Catholic News 2
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Briarwood Presbyterian Church already has more than 4,000 members, two private schools and its own radio station. And if administrators have their way, the wealthy congregation could soon add something that no other American church has: its own police force....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fewer than 10 women victims have come forward so far in the ever-widening investigation into nude photos of female service members that were posted online without their permission, the top Marine general said on Friday. And he pleaded with female Marines to "trust us" and reach out to make complaints or seek help....
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed new rules that would give a powerful boost to the technology from the nation's most populous state....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans hate "Obamacare," so House GOP leaders freak out whenever their health care bill is compared to President Barack Obama's law. But one reason some conservatives are branding the bill "Obamacare Lite" comes down to the tax credits to help consumers buy insurance....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told President Donald Trump's transition team before the inauguration that Flynn might need to register with the government as a foreign agent, but Trump was not aware of the possible move, the White House said Friday....
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has thanked Fr. Giulio Michelini for directing the Spiritual Exercises from which the Holy Father returned on Friday.Before returning to the Vatican, the Pope expressed his and the Roman Curia’s appreciation for Fr. Michelini’s preparation and direction.“I would like to thank you for the good you wanted to do for us and the good you have done us. Above all, thank you for having shown yourself as you are and for being natural without ‘putting on a face from a holy card’.”Pope Francis also thanked him for the work put into his preparation: “This implies responsibility, taking things seriously.”“There was a mountain of things upon which to meditate, but St. Ignatius says that when one finds something in the Exercises something that gives consolation or desolation, one must stop there and not go forward. I’m sure all of us found one or two among all of this material. The rest is not wasted; ...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has thanked Fr. Giulio Michelini for directing the Spiritual Exercises from which the Holy Father returned on Friday.
Before returning to the Vatican, the Pope expressed his and the Roman Curia’s appreciation for Fr. Michelini’s preparation and direction.
“I would like to thank you for the good you wanted to do for us and the good you have done us. Above all, thank you for having shown yourself as you are and for being natural without ‘putting on a face from a holy card’.”
Pope Francis also thanked him for the work put into his preparation: “This implies responsibility, taking things seriously.”
“There was a mountain of things upon which to meditate, but St. Ignatius says that when one finds something in the Exercises something that gives consolation or desolation, one must stop there and not go forward. I’m sure all of us found one or two among all of this material. The rest is not wasted; it remains and will serve for another time.”
The Holy Father went on to tell the story of a famous Spanish preacher to show that “sometimes a little word, a tiny thing” can serve as a point of reflection.
“After giving a grand, well-prepared sermon, a man – a great public sinner – came up to him in tears, asking for confession. He confessed in an outburst of sin and tears, sin and tears. The confessor – shocked because he knew the life of this man – asked him: ‘But, tell me, in what moment did you feel that God had touched your heart? With what word…?’ [He responded,] ‘When you said, Let’s move to another topic’. Sometimes it is the simplest words that help us, or sometimes those more complicated: To each the Lord gives the [right] word.”
Finally, Pope Francis told Fr. Michelini: “Above all, I wish you [the grace] to be a good friar.”
(Vatican Radio) On Friday morning, in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel, the Preacher to the Pontifical Household, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., delivered the first sermon for Lent 2017.The theme of this year’s series of Lenten homilies is “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3) – the Holy Spirit introduces us to the ‘fullness of the truth’ about Jesus and about His Paschal mystery.”Below, please find the full text of Fr Raniero Cantalamessa’s First Sermon for Lent 2017 (delivered in Italian; English translation courtesy of Marsha Daigle-Williamson): THE HOLY SPIRIT LEADS US INTO THE MYSTERYOF THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST1. “He will bear witness to me” One thing impressed me while reading the initial prayer of the Mass of the First Sunday of Lent this year. We don’t pray that God the Father give us the strength to accomplish one of the classic Lenten works: fasting, praying, ...
(Vatican Radio) On Friday morning, in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel, the Preacher to the Pontifical Household, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., delivered the first sermon for Lent 2017.
The theme of this year’s series of Lenten homilies is “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3) – the Holy Spirit introduces us to the ‘fullness of the truth’ about Jesus and about His Paschal mystery.”
Below, please find the full text of Fr Raniero Cantalamessa’s First Sermon for Lent 2017 (delivered in Italian; English translation courtesy of Marsha Daigle-Williamson):
THE HOLY SPIRIT LEADS US INTO THE MYSTERY
OF THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
1. “He will bear witness to me”
One thing impressed me while reading the initial prayer of the Mass of the First Sunday of Lent this year. We don’t pray that God the Father give us the strength to accomplish one of the classic Lenten works: fasting, praying, doing charity; we ask rather to “grow in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ.” I believe that this is indeed the most important and most acceptable work in God’s eyes, and it is to this end that my Lenten meditations would like to contribute.
