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(Vatican Radio) The Archdiocese has published the following notice of the death Cardinal Ivan Dias:

WE REGRET TO ANNOUNCE THE SAD DEMISE OF HIS EMINENCE, IVAN CARDINAL DIAS

June 19, 2017

We Regret to Announce the Sad Demise of His Eminence, Ivan Cardinal Dias, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Archbishop Emeritus of Bombay.

Cardinal Ivan Dias, was born on 14 April, 1936 in Mumbai, India and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Bombay on 8 December, 1958. He held a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome.

He entered the Holy See’s diplomatic service in 1964 and was posted to the Nordic countries, Indonesia, Madagascar, La Réunion, the Comorros, Mauritius and the Secretariat of State. On 8 May 1982, he was appointed titular Archbishop of Rusubisir and Apostolic Pro-Nuncio in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and received episcopal ordination on 19 June. He later served as Apostolic Nuncio in Korea (1987-91) and Albania (1991-97).

On 8 November 1996 he was appointed Archbishop of Bombay. Till 2006

He was created and proclaimed Cardinal by Saint Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February, 2001, of the Title of Spirito Santo alla Ferratella (Holy Spirit at Ferratella).

Cardinal Ivan Dias was also President Delegate of the 10^th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (October 2001). He was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Urbanian University from 20 May 2006 until 10 May 2011.

Cardinal Dias passed away at 8 PM, in Rome, today, 19 June, 2017. The funeral details are awaited.

Press Office
Archdiocese of Bombay

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Twenty young people from Laos who will join the Asian Youth Day in Indonesia in August, took part in a formation camp over the weekend in the Laotian capital Vientiane.  Three Thai formators conducted the camp at the youth development center of the Sisters of Charity, June 17-18, where the young Catholics from three out of the country’s four ecclesiastical jurisdictions were given exercises in team-building and strengthening their English skills. A Filipina, who has volunteered at the development center for a year, also joined the camp.

A volunteer youth leader Joseph said he is thrilled to have the chance to meet other young Catholics at the Asian Youth Day to be held in Yogyakarta in Semarang Archdiocese, July 30-August 6.  He told UCANEWS the youth meet will “won't just be about our new Laotian cardinal or the 17 martyrs beatified last December that will make the Laotian faith community known to the universal Catholic Church." "The young people and I are ready to be bring testimony of how faith is lived in a communist country in which most citizens are Buddhists," he said.  Joseph was referring to Bishop Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, the Vicar Apostolic of Paksé, whom Pope Francis will make a cardinal on June 28.  Seventeen martyrs, among whom were also foreign missionaries, were beatified in Vientianne last December. "The young people and I are ready to be bring testimony of how faith is lived in a communist country in which most citizens are Buddhists," said 27-year old Joseph, who was the only non-Buddhist in his class at school. Christians make up about 1 percent of Lao's 7 million people of whom about 45,000 are Catholics. 

BK, a government employee from the Khamu ethnic group said that the country's ruling communists had limited their freedom of faith. "But the harder the situation is, the stronger our faith is," he said.  Silae, a 25-year-old layman from Vientiane also spoke of restrictions. “When we are not allowed to build more churches in the capital, we can do more and better in the existing church compound," he said.

Joseph appreciated the Thai trainers saying he received no formal training to become a young leader in the church but "adopts the approach of learning by doing."  When guest speakers come from a foreign country, the youth tend to pay more attention, Joseph said. Spoken Thai and Lao are mutually understood.  (Source: UCAN)

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Caritas the social arm of the Catholic Church is supporting flood-hit villages in northeast India following heavy rains and landslides that hit more than 70,000 people.  In response to the situation, Caritas India has rushed support to 12 villages in Lakhimpur district in the state of Assam. There, they organized free medical camps and distributed "hygiene kits" that include antibacterial soap, shampoo, toothpaste, to about 1,000 flood-affected families.

