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(Vatican Radio) The bishops of England and Wales have urged Catholics to support a ‘week of prayer’ initiative being promoted by the Church of England during the week leading up to Pentecost Sunday.

The Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York have written to every Church of England parish priest across the country, suggesting ways in which they can engage with the initiative entitled ‘Thy Kingdom Come.

The week of prayer from May 8th-15th culminates in ‘Beacon events’ to be held in half a dozen cathedrals around the country over Pentecost weekend to pray for the renewal of the Holy Spirit.

To find out more about the ecumenical impact of this Anglican initiative, Philippa Hitchen spoke to Fr Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales….

Listen: 

Fr Christopher says the Archbishops of Canterbury and York wrote to the bishops’ conference explaining about the initiative as a sort of novena before Pentecost, when the Church remembers the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and how they were sent out to proclaim the Gospel to the world.

He says the Catholic bishops wanted to lend their support and were hoping it will develop as an ecumenical project and as a parallel initiative to the work that’s done in Christian Unity Week in January. “If you think of Christian Unity week as a reflection on the unity of the Church ‘ad intra’, within ourselves”, he says, then this event could be seen as “a combined work ‘ad extra’, out into the world of today”. 

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(Vatican Radio) Among the scores of throusands of pilgrims on hand to see Pope Francis on Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly General Audience, were a group of unusually dressed characters from Termoli in central Italy: the Cavalieri di San Timoteo or “Knights of St. Timothy”.

More than just historical re-enactors, the Knights of St. Timothy (so-called for their patron and base of operations out of San Timoteo parish in Termoli) are a group of men involved in volunteer and charity activities in the parish and throughout their city and their region.

Their costumes represent those of the three major monastic-chivalric orders of the High Middle Ages: the Knights Templar; the Knights Hospitaller; the Knights Teutonic.

A delegation from the Association formed of founder Antonello Sciarretta, parish pastor and “chaplain” Don Benito Giorgetta, and artist Cleofino Casolino, presented the Holy Father with a sculpture realized bby Casolino himself.

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Cape Town, South Africa, May 4, 2016 / 06:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops of South Africa have criticized the government for excessive weapons spending given the country’s major social problems. 

“We insist that, in the absence of discernible external military threat to our country, and in a country which is struggling to recover from high levels of unemployment and extreme poverty, it is ethically irresponsible and unnecessary to spend billions of scarce resources on weapons of war,” said Bishop Abel Gabuza. 

Bishop Gabuza chairs the Justice and Peace Commission for the South Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference. In an April 26 statement, he said the arms spending ignored the real problem.

“(T)he greatest threat to our national security are economic inequalities and youth unemployment which are themselves fueling violent social protests,” he said.

Bishop Gabuza said forms of protests are becoming increasingly violent.

“The defense capabilities that the military acquired through the arms procurement in 1999 are irrelevant in the face of this security threat,” he said.

The bishop was critical of a government finding that justified the arms spending in the face of corruption claims.

He said the government spent billions of South African rands – worth tens of millions of U.S. dollars – on weapons in 1999 at a time when the government said it could not afford retroviral treatments for South Africans with HIV.

“We therefore continue to insist that the arms deal was an ethical blunder,” he said.

The bishops’ conference commission also called on the government to suspend its plans for nuclear energy procurement.

 

Photo credit: KANIN.studio via www.shutterstock.com.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- There is no such thing as a soul that is lost forever, only people who are waiting to be found, Pope Francis said.

God is not part of humanity's "throwaway culture" and does not shut out the sinner and those most in need, the pope said May 4 during his weekly general audience.

Because of his immense love for everyone, God takes the illogical step of leaving his faithful flock behind in the harsh desert to seek out the one who has gone missing, he told those gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The pope reflected on the Gospel parable of the good shepherd, which, he said, reflects Jesus' concern for sinners and God's commitment to never give up on anyone.

