usus antiquior, should be an important part of liturgical formation for clergy.”

“For how can we begin to comprehend or celebrate the reformed rites with a hermeneutic of continuity if we have never experienced the beauty of the liturgical tradition which the Fathers of the Council themselves knew?”

Cardinal Sarah then turned to the nature of the “active participation” call for by Vatican II, noting that it is “primarily internal.” He noted that “if we understand the priority of internalising our liturgical participation we will avoid the noisy and dangerous liturgical activism that has been too prominent in recent decades. We do not go to the liturgy so as to perform, to do things for others to see: we go to be connected with Christ’s action through an internalisation of the external liturgical rites.”

He added that we cannot “ dismiss the possibility or the desirability of an official reform of the liturgical reform,” saying that some of the post-conciliar reforms “may have been put together according to the spirit of the times and that there has been an increasing amount of critical study by faithful sons and daughters of the Church asking whether what was in fact produced truly implemented the aims of the Constitution, or whether in reality they went beyond them.”

Indeed, the cardinal stated that in meeting with Pope Francis last April, the Holy Father asked him to study the question of a reform of the reform. He reflected, “if we are to implement Sacrosanctum Concilium more faithfully, if we are to achieve what the Council desired, this is a serious question which must be carefully studied and acted on with the necessary clarity and prudence.”

Cardinal Sarah exhorted priests to “be worshippers first and foremost,” adding that the faithful “can see the difference between a priest who celebrates with faith and one who celebrates in a hurry, frequently looking at his watch, almost so as to say that he wants to get back to the television as quickly as possible!”

“I have also seen priests, and bishops, vested to celebrate Holy Mass, take out telephones and cameras and use them in the Sacred Liturgy … to do this is a sacrilege. No bishop, priest or deacon vested for liturgical ministry or present in the sanctuary should be taking photographs, even at large-scale concelebrated Masses. That priests often do this at such Masses, or talk with each other and sit casually, is a sign, I think, that we need to rethink their appropriateness, especially if they lead priests into this sort of scandalous behaviour that is so unworthy of the mystery being celebrated, or if the sheer size of these concelebrations leads to a risk of the profanation of the Blessed Eucharist.”

Cardinal Sarah then turned to his call for priests to say Mass facing in the same direction as the people. He noted that this is “permitted by current liturgical legislation” and “is perfectly legitimate in the modern rite.”

“Indeed, I think it is a very important step in ensuring that in our celebrations the Lord is truly at the centre,” he added.

The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship appealed also to his fellow bishops to “please lead your priests and people towards the Lord in this way, particularly at large celebrations in your dioceses and in your cathedral. Please form your seminarians in the reality that we are not called to the priesthood to be at the centre of liturgical worship ourselves, but to lead Christ’s faithful to him as fellow worshippers.”

Cardinal Sarah concluded by saying, “we must sing the liturgy, we must sing the liturgical texts, respecting the liturgical traditions of the Church and rejoicing in the treasury of sacred music that is ours, most especially that music proper to the Roman rite, Gregorian chant. We must sing sacred liturgical music not merely religious music, or worse, profane songs.”

The cardinal was followed in his address by Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon, who said the invitation to say Mass eastwards “calls us to realise once again, in all our liturgical celebrations, that Christian liturgy is essentially oriented to Christ whose coming we await in joyful hope.”

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS/Debbie Hill

By Judith Sudilovsky

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (CNS) -- An Italian team has completed restoration of Crusader-era mosaics in the Church of the Nativity, but the mosaics will only be unveiled publicly after work on lighting, electricity and the fire alarm system is also finished.

The work involved removing the layers of centuries-worth of soot and dirt -- a result of the smoke of candles lit by pilgrims coming to venerate the site traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus -- from about 1.55 million tiny mosaic pieces that were reviewed and restored.

"I think all the churches want to save this church because here Jesus was born," said Giammarco Piacenti, CEO of Piacenti restoration center, which began work on the church starting with the rotting wooden roof in April 2013. "It is important for all Christianity. For my professional life, this occasion is incredible."

Only 1,400 square feet of mosaics remain from the original 21,528 square feet that adorned the wall, he noted. The others were destroyed by rain leaking through the roof, he said.

Made of stone, mother of pearl, and glass and gold leaf, the mosaics portray different scenes in the life of Jesus and the church, including the disbelief of Thomas, the Assumption and Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Piacenti said the mosaic of the disbelief of Thomas shows the date of 1155 and the names Ephraim and Basilius, presumably artisans who created the work. Some pieces of the mosaics remain missing and will not be replaced, he said, based on the theory of restoration that there should be a minimum of intervention on any piece.

"Really, it is only conservation," he said.