A depression last week in the Bay of Bengal moved in to Bangladesh and beyond to northeast India bringing in torrential rains causing floods and landslides, especially in hilly areas. 

"We are also planning to distribute mosquito nets to the affected families," Thangsha Sebastian, state officer for northeastern unit of Caritas India, told UCANEWS on Tuesday.  Sebastian said that in many places there is still a foot of stagnant water in village houses.  "The situation is very unpredictable as the rivers are flowing above the danger mark and another spell of rain can increase the floods and worsen the situation even more," he said.

The government says that 22 people have died due to landslides, drowning or electrocution caused by the continued rains and flooding in Assam and neighboring Meghalaya since last week.  Five districts of Assam have been severely affected by the floods. Nearly 4,000 people are reported to have been displaced in the state in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the district administrations in Assam have expressed concern over the situation as Brahmaputra, Dhansiri and Jia Bhoroli rivers have swollen to dangerous levels.   (Source: UCAN)

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Sunday, the feast of Corpus Christi, or the Body of Christ,  was solemnized in Bali, Indonesia, with 181 children receiving the First Holy Communion.   Father Herman Yoseph Babey, parish priest of  the Holy Spirit church in Denpasar, celebrated the Mass, in which the whole community participated with great enthusiasm. The children, who went through a five-year preparation, came from 18 different basic ecclesial communities, and were on an average ten years old.   

In his homily Fr. Babey said that after receiving the Body and the Blood of Jesus, the life of children can no longer be for themselves, but is to be shared and lived in the service of others.  “We hope that after receiving the Eucharist, these children will let themselves become involved in the Church's various activities and that their parents will encourage them to do so," said Fr. Babey said.  “First Communion for those who receive it is the beginning of participation in the life of the Church and the sign that one is ready to believe that Jesus is present in the Holy Eucharist," he said. The parish priest encouraged the children to receive the Holy Communion frequently, wishing as they grow up as true Catholics they make Jesus the centre of their lives.

Yohanes Paulus, father of two girls, spoke to AsiaNews. "I am happy that my two daughters have received communion today,” he said. “For our family, it is truly a blessing from God. I feel that God is truly present in our family and, today, especially in them. " 

After the Mass, the entire community continued the celebration in the parish hall, where the pastoral council of the parish organized a small party in honour of the children.  (Source: UCAN)

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Tuesday travelled to two small towns in northern Italy to pay homage to two Italian parish priests of the past century who championed the poor and challenged powerful prelates to step outside their comfort zones. 

Arriving by helicopter in Lombardy town of Bozzolo to pray at the tomb of  Don Primo Mazzolari, Pope Francis was greeted by Cremona Bishop Antonio Napolioni who announced the process to beatify Mazzolari will start on September 18th.

Listen to the report by Linda Bordoni:

Don Mazzolari, who died in 1959, was the parish priest of Bozzolo. He was also  a scholar who wrote about St. Francis and Blessed John Henry Newman, an anti-fascist activist who opposed the Mussolini regime and an ardent champion of the poor. Sanctioned for a time by diocesan authorities, Mazzolari was a friend of Pope John XXIII and praised by the future Pope Paul VI. 

Pope Francis’ lengthy tribute to Mazzolari – whom he described as Italy’s parish priest - was above all a call to priests not to demand perfection from the faithful, but to encourage them to do their best and an exhortation to them to take the Gospel message into the peripheries in poverty and with simplicity, turning away from the temptations of clericalism and careerism.  

Francis  then flew to Barbiana, near Florence, to pray at the tomb of Don Lorenzo Milani, a man he has described as “a believer, enamored of the Church”  a “passionate educator” who used “original ways.” 

Milani, who died in 1967, is universally acknowledged for having been an optimum interpreter of modern and contemporary pedagogy, a priest attentive to formative methods for young people, and  especially alert to the needs of the poor and the rights of workers.

Milani, the Pope said, taught the importance of giving the poor the capacity to speak up for themselves, because “without the word, there’s no dignity and therefore no justice or freedom”.
 