Following the reflection begun in the Advent on the Holy Spirit who should permeate the whole life and proclamation of the Church (“Theology of the Third Article”!), in these Lenten meditations I intend to move from the third article to the second article of the creed. In other words, we will try to highlight how the Holy Spirit “leads us into all the truth” about Christ and his paschal mystery, that is, about the Savior’s being and work. Concerning Christ’s work we will try, in keeping with the liturgical season of Lent, to delve into the role the Holy Spirit plays in the death and resurrection of Christ and in our personal death and resurrection.
The second article of the creed, in its complete formulation, is as follows:
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
This central article of the creed reflects two different stages of faith. The phrase, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,” reflects the earliest faith of the Church immediately after Easter. What comes next in the article of the creed, “born of the Father before all ages . . . ,” reflects a later, more evolved stage, subsequent to the Arian controversy and the Council of Nicea in 325. Let us dedicate the present meditation to the first part of the article, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,” and see what the New Testament tells us about the Spirit as the author of the true knowledge of Christ.
St. Paul affirms that Jesus Christ was manifested as the “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (Rom 1:4), that is, according to the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul reaches the point of declaring that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3), thanks to his inner revelation. He attributes to the Holy Spirit the “insight into the mystery of Christ” that was given to him and was also “revealed to his holy apostles and prophets” (Eph 3: 4-5). He says that, “strengthened with might through his Spirit,” believers will be able to “to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3: 16, 19).
In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself proclaims this work of the Paraclete in his regard. The Holy Spirit will take what is his and will declare it to the disciples; the Spirit will remind them of all that Jesus said; he will lead them into all the truth about Jesus’ relationship with Father and will bear witness to him (see Jn 16:7-15). From this point on, the precise criterion for recognizing if something is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit will be if one is moved to acknowledge that Jesus has come in the flesh (see 1 Jn 4:2-3).
Some people believe that the current emphasis on the Holy Spirit could overshadow the work of Christ almost as though that work was incomplete or imperfect. This is a complete misunderstanding. The Spirit never says, “I”; he never speaks in the first person; he always points to Christ; he does not claim to establish a work of his own but always refers himself to Christ and leads believers to him. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life; the Spirit is the one who helps us understand all this!
The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost results in a sudden illumination of the whole work and person of Christ. Peter concludes his discourse at Pentecost with a solemn declaration, which today could be called “urbi et orbi”: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord [Kyrios] and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). From that day on, the early community began to look at the life of Jesus, his death, and resurrection in a different way; everything seemed clear now, as if a veil had been removed from their eyes (see 2 Cor 3:16). Although they had lived side by side with him, without the Spirit they had not been able to penetrate the profundity of his mystery.
Today a rapprochement is occurring between Orthodox and Catholic theology on this topic of the relationship between Christ and the Spirit. At a conference in Bologna in 1980, the theologian John D. Zizioulas expressed reservations, on the one hand, about the ecclesiology of Vatican II because, according to him, “the Holy Spirit was brought into ecclesiology after the edifice of the Church was constructed entirely on a Christological basis”; on the other hand, he recognized that Orthodox theology also needed to rethink the relationship between Christology and pneumatology to avoid constructing an ecclesiology based only on pneumatology. In other words we Latins are urged to deepen our understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church (which is what happened after the Second Vatican Council) while our Orthodox brethren are urged to deepen their understanding of the role of Christ and, consequently, of the presence of the Church in history.
2. Objective and Subjective Knowledge of Christ
Let us turn, then, to the role of the Holy Spirit with respect to the knowledge of Christ. In the New Testament, two kinds of knowledge of Christ are already outlined, or two areas in which the Spirit is at work. There is an objective knowledge of Christ—of his being, his mystery, and his person—and there is a knowledge that is more subjective, practical, and interior that aims at knowing what Jesus “does for me” rather than at what he “is in himself.”
In Paul what predominates is an interest in understanding what Christ has done for us, in what was accomplished by Christ, and in particular his paschal mystery; in John what predominates instead is an interest in understanding who Christ is in himself: the eternal Logos who was with God and came in the flesh, the one who says, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30). But it is only from subsequent developments that these two tendencies become evident. I note them briefly because this will help us understand the gift the Holy Spirit is giving to the church today on this matter.
In the patristic age, the Holy Spirit appears above all as the guarantor of the apostolic tradition concerning Jesus to counter new doctrines introduced by the Gnostics. St. Irenaeus affirms that the Spirit is the gift God entrusted to the Church; those who separate themselves with their false doctrine from the truth proclaimed by the Church are not partakers of him. Tertullian argues the apostolic churches cannot have erred in their preaching of the truth. To think otherwise would signify that the Holy Spirit, “the Steward of God, the vicar of Christ,” who was sent by Christ and asked by the Father to be the teacher of truth, would have “neglected his office.”
