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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- The undersea search for the Malaysian airliner that vanished almost two years ago has found a second 19th century shipwreck deep in the Indian Ocean off the west Australian coast, officials said Wednesday....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bernie Sanders has been putting up major advertising cash to seize momentum heading into the Democratic presidential primaries - outspending his rival Hillary Clinton just as voters are beginning to pay attention to the race....
ISTANBUL (AP) -- Turkish police have arrested one person in connection with the deadly suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 Germans, officials said Wednesday....
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- All 10 U.S. Navy sailors detained by Iran after drifting into its territorial waters a day earlier have been freed, the U.S. and Iran said Wednesday....
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The latest developments following the release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors detained by Iran after entering its territorial waters (All times local)....
(Vatican Radio) Aid workers who reached a besieged Syrian town on Monday with humanitarian aid spoke of "heartbreaking" conditions being endured by starving residents, with hundreds in need of special medical help.United Nations agencies in Geneva supporting humanitarian efforts in Syria have condemned the siege in the town of Madaya where 40,000 people are trapped by encircling government forces and local doctors say some residents have starved to death.Listen to Peter Kenny's report: UN Under-Secretary General Stephen O’Brien has told the Security Council that the situation in Madaya is not unique. Almost 400,000 people in all of Syria are trapped in areas besieged by various parties to the conflict.The UN says the use of siege and starvation as a method of war has become routine and systematic with complete disregard for civilian life in the war-torn-country.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says people in Madaya are getting th...
(Vatican Radio) Aid workers who reached a besieged Syrian town on Monday with humanitarian aid spoke of "heartbreaking" conditions being endured by starving residents, with hundreds in need of special medical help.
United Nations agencies in Geneva supporting humanitarian efforts in Syria have condemned the siege in the town of Madaya where 40,000 people are trapped by encircling government forces and local doctors say some residents have starved to death.
Listen to Peter Kenny's report:
UN Under-Secretary General Stephen O’Brien has told the Security Council that the situation in Madaya is not unique. Almost 400,000 people in all of Syria are trapped in areas besieged by various parties to the conflict.
The UN says the use of siege and starvation as a method of war has become routine and systematic with complete disregard for civilian life in the war-torn-country.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says people in Madaya are getting their first provisions since October. Aid workers have found people in a miserable condition, and that children are severely malnourished.
Adrian Edwards, Spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency said there are landmines around where people need assistance: "The situation is horrible. There are people, there is no life…They are fighting for survival. People are selling their belongings to get food. One motorbike gets 5 kilos of rice."
Edwards said children are going out to collect grass to eat. It is one of the last nutritional resources available.
Vatican City, Jan 13, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God's love is offered to everyone who goes to the sacrament of confession, Pope Francis said in his new book on mercy – even those who are not able to receive absolution from their sins.“I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them,” the Pope said in The Name of God is Mercy, a book-length interview of Pope Francis by Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli published Jan. 12.“If the confessor cannot absolve a person, he needs to explain why, he needs to give them a blessing, even without the holy sacrament. The love of God exists even for those who are not disposed to receive it."Pope Francis here referred to cases in which a person is not disposed to be absolved of their sins, giving the example of his own niece, who had civilly married a man who had not yet had his first marriage found null.He recounted how the man, despite having...
Vatican City, Jan 13, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God's love is offered to everyone who goes to the sacrament of confession, Pope Francis said in his new book on mercy – even those who are not able to receive absolution from their sins.
“I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them,” the Pope said in The Name of God is Mercy, a book-length interview of Pope Francis by Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli published Jan. 12.
“If the confessor cannot absolve a person, he needs to explain why, he needs to give them a blessing, even without the holy sacrament. The love of God exists even for those who are not disposed to receive it."
Pope Francis here referred to cases in which a person is not disposed to be absolved of their sins, giving the example of his own niece, who had civilly married a man who had not yet had his first marriage found null.
He recounted how the man, despite having remarried without an annulment, nonetheless went to confession every Sunday before Mass, telling the priest, "I know you can't absolve me but I have sinned … please give me a blessing."
"This is a religiously mature man," the Pope said.
