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The Women’s Monthly Forum Group in South Sudan has told South Sudan Catholic radio station, Radio Bakhita, that the women of South Sudan are disappointed and frustrated by the slow pace of implementing the peace agreement signed by the warring parties last August.

Women’s Monthly Forum Group Coordinator, Sunday Betty Ben, speaking Thursday in Juba said the situation in South Sudan was getting worse, and the warring parties to the agreement were not doing enough to implement the deal; she told Radio Bakhita.

She urged the parties to accelerate the implementation of the agreement to enable peace return to South Sudan.

Sunday Betty Ben said the Women’s Monthly Forum Group is also seeking ways to make sure that South Sudan women are conversant with the details of the peace accord. It is only in doing so that the women, as South Sudanese citizens, would own and buy into the August agreement.

In spite of assurances by both the South Sudan government of President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, the two warring sides have been accused by the international community of procrastination. Hopes were raised in February when Salva Kiir re-appointed his arch-rival Riek Machar as first vice president of a possible government of national unity. Riek Machar has not yet taken up the appointment and is still living outside the capital, Juba.

The warring parties insist they are committed to the peace deal in spite of not adhering to strict deadlines and the terms of the accord.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, last month, urged the leaders of South Sudan to respect the conditions of the peace agreement that would end two years of a brutal conflict that has killed thousands. Thousands more remain displaced as a result of the war.

"Respecting the terms of the peace agreement is not an option, it is a must," Ban Ki-moon told the media last month.

The conflict has resulted in South Sudan facing severe food shortages and raised the possibility of famine if the international community does not come to the aid of South Sudan. There is also the need to protect the population from attacks by government forces and rebel militia. South Sudan is also awash with lawless marauding armed gangs that terrorise citizens.

South Sudan became the world’s newest state in July 2011 after gaining independence from Sudan via a protracted armed struggle. That struggle eventually led to a referendum and then independence. 18 months later, the independence dream unravelled as Salva Kiir and Riek Machar's political battles split the country along ethnic lines leading to a two-year brutal conflict.

(Source: CRN in Juba; additional reporting Vatican Radio, English Africa Service)

Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va)

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(Vatican Radio) A Requiem Mass for Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, PCPA – better known as Mother Angelica – will be celebrated Friday at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, USA.

The Shrine is located on the grounds of the Monastery of Mother Angelica’s order, the Poor Clare Nuns of the Annunciation, which is also the home of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), founded by Mother Angelica.

The principle celebrant for the Mass will be the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, OFM Cap. Through a spokesperson, Archbishop Chaput described Mother Angelica as “a remarkable figure in the Church.”

Vatican Radio spoke with Michael Warsaw, chairman and CEO at EWTN, about the life and legacy of Mother Angelica. “I think there’s no question that Mother Angelica is the pioneer of Catholic communications here in the United States, and really around the world,” he said. “It was really Mother Angelica who, building on the legacy of Fulton Sheen, perhaps, of thirty years earlier, who really embraced new technologies, the use of then satellite and cable television, and then of course all the emerging platforms that would come in the years later. She used those really most effectively for the spread of the Gospel in a way that really the Church had not done before.”

Listen to  Michael Warsaw, chairman and CEO at EWTN interviewed by Chris Wells:

Warsaw described Mother Angelica as “one of the key and transformative figures of the Church” in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Born Rita Antoinette Rizzo in 1923, Mother Angelica entered the Poor Clare monastery in Cleveland in 1944, and made her solemn profession of vows 1953. She founded the EWTN corporation in 1981.

“I think it’s quite interesting, and quite an interesting part of her story, the fact that here is this cloistered, Poor Clare nun in Birmingham Alabama, who had no training, no background in media, was 58 years old, in terrible health, with two hundred dollars in the bank, her twelve nuns, and a garage,” Warsaw said. “And yet she persevered and pushed forward to build EWTN and to create this now global communications for the Church.”

When Mother Angelica began EWTN, Warsaw noted, “she faced a lot of opposition both from outside, but inside the Church, especially of people who said well, you know, this is not something that a nun can, or this is not something that a woman should be doing.” But, he said, “Mother Angelica took all of that in stride, and really pushed forward with her vision, what she believed God was calling her to do.” He quoted Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who described Mother Angelica as “arguably the most significant, most influential Catholic woman in the Church in America in the last fifty years.”

