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(Vatican Radio) On Friday April 22, over 1 billion people are coming together to celebrate International Mother Earth Day. This year, Earth Day coincides with the signing of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, a legally binding document aiming to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

The theme for this year’s Earth Day is “Trees for the Earth.” Trees are crucial to combating climate change because they absorb harmful levels of CO2 from the atmosphere. Leaders of the international holiday at the Earth Day Network set a goal to plant 7.8 billion trees within the next five years.

In his encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis urges us to participate in the care for our common home. Rufino Lim, a Franciscan Friar from South Korea and an assistant at the General Office for Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC), holds this encyclical letter close to his heart. “It is telling us to listen to the poor and to the cries of the earth, because they are the real teachers,” he says.

Vatican Radio’s Sophia Pizzi speaks with Rufino Lim for more on his work with climate change and the importance of the Laudato Si in light of Earth Day this year.  

Listen: 

New to his position at JPIC, Rufino Lim has only been in Rome for about two weeks. Prior to his arrival, he went on a “climate pilgrimage” in Korea. While on this journey, he encountered many people suffering from climate change. “I cried a lot,” he says. “I didn’t know what this reality of this capitalistic society was.”

To illustrate the significance of trees in society, Lim tells a story of his friend in Korea: “The two of us made a kind of journey together where we would take three steps, bow to the earth, and then take another three steps. Whenever my friend saw a flower, he would stop for a while and bow deeply. When he encountered a tree, he would stop for a while and hug the tree. You could feel the mystery of small flowers and trees…they cannot speak in the same way we do, but they are more deeply related to the mystery of God, the mystery of life.”

Lim also participated in the United Nation’s Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris last year with over 40 Korean environmental activists. Lim considers all of the participants “very knowledgeable,” however, he also feels the Paris Agreement is not sufficient. “Those were just words,” he says. “We should be more clear and push the governments to change their policies and their attitudes to the earth, to the poor, and to the climate.”

On his “climate pilgrimage,” Lim also brought copies of the Laudato Si to give to everyone he encountered. “We would all say one of the two prayers at the end of the encyclical together, and we all cried. We were all very deeply touched by the words of the Pope. No matter what beliefs the people had, they are very interested in the contents of the book.”

Dreaming of the future, Lim hopes the world will change its ways. “The whole structure is so evil,” he says. “We need to be more transparent. People should listen to those who do not have the tools, money, or resources to change the world, and see the reality that they are living in. Then we could change our hearts, our minds, and our visions, and find a new structure that is more just and sustainable. We should not cling to idea of development. It is about life, and about peace. Climate change is closely related to politics, but it is also closely related to peace.” By talking about these issues more freely and publically, he says, we will find a better way to “give this world to the next generation.”

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(Vatican Radio) In a last ditch attempt to rally international support to stave off impeachment against her, Brazil's President Dilma has picked the Big Apple.  

In fact, President Rousseff is today in New York, to put her case to the United Nations. 

Listen to the report by James Blears: 

President Dilma Rouseff is determined to widen the scope of her defence, with this direct and public appeal to the United Nations.  

Paradoxically Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer, who's constitutionally in charge in her absence, is the very person she's accusing of trying to orchestrate a weaponless coup against her, via the impeachment process.
 
The lower House... the Chamber of Deputies has already voted to recommend impeachment.  This issue will be decided by a vote up the upper House the Senate, early next month.
 
Opposition politician Eduardo Braga has just resigned his job as Mining and Energy Minister from the coalition National Government,  on orders from party leaaders, and will return to his job as a Senator,  in time for the crucial vote.  He's the ninth minister to have recently quit this Administration.  
 
Dilma is accused of flagrantly violating Budget Laws while seeking re-election in 2014.  

She denies any wrong doing and says these moves against her are political vendettas. 

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(Vatican Radio) The organization the Vatican has entrusted with taking care of the 12 Syrian refugees who came back to Rome with Pope Francis after his visit to the Greek island of Lesbos on Saturday is the Saint Egidio Community.

Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni spoke to Saint Egidio’s Cecilia Pani who is in charge of the Community’s school of Italian language for migrants and is responsible for welcoming refugees and migrants who arrive in Rome.

She was part of the team that travelled with the Pope to Greece and helped organize the unprecedented  flight back. She says she believes the Pope’s powerful gesture of legally allowing people who are fleeing conflict to enter the country speaks to an indifferent -  and even defiant world – and  puts forward  a model that other EU nations can imitate:

Listen:

“I think the Pope wanted to provoke others to imitate him, There must be a way to let them come to Europe legally and stop these terrible journeys” Pani says.

Pointing out that there a different models for integration, Cecilia Pani says she thinks Italy has quite a good model, also because people coming to Italy come from different geographical areas: “it’s not only one mono-lingual or mono-cultural population, so it is a little bit easier”.

She says that people who are fleeing war and other terrible situations not only have the right to seek protection in Europe, but also to travel safely.

The 12 refugees who came to Rome from Lesbos with Pope Francis have been granted humanitarian visas. The next step is for them to apply for asylum so that they can be recognized as refugees.

Pani also speaks of the unique experience of travelling with the Pope and of how he greeted the group twice during the journey and expressed his emotion of being able to be with the families in Lesbos: “ he said he was moved by what he saw in the camp”.

She tells of the excitement – especially of the children –when they boarded the plane and of how they were given a special meal with lasagna and chocolate which was much appreciated.

She says the three families are temporarily housed in a Saint Egidio shelter for families and young people: “we want to let them stay for a while together because they are in a completely foreign environment”.

Pani says that they will soon be moved to apartments and that the Vatican has asked the Saint Egidio Community to help with the process of integration.

“They have already registered at the Community’s School of Italian Language and have attended the first lessons (…) of course we hope that the youngest couple will soon find a job, and the children will go to school – it is their right to do so” she says.
    

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Denver, Colo., Apr 21, 2016 / 10:22 am (CNA).- Father Raymond Thomas Gawronski, S.J., professor of dogmatics at St. Patrick's Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California, died in the closing hours of April 14 of complications from cancer, at the age of 65.

He was remembered for his love of Christ, formation of seminarians, and witness to the beauty of the priesthood.

“Certainly he was an excellent classroom lecturer, but it was his real interest in the (seminarians), and their spiritual development, and his desire that they have a real relationship with Christ – that was his constant theme,” said Fr. Gladstone Stevens, the rector and president of St. Patrick's Seminary.

“He was such a great witness to what priests could be.”

Fr. Stevens told CNA that while Fr. Gawronski had not been at the seminary for very long, “when you think about the disproportion between the time he was here and his impact, it's just incredible: he was such a presence here, in such a positive way.”

Gawronski was born in Brooklyn Sept. 9, 1950, to Stanley and Blanche Gawronski, a family of Polish heritage. Growing up in New York and New Jersey, he graduated with a degree in philosophy from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. In 1971. He later earned a master’s degree in world religions from Syracuse University, where he studied under Dr. Huston Smith.

In 1977 Gawronski joined the Society of Jesus. His two years of novitiate were served in Wernersville, Pa., and he also served the poor in Washington, D.C., at St. Aloysius parish. He then earned an M.A. in Asian Studies at the St. Michael's Institute of Gonzaga University, and an M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

Fr. Gawronski was ordained a priest of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus in 1986. He went on for further studies in Rome, earning a licentiate in theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

He taught theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He was for some 10 years spiritual director and a theology professor at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colo., where he helped to establish the spirituality year, with its Ignatian characteristics: a month of itinerancy and a 30-day retreat following the Spiritual Exercises.

Fr. Gawronski spent the last two years of his life serving as a spiritual director and professor at St. Patrick's Seminary.

He is the author of Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter Between East and West and A Closer Walk with Christ: A Personal Ignatian Retreat. He appeared in an EWTN series and his articles appeared in such publications as Communio, New Oxford Review, and America.

Fr. Stevens reflected that he appreciated Fr. Gawronski's insistence that “we have to do a better job bringing together the intellectual and spiritual life” of seminarians, which he shares.