One special moment came when restorers cleared away plaster from the wall bordering the roof in the main section of the church and discovered a seventh mosaic of a golden angel, in addition to the six they already knew existed. The angels' arms gently direct pilgrims toward the grotto traditionally thought to be the site where Mary gave birth to Jesus.

During the Ottoman Empire, the angels' faces were disfigured with gunshots to the nose and so here the missing pieces have been replaced, said Piacenti.

Both Islam and Judaism prohibit graven human images.

"They were shot in the nose to destroy, to kill them," Piacenti said. Restoration gave them "a second life."

The Church of the Nativity is shared by the Franciscans, and the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches. It is governed by the traditional Status Quo, the 1852 agreement that preserves the division of ownership and responsibilities of various Christian holy sites. In years past, the denominations have been known to jealously guard over their sections of the church, to the extent of fist fights breaking out over who could clean which part of the stone floor.

Relations among the churches have become progressively more cordial over the past decade, and the three churches were able to come together under the auspices of a special committee formed by the Palestinian National Authority. Through joint discussions they reached a working agreement permitting the much needed restorations on the Church of the Nativity to begin.

Once funds are raised, the next stage of the project will include restoration of the church's 50 pillars and the study and restoration of the church floor and the mosaics underneath.

The different denominations have come to similar agreements in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, allowing for restoration projects to begin there as well.

- - -

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.

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS illustration/Liz Agbey

By Chaz Muth

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (CNS) -- As U.S. Air Force Maj. Justin Secrest organizes moving boxes in the family garage, his wife, Jennifer, surveys the kitchen to see what she can do without before the movers come in a few weeks to take their belongings to their new home near Kansas City, Missouri.

It will be the 13th move that the couple has made in their 24 years of marriage.

Frequent moves are a fact of life when one or both spouses in a family have military careers, and though the physical transport of their belongings to a new home at Whiteman Air Force Base is a manageable task, it's the saying goodbye to friends that never gets easy, 46-year-old Jennifer Secrest told Catholic News Service as she was packing up her home of a few years at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls.

The golden-haired mother of two adult sons and a teenage daughter in high school became misty-eyed when she talked about leaving the life her family has made in northwest Montana, the friends who will stay behind and the Catholic Church on base in which she has immersed herself.

"We say goodbye to a lot of people," Jennifer Secrest said as she fought back tears.

Her husband recognizes the emotional toll these moves have on his wife and said he has built up some barriers to protect himself from the impact of the frequent change in assignments.

"There are some great things about military life, but there are definite hardships," Maj. Secrest said. "It's a strange life and it's definitely not an easy life."

The biggest constant the Secrests said they have had in this "crazy life that is the military," is the church and the relationships they have forged with various chaplains along the way.

"Our family has benefited so much from the church and we've been very fortunate to have close ties with Catholic chaplains over the years," Maj. Secrest said. "Yes, the religious aspect has been important to us, but the presence of the church in our lives has kept our foundation strong during some very difficult times."

Frequent deployments have required the 46-year-old major to be away from the family sometimes for a year at a time.

Jennifer Secrest figures that her husband's absences from the family total about five years in all.

The Secrests' situation is common among military families, making the presence of the chaplain that much more important, said Father John Reutemann, the Catholic chaplain at Malmstrom.

The military chaplain helps families with unique challenges that don't necessarily impact most people in civilian parishes, Father Reutemann told Catholic News Service during a May interview at the Montana Air Force base.

Frequent relocations, deployments, family separations, dangers associated with war -- and at Malmstrom, the stress of guarding and being so close to the largest number of nuclear missiles on U.S. soil -- are just some of what military families cope with.

Joyce Flores' husband, Army Maj. Rufino B. Flores Jr., has been deployed to Afghanistan four times during the course of the past several years.

The young couple is currently stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where they celebrated his latest homecoming last December.

The dangers Maj. Flores' war-zone missions have carried their own levels of stress on the young mother of three small children.

Though she is thrilled each time her husband returns home, reintegration isn't as easy as one may think, Joyce Flores told CNS during a March interview at Fort Bragg, as her 7-year-old son was preparing for his first confession at one of the chapels on base.

"Being on his own for such a long time during the last deployment, I found that when he returned, he had forgotten what it was like to be a part of a whole family," she said. "He was responsible for himself and his gear and his mission, and his day-to-day life didn't include taking care of children, helping with household chores and helping the kids with homework."

It was a difficult transition for Maj. Flores when he returned. He had to come to grips with the fact that he had four other people in the house who depended on him, Joyce Flores said.

"It took me a little while to realize that he wasn't in that mindset and that it wasn't automatic the way it had been after other deployments," she said.