Jesus uses the parable to explain how "his closeness to sinners must not scandalize, but, on the contrary, encourage everyone to seriously reflect on how we live our faith," the pope said.

The parable, he said, responds to the doctors of the law and the Pharisees, who "were proud, arrogant, believed themselves just," and, therefore, became suspicious or shocked seeing Jesus welcome and eat with sinners.

The parable according to the Gospel of Luke begins, "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the 99 in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?"

The query, the pope said, introduces a paradox that questions how smart this shepherd could be when he abandons his precious flock, not in a safe pen, but in the dangerous desert just for one sheep.

"He could have reasoned, 'Well, let's look at the numbers: I have 99, I lost one, oh well,'" the pope said. But, "no. He goes looking for it because everyone is very important to him and that (sheep) is the one most in need, the most abandoned, the most rejected and he goes out to find it."

The story might make people think that the good shepherd doesn't care about the ones he leaves behind, the pope said, "But in actuality it's not like that. The lesson Jesus wants to give us instead is that no sheep can be lost. The Lord cannot resign himself to the fact that even one single person may be lost."

God's desire to save all his children is so "unstoppable, not even 99 sheep can hold the shepherd back and keep him locked up in the pen."

"We are all forewarned -- mercy toward sinners is the way God works" and "nothing and no one will be able to take away his will of salvation" for all of humanity, the pope said.

"God doesn't know our current throwaway culture," he said. "God throws nobody away. God loves everyone, seeks out everyone, everybody -- one by one."

The parable shows how everything depends on the shepherd and his willingness to look for the lost ones.

But it also tells the faithful flock that they will always be on the move, that they "do not possess the Lord, they cannot fool themselves keeping him imprisoned in our mindset and game plans," Pope Francis said.

"The shepherd will be found where the lost sheep is," he said, and it is up to the flock to follow the shepherd's same journey of mercy so all 100 may be reunited again and rejoice.

The church needs to reflect often on the parable of the lost sheep, he said, because there is always someone who has strayed from the fold.

Sometimes seeing that empty place at the table, the pope said, "is discouraging and makes us believe that the loss is inevitable, an illness without a cure. And then we run the risk of closing ourselves up in the pen where there will be no smell of sheep, but the stink of stale air."

Christians, he said, must never have the musty smell of confinement, which happens when a parish or community loses its missionary zeal and cuts itself off from others, seeing itself as "we -- quote unquote -- the righteous."

Christians must understand that in Jesus' eyes, no one is ever lost for good; there "are only sheep that must be found." God waits up until the very end, like he did for the good thief, who repented before he died on the cross next to Jesus, the pope said.

No distance is too far to keep the shepherd away, and "no flock can give up on a brother" because the joy of finding what was lost belongs both to the faithful and the shepherd, he said.

"We are all sheep who have been found again and welcomed by the Lord's mercy, called to gather the whole flock together with him," Pope Francis said.

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(Vatican Radio) A regular visitor to the Venerable English College in Rome, Dr Serenhedd James, a Member of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Oxford, recently adressed the College’s Wiseman Society in their Annual Lecture.

As a regular, and much respected visitor, he had noticed something of an omission in the pictorial record of the College, notably, the lack of a portrait of the influential nineteenth century archbishop, George Errington. As Dr James himself explained during the lecture,

“… a man whose long life and ministry was bound up with almost every controversy that beset the English Catholic Church in the mid-nineteenth century, who was Vice-Rector of this College – and nearly its Rector – and who, in the fullness of time, came very close indeed to succeeding Nicholas Wiseman as Archbishop of Westminster. But history is written by the winners; and George Errington lost perhaps more than anyone else as the Church in England writhed towards a recasting of its self-understanding in the years that followed the restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.”

Listen as Dr James describes to Phil Andrews about how his curiosity soon became a full-blown academic enquiry.

“George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England” by Dr Serenhedd James is published by Oxford University Press, and is available from Amazon, and all leading bookshops.

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