A pilgrimage the Pope himself said was undertaken  in the footsteps of two parish priests whose legacy he described as “scomodo” which means challenging or inconvenient, but that has left a radiant  trace in their service to the Lord and to the people of God.

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Barbiana, Italy, Jun 20, 2017 / 05:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday Pope Francis made a pilgrimage to the graves of two 20th century Italian priests, reflecting on charity and education, and calling on adults to form their consciences well, so that they may teach young people to do the same.

Addressing educators, Pope Francis said June 20, “Yours is a mission full of obstacles but also of joys. But above all it is a mission. A mission of love, because you cannot teach without love and without the awareness that what you give is only a right that you recognize, that of learning.”

“This is an appeal to responsibility. An appeal to you, dear young people, but first of all, adults who are called to live the freedom of conscience in a genuine way, as a search for the true, the beautiful and the good, ready to pay the price that this entails.”

The Pope’s June 20 pilgrimage to the small Italian towns of Bozzolo and Bariana took place in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Fr. Lorenzo Milani, who lived from 1923-1967. He also visited the grave of Fr. Primo Mazzollari, who lived from 1890-1959.

Both priests have been wrongly portrayed as “anti-clerical” and their writings have often been misquoted in order to make them appear to dissent from the Church. However, during their lives they always obeyed any restriction the Church placed upon them, and they never preached or taught outside of the Catholic Church.
 
“There are so many things to be taught,” Pope Francis continued, “but the essential thing is the growth of a free conscience, capable of confronting itself with reality and of orienting itself in (reality) guided by love, by the desire to compromise with others, to take on the weight of their difficulties and wounds, to escape from all selfishness to serve the common good.”

The Pope’s brief visit – only half a day – began with an early morning helicopter flight to Bozzolo, landing at 9:00 a.m. He was welcomed by the Mayor of Bozzolo and the Bishop of Cremona, Antonio Napolioni.

From there the Pope proceeded to the parish of St. Peter to pray at the tomb of Fr. Primo Mazzolari, after which he gave a commemorative speech to the faithful present at the church.

At 10:30 a.m. he left for Barbiana, arriving at the Barbiana church at 11:15a.m. He was welcomed there by Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence and the Mayor of Vicchio, a municipality of Florence.

He then made a private visit to the cemetery of the church to pray at the grave of Fr. Lorenzo Milani. Afterwards, Pope Francis met in the church with still-living disciples of Fr. Milani.

After a short visit to the rectory in the adjacent garden he gave a speech in the presence of around 200 people, including the disciples, priests of the diocese and some children living in family homes in the area. The Pope arrived back at the Vatican around 1:15 p.m.

Fr. Mazzolari believed that a parish priest was called to be a reference point for the community, and also called to work for the re-evangelization of Christianity.

Fr. Lorenzo Milani had a similar approach, which he applied by teaching poor children about the social doctrine of the Church. At a time of increasing communist influence in the region, he declared that “only the Gospel” would be his guide.

“The school, for Fr. Lorenzo, was not something different from his priestly mission, but the concrete way to do that mission, giving it a solid foundation and the capacity to rise up to heaven,” Francis said.

You are witnesses to how a priest has lived out his mission, “with full fidelity to the Gospel and precisely for this, with full fidelity to each of you, whom the Lord had entrusted to him,” the Pope said to former students of Fr. Milani’s schools.   

A teaching of Fr. Milani was, he said: “Give to the poor the word, because without the word there is no dignity and therefore no freedom and justice.”

If we teach them the Word of God, this is what will open up the path to full citizenship in society, through work and through full membership in the Church, Francis explained.

This is still true, even in our time, he said. It is only the Word of God that can help us to discern between the many false and confusing messages that we are bombarded with by society. It is also only the Word that can help us to make sense of and express the deep feelings and desires of our hearts and of the lack of justice for many of our brothers and sisters.