Joyce Flores also said that since she had spent the entire year he was gone taking care of the family needs, she didn't reach out to her husband for help when he returned and he sometimes watched while the family went on with daily life, wondering where he fit in.

Their Catholic chaplain at Fort Bragg, Father Lukasz J. Willenberg, said reintegration is one of the biggest stresses military families endure following deployments and he tries to provide support when a mother or father returns from war.

"Soldiers return home, sometimes with different issues, and it can be a real challenge to adjust," Father Willenberg said. "The combat zone changes them. But also, as they are away, the kids are growing up; the spouse left behind has to adjust to the new normal. After 12 months, there are two people who are now slightly different who have to learn how to deal with each other again, how to rediscover one another."

Sometimes Father Willenberg provides these couples with counseling himself and other times he refers them to reintegration seminars and retreats offered by the Army.

"I encourage them to set up a date night or something special just for the two of them," he said, "to get away and rediscover each other."

The Catholic Church is invested in helping families stay together and to keeping marriages intact, Father Willenberg said, and so is the military, because armed forces service men and women function better when their home lives are stable.

Many airmen at Malmstrom deploy every other week to the nearby nuclear missile fields. They are frequently on duty for five days straight, staying in the field that entire time, then return home for four days in row.

"I would argue that can be an even more difficult deployment on a family than when someone is gone for a year at a time," Father Reutemann said. "They are constantly in a coming-and-going cycle and you sometimes have a situation where one person carries the weight of the parenting."

It's almost like they are a single parent, yet they are married and there are two visible parents, he said. "It's a strange dynamic and one that can create all kinds of difficulties."

Father Reutemann has become a fixture at the Secrests' home for spiritual support as well as companionship.

As the family prepared to leave Malmstrom, they naturally reflected on how the church and the chaplains have impacted their lives.

Jennifer Secrest recalled that when her husband was on one of his long deployments, one of her sons told her that he needed to go talk to the chaplain.

When she tried to press him to see if it was an issue she could help him with, he told her no and left.

It was later revealed that he was struggling in school and didn't want to burden his mother, who had been left in charge of the family. But he knew the chaplain was a source of support.

"We would not be the same," Maj. Secrest said, "had we not had that support that the church gives us."

- - -

Follow Muth on Twitter: @Chazmaniandevyl.

- - -

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.

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pray for those responsible for extreme poverty, for the rich who feast unaware of people in need at their door, and for priests who ignore those who are hurting, Pope Francis told people living a precarious existence.

Say a prayer for these people, wish them well and "ask Jesus that they convert, and I assure you that if you do this, there will be great joy in the church, in your hearts and also in beloved France," the pope told his audience.

The pope met with about 200 people from the French province of Lyon, who are homeless, living in poverty or coping with an illness or disability.

The group was on pilgrimage to Rome with Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon and the All Together With Dignity Fourth World movement founded by Father Joseph Wresinski, who ministered to deprived families in urban and rural parishes.

Meeting with the group July 6 in the Vatican's Paul VI audience hall, the pope told them he had a favor to ask them, or rather, he said, he was giving them a mission to carry out.

It is "a mission that only you, in your poverty will be able to accomplish," he said in Italian, while an aide translated into French.

Jesus was very harsh with and "strongly reprimanded people who do not embrace the father's message," the pope said, recalling Jesus' "sermon on the plain" in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

While the poor, hungry, excluded and mournful are blessed, Jesus said, "woe to you who are rich," satiated and mocking, the pope said.

When spoken by the son of God, the warning of "woe," he said, "is frightening," and Jesus directed that admonition "to the rich, the wise, those who laugh now, those who like to be flattered, hypocrites."

"I give you the mission of praying for them so that the Lord give them a change of heart."

The pope also asked them to pray for those who are "guilty of your poverty" and for "so many rich people dressed in purple and fine linen, who feast with great banquets without realizing that lying at their door there are so many Lazaruses eager to eat the scraps from their table."

"Pray also for priests, for the Levites, who, seeing that man beaten and half-dead, pass to the other side, look the other way, because they have no compassion," the pope said.

Jesus chose to share in their suffering out of love, by becoming "one of you: scorned by man, forgotten, someone who means nothing."

"When you experience this, do not forget that Jesus also experienced this like you. It is proof that you are precious in his eyes and that he is by your side," he said.

The poor are a priority for the church, Pope Francis told them. "The church, who loves and prefers those whom Jesus loved and preferred, cannot rest until it has reached all those who experience refusal, exclusion and who don't mean anything to anybody."

Not only are people able to encounter Christ in the poor, he said, the poor help build peace in the world by "reminding us that we are brothers and sisters and that God is the father of everyone."

- - -

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.

Full Article

Full Article