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The Episcopal Conference of Mali is appealing to the public to help secure the release of kidnapped Sr Cecilia Argoti Narvaez, of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate. 

Sr Narvaez, of Colombian nationality was kidnapped on 7 February 2017 in Karangasso, southern Mali.

“We are appealing to the public and the media to help us solicit the search for contacts with kidnappers for the release of Sr Cecilia Narvaez. The Diocese of Karangasso is also trying to find intermediaries to find a contact with the kidnappers,” Fr Edmond Dembele, Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference of Mali told Fides recently.

“We are exploring all possible paths to obtain Sister Cecilia’s release and are calling upon the faithful to keep praying for her,” he added.

He called on those with any information regarding the whereabouts of the kidnappers to report the matter immediately to relevant authorites.

“Some people believe that bandits in the area kidnapped the Sister in the hope of getting a ransom, and now do not know how to handle the situation. Others believe jihadists kidnapped her,” said Fr Dembele.

Recently, a special Guala anti-kidnapping group of Colombia's National Police was sent to Mali to help local authorities find Sister Cecilia Narváez Argoti.
(Agenzia Fides)

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Vatican City, Mar 28, 2017 / 11:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Rino Fisichella celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to mark the one-year anniversary of the passing of Mother Angelica, saying the nun changed the face of the New Evangelization by riding the digital wave and using to communicate the Gospel in a fresh and appealing way.

“Before John Paul II spoke of the New Evangelization, (Mother Angelica) was able to do it concretely with television, the new way of communicating the Word of God,” Archbishop Fisichella told CNA March 27.

Because of this, he said Mother “was a New Evangelist, she concretely did the New Evangelization” alongside another major saintly personality in the U.S. at the time: Archbishop Fulton Sheen, whose cause for canonization has been opened.

“Fulton Sheen and Mother Angelica, for the whole Church they are the image, the icon of what the New Evangelization through the new media of communications means,” he said.

Head of the Vatican’s Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Fisichella celebrated Mass March 27 at the altar of St. Joseph inside St. Peter’s Basilica to mark the one-year anniversary since Mother Angelica’s death.

Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation founded EWTN in 1981, and it has since become the largest religious media network in the world. She died March 27, 2016 – Easter Sunday – after a lengthy struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke. She was 92 years-old.

In his homily for the Mass, which was concelebrated by former Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi and attended by journalists from various media outlets as well as Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See Eduard Habsburg, Fisichella praised Mother as someone whose legacy would continue to last.

A year after her death, “we try to remember her words, her preaching – because it was (a type of) preaching – her witness and the work she did for the Church,” he said.

“The mystery of death raises questions in all of us, but it’s still a mystery,” he said. “We live and we are in front of a death to give sense to our lives.”

He pointed to the words of the Prophet Isaiah in the day’s first reading, who said that “no longer shall there be an old man who does not round out his full lifetime.”

“I think this word of the prophet can also be applied to Mother Angelica,” he said, explaining that “the sense of our lives, the sense of her life was determined by an encounter. She encountered Jesus Christ in her life, and for this reason she consecrated her whole life to Christ.”

Because of this Mother Angelica was above all “a woman of faith,” he said, and recalled an expression Mother herself frequently recited: “my dear friends, faith is what gets you started; hope is what keeps you going; love is what brings you to the end.”

Mother Angelica, he said, “was sustained by faith, she was a witness of hope, but love moved her entire life.”

Pointing to a passage from the day’s Gospel from John in which a nobleman, after learning that Jesus healed his son, “believed through the Word what Jesus had spoken to him, and he went his way.”

“I think that is beautiful to reflect on Mother Angelica’s life with this expression,” Fisichella said. “She believed through the Word that Jesus spoke to her, she believed and there is no other reason.”

“She believed and all that she created was a consequence of this faith, of this encounter of faith. And then she went her way, and her way is what today millions of people can watch, can listen to, can reflect on.”

EWTN, he said, is not just a television network, but “a work and consequence of this vocation, of this encounter of Mother Angelica with Christ.”

“This was her vocation, this she understood as the gift that Jesus himself gave to her. And she did it in a very strong way,” he said, noting how she was able to communicate the Gospel on TV “sine glossa,” meaning “without adding” or interpreting.

At times Mother even caused trouble with people, he said, explaining that “every time we announce the Gospel, we give trouble to someone.” But what Mother did was offer “a challenge.”

It was above all a challenge “to find the sense of your life, especially in a culture in which indifference and atheism is, it seems to be, in first place for many people,” he said.

Referencing another passage from Isaiah that says “‘they shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyard they plant,” the archbishop said Mother Angelica continues to live through EWTN’s witness.

“Mother Angelica’s vocation continues to give witness to the world of today, with your ability, capacity, will, to announce the Gospel of the Lord,” he told employees of the organization attending the Mass.

Fisichella closed his homily with another quote from Mother, who said that “everything starts with one person. I don’t care if you are five or 105, God from all eternity, chose you to be where you are at this time in history, and he chose you to change the world.”

“We keep these words in our hearts and in our minds, like a new challenge one year after her death, to remember the task that everybody should have in this service to the Church,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are five or 105, what is important is that God, from all eternity, chose you.”

