Catholic News 2

239 Catholic couples were able to celebrate their marriage in style in Indonesia, thanks to collaboration between the Diocese of Atambua and local authorities in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province.   The event was held under a huge tent in St Filomena Church in Mena, where Fr Kanis Oki and several priests concelebrated the nuptial Mass organised as part of the Jubilee of Mercy "to reiterate the beauty of marriage”.  Practical reasons brought about the mass wedding, most notably a desire to facilitate the issuance of marriage certificates, a notoriously painful process in Indonesia. 

A few months ago, Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa spoke publicly about the importance of marriage and birth certificates, something that many Indonesians fail to grasp. He noted that 85 per cent of all children in NTT, the country’s most Catholic province, do not have a birth certificate.  Some 36 million Indonesian children out of a total of 87 million do not have this document. 

In NTT, many adults also do not register their marriage because women, according to tradition, are required to provide a dowry (called bellis in the local language) to the groom's family. This is not the case in Java and other provinces.  However, the bellis is a financial burden for many people, and so couples opt out of the official marriage to avoid the payment. Their children however end up without a birth certificate, unable to attend state schools.

To solve the problem, Minister Parawansa contacted religious leaders in the province.  St Filomena’s pastor, Fr Bowe, said, "We received the full support of the government and dozens of NGOs, local and foreign. Mass weddings were carried out to help newlyweds get the papers required by the State."   (Source: AsiaNews)

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An Indian court jailed 11 Hindus for life on Friday for murdering dozens of Muslims during riots in Gujarat in 2002 that shook India at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state's chief minister.

The court sentenced 12 other people to seven years in jail for arson and their role in rioting in which 69 Muslims were killed, while another was handed a 10-year sentence, prosecutors said.  The massacre came during a series of religious riots that flared for two months in Gujarat, killing more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. 

The court called the massacre the "darkest day" but rejected prosecutors' demand to sentence the defendants to death after ruling that the attack was not planned.  A Hindu mob scaled the boundary wall of a housing complex in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, in February 2002 before torching the homes in which Muslim families were trapped.  Among the victims were children and women who were burned to death.

The riots, among the worst since Indian independence in 1947, have dogged Modi's political career for years after he was accused of not doing enough to stop the violence.  Modi, a Hindu, denies any wrongdoing and in 2013 a panel appointed by the Supreme Court said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Zakia Jafri, whose husband Ehsan, a former Congress party legislator, died in the blaze, said the sentences on Friday were too lenient.  "I am not satisfied with this verdict. I have to start all over again. This is wrong," she told media. Jafri, who is fighting what may be the last legal battle to pin blame on Modi, says she saw her husband making repeated desperate calls to police for help but none came. He was dragged out of his home by sword-wielding men and within minutes was stripped and killed, according to Jafri.  (Source: Reuters)

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The Islamic State group is committing genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes against the Yazidi community in Iraq and Syria, a U.N. panel said Thursday, calling on countries to do more to stop it.  The Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued its first report on Thursday specifically looking at IS  crimes against Yazidis after the extremist group's attack on unarmed Yazidi communities in northwestern Iraq in August 2014. Many Yazidis were taken into Syria, and over 3,200 Yazidi women and children are still captive, the report said. 

The 41-page report, based on 45 interviews with survivors, religious leaders, activists, medical staffers and others, seeks to put allegations of rape, sexual slavery and other crimes in a wider context of crimes against humanity and genocide by alleging that such practices are part of a IS strategy to wipe out the Yazidis, whom the radicals see as infidels.

The U.N. estimates that some 5,000 Yazidi men were killed by IS militants when they took control of Iraq's northwest two years ago and thousands more people, mostly women and children, were taken into captivity. Most of the Yazidi population - some 400,000 people - was displaced.  (Source: AP)

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Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jun 17, 2016 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic faithful shouldn’t believe a misleading newspaper ad that says Sunday Masses are being held in a hotel room in the city of Colombo, the Archbishop of Colombo has said.