“That comes a lot from his work on von Balthasar,” he said. “This recognition that the life of the mind and the life of the spirit cannot be seen as two separate things to be cultivated: and that was certainly apparent when he put together the spiritually program, but that's how he approached everything. In his homilies, his spiritual direction, in his class, he just went back and forth between his life of prayer and his scholarship without skipping a beat, and I admire that so much.”

Fr. Gawronski was preceded in death by his parents and by his sister Carol. He is survived by his brother-in-law Paul Sander, his niece Katie Sander, his nephew Peter Sander, and his cousin Donald Ferri.

His funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. April 26 at Shrine of St. Anne Catholic Church in Arvada, a Denver suburb. His body will be interred following the Mass, at the Jesuit plot of Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

A viewing and vigil will be held the preceding evening at Shrine of St. Anne at 5:30 p.m.

 

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Lima, Peru, Apr 21, 2016 / 10:52 am (CNA).- On Saturday an ethics commission created to investigate and offer proposals surrounding accusations of abuse against the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae released its report, which detailed an internal culture of extreme “discipline and obedience to the founder.”

This culture was “forged on the basis of extreme physical demands, as well as physical punishments, constituting abuses which violated the fundamental rights of persons,” the commission wrote in its April 16 report.

The Ethics Commission for Justice and Reconciliation was formed in November 2015 at the request of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. It is formed of two lawyers, a bishop, a psychiatrist, and a journalist.

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. Alejandro Bermúdez, executive director of CNA, is a member of the community.

An apostolic visitor from the Vatican is currently investigating allegations of sexual abuse, mistreatment, and abuse of power against Luis Fernando Figari, founder of the community.

The Sodalitium responded to Saturday's report, voicing gratitude for “the effort made by all the commissioners in listening to and ministering to the people who came forth to give their testimony.”

They also noted that they are waiting for the official Vatican evaluation of the situation and said that the independent commission's findings cannot be “taken in a total and absolute way.”

Figari stepped down as superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in 2010. The current superior general, Alessandro Moroni Llabres, confirmed Figari's guilt earlier in the month.

Responding to the new report, Moroni said that “despite the pain it caused me at first, I believe it describes with great clarity, the experience of suffering of the persons we have hurt.”

The report of the ethics commission indicated that young people were recruited to be Sodalits, and that in their houses of formation “many of those in formation were victims of physical assaults, harassment, and even abuse of a sexual nature. This has impressed on them profound psychological harm, in some cases disabling their reincorporation” into life outside the community.

The “absolute obedience” of those in formation “was accomplished by the practice of extreme discipline” which “minimized or annulled the will of those in formation,” the report read.

“This psychological and physical 'relationship of subjection' imposed within the SCV is incompatible with the institutional purpose which it is supposed to have encouraged in those in formation in the organization to accomplish: their vocational discernment and spiritual growth.”

Dependence and submission were only increased as one progressed through formation, the report said.

“Notwithstanding that these acts were denounced within the SCV, the then-superiors did not adopt corrective measures and, on the contrary, they concealed them, thereby encouraging the practice of new and greater abuses, under a mantle of impunity.”

Several members of the community were designated to personally serve Figari, whose behavior was characterized by “giving orders that could not be questioned, the use of vulgar and profane language,” and “control of all the activities within the institution and the personal lives of its members.” Figari's arbitrary use of authority led to “an organizational culture based on the cult of personality.”

The report suggested that some individuals might have been reduced to “servitude” at the hands of Figari, who denied them formation while they rendered unpaid services to him – in some cases, as long as 20 years.

Those in leadership within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae were in “complicit silence” about Figari's behavior, the report found. “They did not answer to the delicate task of forming young people who had placed their confidence and trust in the SCV, and who were finally frustrated in their expectations of a full life in the Christian faith.”

The ethics commission reported that vocational discernment was not accomplished through “individual freedom.” In some cases, those who demonstrated they did not have that vocation “were conditioned to effect a consecration which they really did not desire.”