After the Mass veteran Vatican journalist Joan Lewis, Rome Bureau Chief for EWTN and former employee of the Holy See Press Office’s Vatican Information Service, recalled the moment when she was “commissioned” by Mother Angelica after accepting the job as bureau chief.

While Mother was already speechless after suffering a debilitating stroke, Lewis told CNA that she approached Mother, who was in a wheelchair, and knelt down so the two could look each other in the face.

“It was very moving for me because although she couldn’t talk, she blessed my ears, my mouth, my hands and my eyes, so that I would use all of those to do what she had done for so many years, which was to bring the Word of the Lord, the teachings of the Church to the world,” Lewis said.

“So it was her example, even when she couldn’t speak, that really infused in me the desire to go ahead and do her work,” she said, explaining that Mother Angelica was particularly inspiring for what she did as a woman.

“What a wonderful woman courage she was, of vision, of foresight, a person who just didn’t let obstacles get in her way,” Lewis said, noting that at the time, women in the United States often still hit “a glass ceiling.”

“If you were a woman, you couldn’t go any higher – you would hit this glass, but un-seen ceiling,” she said, but recalled that with Mother Angelica, “she never sensed that. There was never a barrier to whom or how she could tell the truth, and I try and remember that when I write.”

Referring to Archbishop Fisichella’s homily, Lewis said his decision to quote Mother’s phrase that “faith sets you out on the path, hope keeps you going, and love brings you to the end,” was particularly moving. “It just doesn’t get any better.”

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Lima, Peru, Mar 28, 2017 / 01:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The March for Life in Lima, Peru on Saturday was transformed into a Solidarity March, with volunteers gathering several tons of food and nearly 4,000 gallons of water for those who have lost their homes in the ongoing devastating floods throughout the country.

“The March for Life, faithful to its commitment to life, today becomes a Solidarity March with all the victims, because the Church must live with a beating heart, not just with prayer and the sacraments, but also with love for our neighbor with works of charity” said Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Lima.

In his Saturday radio program “Dialogue of Faith,” Cardinal Cipriani explained that the volunteer program had already set up canteens, tents and medical care in some of the hardest hit areas.

Heavy rains in Peru recently have led to devastating flooding and mudslides, with some 85 people dead and more than 111,000 suffering some damage or material loss, according to the latest report from the Center for National Emergency Operations.

The need for aid in the area is great, particularly for those who have lost their homes.

In light of the ongoing devastation, Cardinal Cipriani decided to cancel the March for Life and replace it with a collection drive for victims.

According to a news brief from the Archdiocese of Lima, the collection of donations was facilitated by more than 3,000 volunteers for the March for Life, who reached out to some 100 parishes in the Peruvian capital.

Fr. Luis Gaspar, representative of the Archdiocese of Lima, thanked “the thousands of Peruvians who today marched not only for the lives of the unborn children, but brought aid for our brothers in need. We are the largest march in Peru and today it was up to us to shoulder our responsibility.”

“Over the next few days, we will get organized to bring all this aid to the different places in Peru where this it is needed,” he added.

 

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By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- People should stop blaming and complaining so they can be filled with God's joy and rise up to life's challenges, Pope Francis said.

Forgetting what joy is and languishing in self-pity come with the sin of sloth, the pope said March 28 in his homily during morning Mass at Domus Sanctae Marthae.

"It's a terrible disease: 'Well, I'm comfortable as is, I've gotten used to it. Life, of course, has been unfair to me.' You see resentment, bitterness in that heart," he said.

The pope's homily was a reflection on the Gospel of St. John reading in which Jesus heals a lame man at the pool of Bethesda.

A large number of people who were ill, blind or crippled gathered at the pool because it was believed if a person immersed himself just when the waters were stirred by an angel, he would be healed. Jesus saw a lame man, who had been waiting by the poolside for 38 years, and asked him, "Do you want to be well?"

Pope Francis said, "This is beautiful; Jesus always asks us this: Do you want to be healed? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to make your life better? Do you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit?"

If Jesus had asked any of the other people there desperate for help, the pope said, "they would have said, 'Yes, Lord, yes.' But this was a strange man" because instead he started complaining about how he had no one to help him into the water and everyone else always managed to get in before him.

The man is like a tree planted near streams of water, but he cannot grow and prosper because his roots are dried up, "those roots don't reach the water, he couldn't take in the well-being of the water," the pope said.

"This is a terrible sin, the sin of sloth. This man was ill not so much from paralysis, but from sloth, which is worse than having a lukewarm heart," he said. "It is living, but only because I am alive and have no desire to go on, have no desire to do something in life, to have lost his memory" of what joy is.

But Jesus does not scold him, the pope said; he tells him to rise, take his sleeping mat and walk, which he does, disappearing into the crowd, without saying thank you or even asking Jesus his name.

"Sloth is a sin that paralyzes, makes us lame. It doesn't let us walk. Even today the Lord looks at each one of us, we have all sinned, we are all sinners," the pope said, but Jesus still looks and "tells us, 'Rise.'"

Everyone is asked to pick up his or her sleeping mat and walk, "take your life as it is, beautiful, terrible" whatever it's like and go, the pope said.

"It is your life, it is your joy," he said. The Lord is asking, "Do you want to be healed?" Do not be afraid to say "yes," ask for help and go toward the waters. "Quench your thirst with joy" because it is the joy of salvation, he said.

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Follow Glatz on Twitter: @CarolGlatz.

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