“Of that full humanization that we claim for every person on this earth, besides bread, home, work, family, is also the possession of the word as an instrument of freedom and fraternity,” he said.

Speaking to priests, Francis said that Fr. Milani was looking, as his mother said, for the “Absolute,” which he found in “religion and the priestly vocation.”

“Without this thirst for the Absolute you can be good officials of the sacred, but you cannot be priests, true priests, able to become servants of Christ in your brothers,” the Pope said.

“Dear priests, with the grace of God, we seek to be men of faith, a sincere faith, not watered down; and men of charity, pastoral charity toward all those whom the Lord entrusts us as brothers and children.”

“We love the Church, dear brothers, and let us love it, showing it as a caring mother of all, especially of the poorest and most fragile, both in social life and in personal and religious life.”

This is the Church that Fr. Milani has shown the world, he said. A Church with a maternal and thoughtful face, extending to everyone the opportunity to meet God.

This charity was not lacking in Servant of God Fr. Primo Mazzolari either. He himself was a priest who was poor, but not a “poor priest,” the Pope said.

In his spiritual testament, the Pope recounted, Fr. Mazzolari wrote that he always had little money, which always had to go to pay for the necessary things. This was his one regret on this point, he wrote, that he did not have more to give to the poor and his parish works.

However, Fr. Primo lived out a “pastoral charity” in his priestly ministry, Francis said, opening up horizons in the many complex situations he had to face during that time: “wars, totalitarianism, fratricidal clashes, the fatigue of democracy in gestation, the misery of its people.”

The Pope encouraged his fellow priests to follow Fr. Mazzolari’s example by listening to the world and all those who live and work in it: “Take care of every question of feeling and hope, without fear of passing through deserts and shadow areas,” he said.

Fr. Mazzolari had a great love of the poor, Francis continued, saying that charity was a matter of spirituality and of looking. In his book “The Crucified Way of the Poor,” he wrote that “he who has little charity sees few poor; he who has much charity sees many poor; those who have no charity see no one.”

The priest added, however, that “he who knows the poor knows his brother: whoever sees the brother sees Christ, who sees Christ sees life and his true poetry, for charity is the poetry of heaven carried on earth.”

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn

By Josephine von Dohlen

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- After almost 12 years as an Episcopal priest, Deacon Jonathan Erdman entered into full communion with the Catholic Church along with his family in 2016 and a year later, he is becoming a Catholic priest.

He will be ordained a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter June 29.

This spring, 590 men entered the priesthood in dioceses throughout the United States, according to a report released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. The report is based on an annual study that the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted for the USCCB.

Leading to his joining the Catholic Church, Deacon Erdman felt something in the background repeatedly calling him to the church, but he said he continually found new ways to distract himself.

"I think often when one hears God calling, a response can be thinking of an excuse," Deacon Erdman said in a phone interview with Catholic News Service June 14. "Moses said he didn't have the ability to speak, Jeremiah claimed he was too young, and even Peter asked Jesus to depart because he felt unworthy. I distracted myself with my work in ministry. I told myself that I was needed where I was."

He recalls teaching a yearly presentation on "What Is the Episcopal Church?" at St. Meinrad Archabbey and Seminary in Indiana. "One of my students joked that it seemed I wanted to be a bit more Catholic with each passing year," Deacon Erdman said.

Events such as the election of Pope Francis allowed Deacon Erdman to see the unity of the Catholic Church through devotion and prayer, gradually leading him to the doors of the Catholic faith.

The first time Deacon Erdman attended Mass while beginning the discernment process, it happened to be on the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, the namesake feast of the ordinariate of which he will soon become a part.

Based in Houston, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter is similar to a diocese, but national in scope. It was established in 2012 by the Vatican earlier this year to facilitate and shepherd communities of former Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic faith while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage and traditions.

"I'm very grateful to Anglicanism for teaching me what to long for, for teaching me to long for Scripture, to long for the sacraments, to long for a faith rooted in tradition and reason, to long for Incarnated faith, and to long for true unity," Deacon Erdman told CNS. "I believe these desires pointed me in the direction that God has called me to go. I found these desires satisfied in the Catholic faith."