Vatican spokesman Jesuit  Father Federico Lombardi  has also commented on her passing away saying: “Mother Angelica was ‘a great witness and a missionary apostle,’  expressing the hope to  CNA on the 28th of March ‘that she prays for us more than we for her’.”

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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis on Thursday sent a telegram expressing his condolences for the death of Cardinal Georges Marie Martin Cottier, OP, Theologian-emeritus of the Papal Household.

Cardinal Cottier died during Thursday night at Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Hospital at the age of 93.

In the telegram addressed to Cardinal Cottier’s sister, the Holy Father conveyed his ‘profound gratitude’ in remembrance of the Cardinal’s ‘strong faith, his paternal kindness, and his intense cultural and ecclesial activity, especially in the service of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI as theologian of the Papal Household’.

Pope Francis also invoked the intercession of the Virgin Mary and St. Dominic, sending his Apostolic Blessing to all who knew Cardinal Cottier during the course of his long life.

Biography 

Cardinal Georges Marie Cottier, O.P., Theologian-emeritus of the Papal Household, died during the night between 31 March and 1 April 2016 at Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Hospital.

The funeral Mass is to be presided over by Cardinal Angelo Sodano at St. Peter’s Basilica on 2 April at 8.30 am.

Born 25 April 1922 in the Carouge municipality of Ginevra, Switzerland, Dominican Cardinal Cottier served as the Theologian of the Papal Household from 1990 until 2005.

Cardinal Cottier entered the Dominican Order in 1945, studying philosophy and theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, also known as the ‘Angelicum’. He was ordained a priest on 2 July 1951.

In 1959 he defended his doctoral thesis at the Liberal Arts Faculty of the University of Ginevra on ‘The Atheism of the young Marx and his Hegelian origins. In 1962 he became a professor at the same University until his retirement in 1987.

Cardinal Cottier also taught courses in modern and contemporary philosophy at the Universities of Fribourg, Montréal, and Padua, as well as at the Catholic Institute of Paris and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.

He participated in the Second Vatican Council as an ‘Expert of the Council’ and was a ‘Council Consultant’ in the dialogue with non-believers, participating in a series of meetings in Ljubljana, Budapest, Strasburg, and Moscow.

In an interview on the impact of Vatican II, Cardinal Cottier once said, “I would say that much has been done. For example, the structure of episcopal conferences; the way some of them function now; or the dicasteries of the Church which didn’t exist before, Christian union, dialogue with non-believers – all these are new things which often function well. Also those areas that regard justice and peace – these things didn’t exist before the Council, as well as concern for dialogue with the world, the idea itself of the New Evangelization was born with the Council. Also the Synod of Bishops and the doctrine itself of the last Popes, which have as their no. 1 program the implementation of the Council.”

In 1986 he was nominated a member of the International Theological Commission, becoming its Secretary in 1989.

Cardinal Cottier also served as a consultant for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Council for Culture.

He was consecrated Archbishop on 20 October 2003 with the titular Church of Tullia and nominated Cardinal of the Consistory by Pope St. John Paul II on 21 October 2003.

Below is a Vatican Radio translation of Pope Francis' telegramme:

To Madame Marie Emmanuelle PASTORE COTTIER 

I have learned with sadness the news of the passing of your brother, Cardinal Georges Marie Martin Cottier, O.P. I would like to express my deep involvement in the mourning which affects everyone who knew this zealous servant of the Gospel. With profound gratitude, I remember his strong faith, his paternal kindness, and his intense cultural and ecclesial activity, especially in the service of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI as Theologian of the Papal Household. I offer a fervent prayer to the Lord, so that, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and St. Dominic, he may grant the late Cardinal the reward promised to his faithful disciples. As a sign of comfort, I send my Apostolic Blessing with all my heart to you, and to all who appreciated his priestly zeal and dedication to the Church and to the Sovereign Pontiff.

Franciscus Pp.

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(Vatican Radio) On Friday April 1st a Requiem mass for Mother Angelica , founder of the 'Eternal Word Televison Network' (EWTN) wil be celebrated in Hancelville, Alabama, USA. 

Rome bureau chief for EWTN, Joan Lewis, shares some thoughts relating to this pioneer of Catholic communications who was born in 1923 and passed away on Easter Sunday. 