Pope Francis stressed the importance of tenderness towards those who come to confession.
"If we don’t show them the love and mercy of God, we push them away and perhaps they will never come back,” he said. “So embrace them and be compassionate, even if you can’t absolve them. Give them a blessing anyway.”
In The Name of God is Mercy, the Pope touches on a wide range of topics on the theme of mercy, with significant attention given to the subject of confession.
Pope Francis was asked about the importance of going to confession to a priest – specifically, why it is not enough to ask God's forgiveness “on one's own.”
The Pope responded saying priests and bishops “become instruments of the mercy of God” and act in the person of Christ. They are the successors of the Apostles, to whom Christ said, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”
The act of going to confession to a priest is significant because man is a social being, and forgiveness has a social dimension: “We are social beings, and forgiveness has a social implication; my sin wounds mankind, my brothers and sisters, and society as a whole.”
“Confessing to a priest is a way of putting my life into the hands and heart of someone else, someone who in that moment acts in the name of Jesus,” he said. “It’s a way to be real and authentic: we face the facts by looking at another person and not in the mirror.”
“If you are not capable of talking to your brother about your mistakes, you can be sure that you can’t talk about them with God, either, and therefore you end up confessing into the mirror, to yourself.”
“It is important that I go to confession, that I sit in front of a priest who embodies Jesus, that I kneel before Mother Church, called to dispense the mercy of Christ,” he said. “There is objectivity in this gesture of genuflection before the priest; it becomes the vehicle through which grace reaches and heals me.”
Pope Francis said he is moved by the tradition in Eastern Churches, in which the priest the places his stole on the penitent's head, and puts his arm around his shoulder, describing it as “the physical representation of acceptance and mercy.”
He explained how the faithful do not go to confession to be judged, but to encounter mercy.
“It’s true that there is always a certain amount of judgment in confession, but there is something greater than judgment that comes into play,” he said.
“It is being face-to-face with someone who acts in persona Christi to welcome and forgive you. It is an encounter with mercy.”
Pope Francis was also asked about references he made to mercy early on in his pontificate, like the anecdote of the elderly woman who said that without God's mercy, “the world would not exist.”
“It was an example of the faith of simple people who are imbued with knowledge even if they have never studied theology,” he said.
“I was struck by that woman’s words: without mercy, without God’s forgiveness, the world would not exist; it couldn’t exist.”
“As a confessor, even when I have found myself before a locked door, I have always tried to find a crack, just a tiny opening so that I can pry open that door and grant forgiveness and mercy.”
Tornielli also asked Pope Francis the significance of saying confession should not be like going to the “dry cleaner,” a comparison which he has used more than once.
“It was an example, an image to explain the hypocrisy of those who believe that sin is a stain, only a stain, something that you can have dry-cleaned so that everything goes back to normal,” he said.
“But sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed.”
In reference to another saying of his – that confessionals should not be torture chambers – Pope Francis said he is speaking directly to priests and confessors.
The Pope cited instances of priests in the confessional interrogating the penitent, or exhibiting excessive curiosity to the point of impropriety.
One the one hand, “Anyone who confesses does well to feel shame for his sins: shame is a grace we ask for; it is good, positive, because it makes us humble. But he added that “in a dialogue with a confessor we need to be listened to, not interrogated. Then the confessor says whatever he needs to and offers advice delicately.”
Asked whether he himself was a “strict or indulgent confessor,” Pope Francis answered saying he “always tried to take time with confessions,” adding that he wished he could “walk into a church and sit down in a confessional again.”
“So to answer the question: when I heard confessions, I always thought about myself, about my own sins, and about my need for mercy, and so I tried to forgive a great deal.”
In a section of the book entitled “A sinner like Simon Peter,” Pope Francis was asked what advice he would give to a penitent in order to give a good confession, and to a priest to be a good confessor.
To the penitent, he stressed the importance of avoiding arrogance and acknowledging himself as a sinner.
“He ought to reflect on the truth of his life, of what he feels and what he thinks before God. He ought to be able to look earnestly at himself and his sin,” he said.
“He ought to feel like a sinner, so that he can be amazed by God. In order to be filled with his gift of infinite mercy, we need to recognize our need, our emptiness, our wretchedness.”