After his priestly ordination, he will serve the Community of Our Lady and St. John in Louisville, Kentucky.

Six months after Father Andrew Dawson entered the Catholic Church at Easter 2006, people began to ask him if he had thought about joining the priesthood.

According to the USCCB report on the ordinand class of 2017, 87 percent of men were encouraged by an average of four people to enter the priesthood.

"I remember very vividly sitting up in bed one night, bolt upright, thinking to myself, 'All these people have said these things and not one time have I ever said no,'" Father Dawson said to CNS June 14. "All I've done is make a joke of it, and just dismiss it. I realized that the reason that I hadn't been able to say no to anyone is because I was asking myself the same question."

The priesthood eventually became all that Father Dawson would think of in his free time.

Before entering the seminary, Father Dawson worked as an associate director at a Catholic youth camp, Sancta Maria, in Gaylord, Michigan. His experience working at the camp drastically influenced his faith life, as the camp began his intellectual conversion to the Catholic Church.

It was in the chapel at Sancta Maria that he truly came to experience the reality of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. "I didn't know what was happening, but I knew that what I was looking at was not what I had believed it to be previously," Father Dawson said. "I needed to go and investigate that'it was so powerful to me."

Father Andrew said he relates to St. Peter because of how St. Peter is both bold and terrified, both understands and doesn't understand, how St. Peter puts all his weaknesses out there and still the Lord uses him in a powerful way because of his openness.

Being in the Archdiocese of Detroit also has brought Father Dawson close to the late Capuchin Father Solanus Casey, who will be beatified in Detroit in 2017. Father Dawson wore a relic of Father Casey during his ordination and will serve at St. Fabian Parish in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Father Steven Oetjen's parents, along with those of 80 percent of the new ordinands, were both Catholic.

They raised Father Oetjen and his siblings in the church, sending them to Catholic schools and Mass every Sunday. But it wasn't until Father Oetjen went off to study engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that he began to feel the call to the priesthood.

"Basically, I found myself thrown into this really competitive environment and a very demanding environment, with all the work of engineering it was very busy, very hard to find time for prayer," Father Oetjen said. "It was also the first time that I was on my own without my family and I knew that I needed to really start to make the faith my own and if I wanted to take the faith seriously, my parents weren't going to be there anymore to make me."

Desiring to make his faith his own, Father Oetjen became involved actively with the Newman Center at Carnegie Mellon and he saw in his friends a joy in living a life of virtue that he, too, wanted for himself. It was in the chapel at the Newman Center that he encountered the Blessed Sacrament.

"I found that there in the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar in the monstrance, it was the perfect place for me to go every day to encounter our Lord Jesus Christ and to just spend time with him in silence and to pray to him, telling him about all my struggles and challenges, asking him for grace," Father Oetjen said. "That helped me immensely."

This devotion to the Blessed Sacrament eventually revealed a little tug on his heart that Father Oetjen felt and discovered to be God calling him to the priesthood.

"Seeking the Lord out in silence and in prayer really filled a gap that was much needed in my life at the time, and it is always there, I always need to pray," Father Oetjen said. "But I also think it's a joy that is always going to be growing and it's a joy that doesn't mean that everything is always happy go lucky, all the time but even through ups and downs, its an underlying joy, it's a peace."

Like 43 percent of those ordained this year, Father Oejten finished his undergraduate degree before entering the seminary.

"I've really been in awe now that I'm able to celebrate Mass every day," Father Oejten said. "I'm looking forward to every day for the rest of my life, God willing, to being able to celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass, to preach and teach God people to help them receive the sacraments as fruitfully as they can so that all the grace that God wants to give them can flourish in their lives."

Father Oejten was ordained June 10 in the Diocese of Arlington, and he will serve at St. James Catholic Church in Falls Church, Virginia.

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