Listen to Joan Lewis, Rome bureau chief for EWTN in an interivew with Veronica Scarisbrick: 

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Irondale, Ala., Apr 1, 2016 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was September 1987, and Pope John Paul II had just arrived in Los Angeles after traveling around the United States. The Pope was greeted in the City of Angels by a closed-door meeting with a group of progressive bishops who had a bone to pick with several Church traditions.

One of four chosen representatives, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, spoke to the pope about female ordination:

“Women seek…(a church) that teaches and shows by example the co-discipleship of the sexes as instruments of God’s kingdom. They seek a church where the gifts of women are equally accepted and appreciated...where the feminine is no longer subordinate but seen in a holistic mutuality with the masculine as forming the full image of the Divine,” he said.

Meanwhile in Alabama, a woman of the Church named Mother Angelica had just thrown her cable network, which reached more than 2 million homes at the time, into 24-hour coverage territory. During the 1987 papal trip, the EWTN Network took on the then-unprecedented task of live, unedited, constant coverage of the Holy Father’s visit.

And when word reached the spunky nun of the Milwaukee bishop’s remarks to the Pope during the trip, she couldn’t help but chime in with her opinion.

“Women in the priesthood, that’s just a power play, that’s ridiculous,” Mother Angelica said the next day.  

“As it is women have more power in the Church than anybody. They built and run the schools. God has designed that men be priests, and we can’t afford to deny God his sovereign rights,” she said, as recalled in her biography by Raymond Arroyo.

If anyone has any doubts as to whether ordination is necessary for leadership and influence in the Church, they need look no further than the media mogul nun herself to be proven wrong, said Catholic talk show host and media consultant Teresa Tomeo.  

“Not only was she a prominent international media personality, because of her work on air and her great shows, but she was a foundress of a major religious network and she was a CEO of that network while being on the air, which is something that few women in the secular world accomplish,” Tomeo told CNA.

“And here she is accomplishing this in the Catholic Church, which is supposedly so sexist and backward according to the world. She’s breaking barriers that these powerful women in secular media can’t even touch.”

In 1981, at a time when women were still struggling for places of prominence in the world of broadcasting, Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation launched Eternal Word Television Network, which today transmits 24-hour-a-day programming to more than 264 million homes in 144 countries. What began with approximately 20 employees has now grown to nearly 400. The religious network broadcasts terrestrial and shortwave radio around the world, operates a religious goods catalog and publishes the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency, among other publishing ventures.

She’s breaking barriers that these powerful women in secular media can’t even touch.

Besides founding EWTN, Mother Angelica is also credited with building a monastery, a shrine, and establishing two religious orders.

Mother Angelica passed away on March 27 after a lengthy struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke. She was 92 years old.

After her passing, the praises of Mother Angelica were sung from both the secular and Church media, with many recognizing her as a strong example of female leadership.

In his tribute, John Allen of Crux wrote:  

“Today there’s a great deal of ferment about how to promote leadership by women in the Church in ways that don’t involve ordination, a conversation Pope Francis himself has promoted. In a way, however, debating that question in the abstract seems silly, because we already have a classic, for-all-time example of female empowerment in Mother Angelica.”

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, remembered her as a “devout believer and media pioneer" in a statement following her death.

"Mother Angelica reflected the Gospel commission to go forth and make disciples of all nations, and like the best evangelists, she used the communications tools of her time to make this happen. She displayed a unique capacity for mission and showed the world once again the vital contribution of women religious," he said.

Her vigorous leadership and vision in a Church with all-male clergy came from her security in knowing her identity before God, Tomeo added.

“Bottom line is that she knew who she was in Christ, she knew that she was designed in the image and likeness of God, that we’re male and female, we’re equal but we’re different,” she said.

“And she knew that God has a special role for her, and that he chose her for a specific reason, and that you can do all things through Christ as St. Paul tells us.”

Mother Angelica doesn’t stand alone in the line of formidable female figures in the Church, either, Tomeo noted. She succeeded other spiritual giants like St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena, and is joined by other women in the contemporary world, who are working to make a difference in the Church.

For years to come, Mother Angelica will be remembered for her authenticity and punchy humor, and her ability to preach the Gospel with love, Tomeo added.

“She was funny, she always gave me hope that no matter how many mistakes any of us make, God is always going to allow us to come home,” she said.

“I think that we have just begun to unpack her wisdom. I think...for decades and centuries, she’s going to be seen as one of the greatest evangelists in America.”

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