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Vatican City, Apr 15, 2016 / 04:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Friday encouraged Christians to embrace the humiliations that God allows in our lives to draw us closer to him and open our hearts, just as Saul did after he was knocked down on the road to Damascus.

During Mass at the chapel of Santa Marta House in the Vatican on April 15, the Holy Father focused his homily on the day’s first reading found in the Acts of the Apostles.

The passage recounts the famous conversion story of St. Paul, as Saul became known, who was knocked down while traveling on the road to Damascus to hunt down more Christians to persecute.

Although Saul was “a strong, brave young man, zealous in his faith,” he was one “with a closed heart” who “did not want to hear about Jesus Christ” and went so far as to seek out Christ’s followers to persecute them, Pope Francis said.

While on his way to find more Christians, “suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him” and Saul was thrown from his horse where, the Holy Father said, he “understood the truth; he understood that he was not a man as God wanted, because he created us, all of us, to be on our feet, heads held high.”

Saul heard the voice of Christ addressing him asking, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Then Christ instructs him to “get up and go.”

After his fall, Saul humbly allowed himself “to be guided” by another to Damascus because he had been blinded. It was this “humiliation” that became “the path to open the heart” which allowed him to “be converted to the Lord Jesus,” the Roman Pontiff said.

He explained that “when the Lord sends us humiliation or allows humiliation to come to us, it is precisely for this reason: so the heart may be opened, may be docile.”

However, Christ did not leave Saul on the ground, nor does he expect us to stay there when we are knocked down. In this account we see a lesson in conversion, the Holy Father said, explaining that with humbling experiences, “the Lord is able to change hearts and make a hard, stubborn heart become docile to the Spirit.”

After a fall we first must rise, because “a Christian must be on his feet with his head held high.”

A Christian must also “let yourself be led,” just as Paul did when he “let himself be led like a child; entrusted himself to the hands of another, whom he did not know,” when he came to Ananias, the man who God chose to use to restore Saul’s sight and baptize him.

Even with all the different players in this account, the “main character” in all this is the Holy Spirit, whom the Pope called the “protagonist of the Church who leads the People of God.”

Pope Francis concluded saying that this conversion story affects all of us since we all “have hardness of heart,” just as Saul did.

“(L)et us ask the Lord to make us see that this hardness knocks us to the ground; may he send us the grace and also – if necessary – humiliation so as not to remain down but rise, with the dignity with which God created us, which is the grace of a heart open and docile to the Holy Spirit.”

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LAGOS, Nigeria (CNS) -- Two Nigerian bishops called on the government to hasten its efforts to free 219 school girls who were abducted by insurgents two years ago.

Bishops Matthew Audu of Lafia and George Dodo of Zaria urged officials to boost intelligence gathering efforts and muster the political will to find the girls, who were taken from their dormitories by Boko Haram forces during a middle-of-the-night raid at a school in Chibok in northeastern Nigeria April 14, 2014.

The bishops told Catholic News Service it is unlikely that all of the girls will be found because media have reported that some had been killed or sold off to be married by the insurgents. They urged the country to pray for the abductors so that they have a change of heart and consider releasing the students.

New video images recently obtained by CNN and apparently filmed on Christmas Day showed some of the girls dressed in black robes pleading with the Nigerian government to cooperate with the militants on their release. They said they were being treated well but wanted to be with their families.

Family members and friends identified some of the young people as students from the school.

The Catholic News Agency for Africa reported that relatives of the girls marched in the capital, Abuja, on the anniversary, calling for government action.

"Only God knows what their abductors might have done to them, where they would be by now. It might be true that some might have been killed, some molested and some married out by their abductors," Bishop Audu said. "That we can still recover all those abducted on ... is not certain," Bishop Audu said.

"That they are still within the custody of their abductors after two years does no credibility to the corporate image of Nigeria as a nation," he added.

Bishop Audu, whose diocese is in central Nigeria, called for a concerted effort from by world leaders, starting from Nigeria's neighbors in West Africa, to fight terrorism by contributing forces and weapons to a multinational joint task force assembled to root out the insurgents.

"World leaders must find ways to block the sources of funding of the insurgents and those supplying them those arms and ammunition which they use to attack legitimate governments and innocent people," he said.

Bishop Dodo, whose diocese is in northern Nigeria, said that he was praying that missing girls would be discovered. "I am not sure that we will be able to rescue all of them after two years of their abduction. ... If it we are fortunate, we may get some of them back but not 100 percent," he said.

He also expressed concern for thousands of other internally displaced persons living in various refugee camps who cannot return to their homes.

"The federal government must also look into the plights of other Nigerian workers being owed several months of unpaid salaries by their state governments," he said.

"Many do not have money to report for duties at their offices, the federal government should bail out the state governments with financial assistance for them to fulfill their obligations to their workers and citizens.''

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Vatican City, Apr 15, 2016 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis didn’t attend U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vt.) speech at the Vatican, but the presidential candidate provided a long reflection on Catholic social teaching, as he saw it.

Sanders spoke Friday at a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s “Centesimus Annus.” The senator commented:

“With the fall of Communism, Pope John Paul II gave a clarion call for human freedom in its truest sense: freedom that defends the dignity of every person and that is always oriented towards the common good.”

The April 15-16 conference was sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which fosters dialogue between scientists, politicians and various experts.

At the start of the gathering, Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo, the academy’s chancellor, read a letter from the Pope. The letter said he could not make the event. Pope Francis said that his agenda was “quite complicated” because of his Saturday trip to visit migrants and refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Pope Francis’ letter to the gathering did not mention Sen. Sanders or any of the other participants.

John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical marked the anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum,” a major landmark in Catholic social teaching.

“There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy,” Sanders said in remarks to the conference. He cited Leo XIII’s encyclical that described the challenges of “the enormous wealth of a few opposed to the poverty of the many.”

 “At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable,” Sanders commented.

“We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Yet we have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance were deeply prescient.”

The senator cited problems with financial speculation, illegal flow of money, environmental destruction, globalization, financial deregulation, corporate power in politics and weakening rights of workers. He said that “widespread financial criminality on Wall Street” helped cause “the world’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

Sen. Sanders said that economic consequences for working families have been direr.

He repeatedly cited Pope Francis. “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules,” he said, citing the Pope’s words against the world’s “new idols.”

“The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal,” the Pope had said.

The senator also cited the Pope’s criticism of ideologies that “uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation,” because this denies States the right to control them for the common good.

Sen. Sanders echoed the Pope’s rejection of “a financial system that rules rather than serves.”

In the face of financial corruption, Sanders said, Pope Francis is an example “against such a surrender to despair and cynicism.”

“He has opened the eyes of the world once again to the claims of mercy, justice and the possibilities of a better world. He is inspiring the world to find a new global consensus for our common home.”

The senator also drew on Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si.”

“The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet,” he said. “Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.”

Sen. Sanders, who is Jewish, is currently battling for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The New York primary election, a major event in the campaign cycle, will take place April 19.

While Sanders applauded parts of Church teaching, some of his beliefs are strongly at odds with Catholic belief.

In his April 14 debate with Clinton, Sanders said he has a “100 percent pro-choice voting record.” He called for increased federal funding for the politically powerful abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Sanders has also sided with LGBT political causes over religious liberty concerns, vowing to veto “any legislation that purports to ‘protect’ religious liberty at the expense of other’s rights.”

 

 

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