The Pope then turned his attention to the confessor, saying he should emulate God's mercy.
“A priest needs to think of his own sins, to listen with tenderness, to pray to the Lord for a heart as merciful as his, and not to cast the first stone because he, too, is a sinner who needs to be forgiven,” he said. “He needs to try to resemble God in all his mercy.”
The Roman Pontiff cited the parable of the prodigal son, in which the Father embraces the younger of two brothers who has returned home after squandering his inheritance.
“This is the love of God,” the Pope said. “This is his overabundant mercy.”
Vatican City, Jan 13, 2016 / 02:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis could make two additional international trips in 2016, including a possible trip to Armenia.This possibility is suggested by gaps in the papal events schedule published on the website of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household. The prefecture coordinates and prepares all the Pope’s audiences and visits in the Vatican and oversees the arrangements for the Pope’s pastoral visits to Rome and to Italy.The schedule is published every six months. The latest version includes all papal events from January to June 2016.Currently, the schedule labels two Angelus prayers and a general audience as “cancelled.” The Pope will not hold the Angelus May 22 or June 26, nor will he hold the June 22 general audience.This means that the Pope could have time for one short international trip in May and a longer one in June.At present, this interpretation of the schedule is just speculation. But sources confirme...
Vatican City, Jan 13, 2016 / 02:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis could make two additional international trips in 2016, including a possible trip to Armenia.
This possibility is suggested by gaps in the papal events schedule published on the website of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household. The prefecture coordinates and prepares all the Pope’s audiences and visits in the Vatican and oversees the arrangements for the Pope’s pastoral visits to Rome and to Italy.
The schedule is published every six months. The latest version includes all papal events from January to June 2016.
Currently, the schedule labels two Angelus prayers and a general audience as “cancelled.” The Pope will not hold the Angelus May 22 or June 26, nor will he hold the June 22 general audience.
This means that the Pope could have time for one short international trip in May and a longer one in June.
At present, this interpretation of the schedule is just speculation. But sources confirmed to CNA that a Papal trip to Armenia is likely in the course of the year.
These sources are corroborated by the remark of Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, during his visit to Armenia in September 2015. He raised the possibility of a 2016 papal visit to the country.
In response to a question on whether Pope Francis was willing to visit, Cardinal Sandri told the press agency Ria Novosti that Pope Francis “wishes with all of his heart to go to Armenia,” and that he already “welcomed the invitation Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan made to Pope Francis” last year. Cardinal Sandri noticed that, though “the Pope has a busy schedule,” he hopes “the Pope will find some time to go to Armenia.”
Pope Francis himself expressed his wish to go to Armenia in his Nov. 30 press conference in the flight from Central Africa. In the year 2014, he said, “I promised the three (Armenian) Patriarchs that I would go: the promise has been made. I don’t know if it will be possible, but I did promise.”
The Pope might have time to go to Armenia in June, when a general audience and the consecutive recitation of the Angelus have been cancelled. This means that the Pope will have at least four days to visit the country, from June 22 to June 26.
There are even more options for an eventual international trip to be held around May 22. Every year, the Pope has made a one-day visit to a European capital: in September 2013, he visited Tirana in Albania, while in June 2014 he went to Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Some sources speculated that the Pope might go to Kosovo or to Macedonia, to show closeness to the migrants and refugees that go back and forth on the frontier there.
However, the Pope might also choose to go to a European capital not in the Balkans, a capital that faces increasing migration trends while also experiencing a strong secularization.
Pope Francis was supposed to visit Milan on May 6. Both the Vatican and the Archdiocese of Milan had confirmed the trip.
However, the Holy See press office on Dec. 10, 2015 said that the Pope had cancelled the visit to Milan, and postponed every other “pastoral visit to Italy” due to the commitments for the Jubilee of Mercy. However, the communiqué did not mention any possible cancellation of Pope Francis’ trips outside of Italy.
At the moment, Pope Francis is confirmed to make two international trips. He will go to Mexico Feb. 12-18, and he will go to Poland at the end of July to take part in the World Youth Day scheduled July 26-31.
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