The ad appeared on the first page of the late City Edition of the Daily Mirror June 9. It was titled “Celebrating Women in Ministry” and said there was a Mass every Sunday in the Cinnamon Grand Hotel.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo warned about the ad in a letter to his parish priests, saying it “has nothing to do with the Catholic Church” and “is not in any way to be canonically considered equivalent to the Sunday Mass celebrated by the Church.”

He emphasized that Mass is “celebrated only by a priest duly ordained to that ministry by a bishop of the Catholic Church.”

Cardinal Ranjith cautioned the faithful not to be misled by the ad’s claim that its religious service was equivalent to a Eucharistic celebration in Catholic churches.

He added that all the Catholic faithful are obliged to attend a Sunday Mass celebrated by validly ordained priests.

The cardinal also urged the Daily Mirror to publish a clarification about the matter; the paper responded to his request and published his clarifications June 10.

His clarifications said that in the canonical and liturgical understanding of the Mass, it is celebrated not by lay persons but by the ordained clergy only.

 

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Vatican City, Jun 17, 2016 / 08:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Since 2015, when the refugee crisis reached a fever pitch in Europe, five Syrian families fleeing civil war have found refuge in Italy with the help of the Vatican. As of Thursday, nine more people have been added to that list.

“Following the visit of the Holy Father to the Island of Lesbos, in Greece, when he accompanied three families of refugees back to Rome, a second group of nine refugees, including two Christians, arrived in Rome yesterday,” a June 17 communique from the Vatican announced.

The refugees, consisting of six adults and three children, arrived to Rome Thursday. They are all Syrian citizens who had been living in the Kara Tepe camp on Lesbos after making the perilous boat ride from Turkey to the small Greek island.

According to the Vatican communique, the Vatican Police force, called the “Gendarmeria,” alongside the Interior Ministry of Greece, the Greek Asylum Service, and the Community of Sant’Egidio, who will provide for their housing, all played a role in getting the families to Rome, and accompanied them from Athens to the Eternal City.

Pope Francis, true to his knack for making headlines, surprised the world when he brought 12 Syrian refugees on his return flight from Lesbos, a primary entry point for refugees seeking passage into Europe, after making an April 16 daytrip to the small Greek island.

Hailing from war-torn Syria, each of the families were Muslim and number 12 people in total, including six children. Two of them are from Damascus, while third is from Deir Azzor, which is now territory occupied ISIS. Their homes had been bombed.

According to the AFP news agency, an official of Greece's state refugee coordination agency said the families had all been staying in the same open camp, Kara Tepe, as the latest round of arrivals. They had been selected through a drawing, which they were eligible for as a result of having all their documents in order.

Pope Francis had traveled to the island as a sign of concern and solidarity for migrants forced to flee their homelands due to war, violence, hunger and poverty.

Lesbos, along with its neighboring island Kos, has been one of the primary destinations for refugees, many of whom are fleeing war in Syrian and Afghanistan, who travel to Turkey in order to make the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean to enter Europe.

In 2015 alone more than 1.1 million migrants fleeing war and violence poured into Europe, and the influx has continued, perplexing E.U. leaders as to how to handle the crisis.

On Sept. 6, 2015, Pope Francis made an appeal for all European parishes, religious communities, monasteries and shrines to house one refugee family. At the time, the Pope said the two Vatican parishes – St. Peter's Basilica and St. Anne's parish – would also be hosting one family each.

A Jan. 14 communique from the Vatican announced that St. Peter’s Basilica provided an apartment for an Eritrean family, consisting of a mother and her five children.


The family hosted by St. Anne’s parish is a Christian Syrian family, consisting of the parents and two children. They fled from the Syrian capital of Damascus, and are now living in a Vatican-owned apartment just outside the Vatican walls. They arrived in Italy the same day Pope Francis made his appeal.

The Sant’Egidio Community had also assisted the Vatican in welcoming both of these families alongside the Papal Almoner, Bishop Konrad Krajewski.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Paul Haring

ROME (CNS) -- Forty-nine votive candles burned in front of the altar in a Rome church as people gathered to pray for the victims of the massacre June 12 in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub.

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and Santa Susanna parish, the parish serving U.S. Catholics in Rome, planned the evening prayer service June 16. About 100 people attended.