Those who discerned out of the community were hindered from doing so, and were treated as if they were “treasonous,” the report suggested: “In many cases, this has led to grave psychological effects and even the rejection of the Catholic faith, even after being incorporated into live outside the community, obliging them to suffer unmerited spiritual conflicts.”

Furthermore, the commission reported a culture in which transparency was impeded, finances were not always accounted for, and members were treated differently based on their socio-economic class and race: “those in leadership had an evident preference for youth who were white and/or came from an affluent socio-economic class.”

Members of the community have suffered physical, psychological, spiritual, and moral damage, the ethics commission reported.

It concluded by recommending several measures be taken, including a public repudiation of Figari's conduct; the greatest possible sanctions on Figari; care and compensation for the victims; and barring anyone from representing the organization who held any position in the Sodalitium during the years that the abuses were permitted.

In addition to Peru, the community operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, and Italy.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy of Connor Bergeron

By Chaz Muth

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Before Connor Bergeron of Reston, Virginia, left to serve as a lay missionary in Bolivia, he wasn't sure how the experience would impact his life, other than soaking in the excitement and intrigue of living abroad.

After graduating from college, Bergeron was looking for an experience that would help him tie together what he had learned in school with some practical understanding with the world beyond his American upbringing.

At first, he considered teaching English in a foreign country.

However, after consulting with a parish priest, he looked into doing a year of missionary work, went on the Catholic Volunteer Network website and found a program with the Salesian Lay Missioners that appealed to him. He set off for Yapacani, Bolivia, in the summer of 2014.

Bergeron knew he would be using his experience crafting video stories in his work at the Salesian-owned radio and television station, that he would be teaching Bolivian children and serving as an English translator in the Spanish-speaking country.

"My family and friends didn't know what I was signing up for and to be honest, I didn't know exactly either," he said. "Which was fine. Because this is something I was being called to."

The work was hard and the transition to living in rather primitive conditions was challenging, he said, yet Bergeron immediately found the mission rewarding.

When he returned to the U.S. 16 months later, he felt like he had grown emotionally and spiritually.

This is not an uncommon outcome for young Catholic lay missionaries, said Jim Lindsay, executive director of the Catholic Volunteer Network.

"These missions are incredibly important to the church because it is an opportunity for young people to put their faith into action," said Amy Rowland, program coordinator for community service through the Office of Campus Ministry at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

"It is an opportunity to grow closer to God, to broaden their horizons, and to evaluate what is important to them in life before embarking on their careers," Rowland told Catholic News Service.

Based in Silver Spring, Maryland, the Catholic Volunteer Network -- www.catholicvolunteernetwork.org -- is one of the United States' largest Catholic coordinators of mission trips and the organization had 2,668 lay missionaries serving within the U.S. for nine months or longer during 2014-2015 and 428 serving for the same amount of time internationally, Lindsay told CNS.

The Catholic University of America, just one of hundreds of Catholic colleges in the U.S., has anywhere from 15 to 30 students annually commit to doing a long-term volunteer mission after graduation, Rowland said.

"Almost all of our lay missionaries are working with the materially poor in both inner cities and rural areas," Lindsay said.

The most popular field of service for long-term missionaries enrolled in Catholic Volunteer Network programs is social services, accounting for about 25 percent, he said.

Approximately 20 percent serve in education fields and about 10 percent are directly involved in pastoral ministry and religious education, Lindsay said.

Other fields include health care and advocacy, Rowland said.

"Our missionaries almost always live under very simple conditions," Lindsay said. "Most often, they live in community with other missionaries, where they pray together and seek to discover the connection between their faith and the service they render to the poor and marginalized."

The value of a yearlong mission in any location is impossible to measure because the result is one of personal growth, Rowland said.

"After spending a year in a different city or country, students are able to understand more fully the issues that affect certain populations simply by living and walking with the people affected along their journeys," she said. "For the church, opportunities like missions allow students to find and share their faith with people from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs, which hopefully leads them into a life filled with similar, faith-filled experiences."

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Follow Chaz Muth on Twitter: @Chazmaniandevyl.

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