Paulist Father Steve Bossi, vice rector of Santa Susanna, spoke about the need to build a culture where everyone is accepted.

Peace begins in each person's daily life, he said. "If we are not at peace with those near us, how can we be at peace with those far away?"

In brief remarks at the service, Ken Hackett, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, said there is "no reason any individual needs to own an assault weapon."

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, 29, was identified by police as the lone gunman responsible for the massacre at the Pulse, a gay nightclub.  Police say he used a semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol, both of which he purchased legally.

At the Rome prayer service, Hackett mentioned several victims by name and noted that "many were also a part of LGBT community, a community that has seen more than its share of suffering and tragedy."

The vigil was planned to honor the victims, he said, and to send our "deepest and heartfelt condolences and prayers" to their families and friends.

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IMAGE: CNS/Reuters

By Cindy Wooden

ROME (CNS) -- Because most people today do not understand that sacramental marriage really is a bond that binds them to each other for life, many marriages today can be considered invalid, Pope Francis said.

Raising a point he has raised before, and one also raised by now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis insisted June 16 that the validity of a marriage implies that a couple understands that sacramental marriage is a bond that truly binds them to another for their entire lives.

"We are living in a culture of the provisional," he told participants in the Diocese of Rome's annual pastoral conference.

Answering questions after giving a prepared talk, Pope Francis told the story of a bishop who said a university graduate came to him saying he wanted to be a priest, but only for 10 years.

The idea of commitments being temporary "occurs everywhere, even in priestly and religious life. The provisional. And for this reason a large majority of sacramental marriages are null. They say 'yes, for my whole life,' but they do not know what they are saying because they have a different culture," he said.

The Vatican press office, publishing a transcript the next day, adjusted the pope's words to read, "A part of our sacramental marriages are null because they (the spouses) say, 'Yes, for my whole life,' but they do not know what they are saying because they have a different culture."

Attitudes toward marriage are influenced strongly by social expectations, the pope said, telling the story of a young man who told the pope he and his fiancee had not celebrated their wedding yet because they were looking for a church with decor that would go well with her dress. "These are people's concerns," the pope said. "How can we change this? I don't know."

Pope Francis told participants that when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he banned "shotgun weddings" from Catholic parishes because the strong social pressure to marry placed on a couple expecting a baby could mean they were not fully free to pledge themselves to each other for life through the sacrament.

It was important, he said, that the couples were not abandoned, but were assisted by the church. Many of them, he said, "after two or three years would marry. I would watch them enter the church -- dad, mom and the child holding their hands. They knew well what they were doing."

"The crisis of marriage is because people do not know what the sacrament is, the beauty of the sacrament; they do not know that it is indissoluble, that it is for one's entire life," he said. "It's difficult."

Meeting in July 2005 with priests in northern Italy, Pope Benedict also raised the question of the validity of marriages that, while performed in church, bound together two baptized Catholics who had little understanding of the faith, the meaning of the sacraments and the indissolubility of marriage.

Asked about Communion for a divorced and civilly remarried person, Pope Benedict had responded, "I would say that a particularly painful situation is that of those who were married in the church, but were not really believers and did so just for tradition, and then finding themselves in a new, nonvalid marriage, convert, find the faith and feel excluded from the sacrament."

Pope Benedict said that when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he asked several bishops' conferences and experts to study the problem, which in effect was "a sacrament celebrated without faith."

He said he had thought that the church marriage could be considered invalid because the faith of the couple celebrating the sacrament was lacking. "But from the discussions we had, I understood that the problem was very difficult" and that further study was necessary.

According to the Code of Canon Law, "For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation."

In a formal speech in 2015 to the Roman Rota, a marriage tribunal, Pope Francis said: "The judge, in pondering the validity of the consent expressed, must take into account the context of values and of faith -- their presence or absence -- in which the intent to marry was formed. In fact, ignorance of the contents of the faith could lead to what the code (of canon law) calls an error conditioning the will. This eventuality is not to be considered rare as in the past, precisely because worldly thinking often prevails over the magisterium of the church."

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