During the time of the great dogmatic controversies, the Holy Spirit is seen as the custodian of Christological orthodoxy. In the councils, the Church has the firm certainty of being “inspired” by the Spirit in formulating the truth about the two natures of Christ, the unity of his person, and the completeness of his humanity. The emphasis is thus clearly on the objective, dogmatic, and ecclesial knowledge of Christ.
This tendency remains predominant in theology up until the Reformation. With one difference, however. The dogmas, at the time of their formulation, were vital questions and the result of lively participation by the whole Church, but once sanctioned and handed down, they tended to lose their incisiveness and become formal. “Two natures in one person” became a ready-made formula rather than the arrival point of a long and difficult process. During all this time there were certainly wonderful experiences of the intimate, personal knowledge of Christ that was full of fervent devotion to him like that of St. Bernard or Francis of Assisi. But these experiences did not have much influence on theology. Such experiences are still mentioned today in the history of spirituality but not in the history of theology.
The Protestant reformers reversed the situation and said, “To know Christ is to know his benefits and not . . . to reflect upon his natures and the modes of his Incarnation.” The Christ “for me” jumps to first place. A subjective, intimate knowledge is placed in contrast to objective, dogmatic knowledge; an “inner witness” from the Holy Spirit about Jesus in the heart of every believer is placed in contrast to the external testimony of the Church about Jesus. When this theological innovation also tended in official Protestantism to be transformed later into a “dead orthodoxy,” periodically movements, like Pietism in Lutheran circles and Methodism in Anglican circles, sprang up to bring it back to life. The apex of the knowledge of Christ coincides in these movements with the moment in which believers, moved by the Holy Spirit, become aware that Jesus has died “for them,” for each one of them in particular, and they recognize him as their personal Savior:
Then with my heart I first believed,
believed with faith divine,
power with the Holy Ghost received
to call the Savior mine.
I felt my Lord’s atoning blood
close to my soul applied.
Let us conclude this brief look at history by noting a third stage in the way of conceiving of the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of Christ, one that has characterized the centuries of the Enlightenment of which we are the direct heirs. An objective, detached knowledge is now back in vogue, but it is no longer in the ontological category, as it was in the ancient era, but in the historical category. In other words, the interest is not in knowing who Jesus Christ is in himself (his pre-existence, his natures, his person) but who he was in history. It is the age of research surrounding the so-called “historical Jesus”!
In this stage the Holy Spirit no longer plays a role in the knowledge of Christ; he is entirely absent from it. The “inner witness” of the Holy Spirit now becomes identified with reason and the human spirit. The “external testimony” is the main thing, but this no longer means the apostolic testimony of the Church but only that of history, ascertained through various critical methods. The common presupposition of this effort was that to find the real Jesus, one needed to look outside the Church, releasing him “from the wrappings of ecclesiastical doctrine.”
We know what the result of all this search for the historical Jesus has been: a failure, even though this does not mean it did not have many positive fruits. However, in this regard, there still persists an equivocation at bottom. Jesus Christ—and after him other people like St. Francis of Assisi—did not simply live in history but created a history and now live in the history they created, like a sound living in the wave that it produced. The fierce effort of rationalistic historians seems to be to separate Christ from the history he created in order to restore him to a common universal history, as though one could better perceive a sound in its authenticity by separating it from the wave that carries it. The history that Jesus initiated, or the wave he emitted, is the faith of the Church animated by the Holy Spirit, and it is only through that faith that one can know its source.
The legitimacy of normal historical research on Christ is not excluded by all this, but this research must be more aware of its limits and recognize that it is does not exhaust all that can be known about him. Just as the noblest act of reason is to recognize that “there is an infinity of things that are beyond it,” so too the most honest act of the historian is to recognize that there exists something that cannot be reached by history alone.
3. The Sublime Knowledge of Christ
At the end of his classic work on the history of Christian exegesis, Henri de Lubac reached a rather pessimistic conclusion. He said that certain conditions were missing for us moderns to be able to revive a spiritual reading like that of the Fathers. What we lack is that enthusiastic faith, that sense of the fullness and unity of Scriptures they had. The desire to imitate their boldness in reading the Bible today would be almost risking profanation because we are lacking the spirit from which such readings arise. Nevertheless, he did not entirely close the door to hope; in another work he says that “If we aspire to find something of what was the spiritual interpretation of Scripture in the early centuries of the Church, . . . it is a spiritual movement that we must reproduce above all.”
What de Lubac noted with regard to the spiritual understanding of Scripture can be applied all the more to the spiritual understanding of Christ. It is not enough to write new and more updated treatises on pneumatology. If we lack the underpinnings of a lived experience of the Spirit, analogous to that which accompanied the first elaboration of the theology of the Spirit in the fourth century, whatever is said will always remain external to the real issue. We would lack the necessary conditions to raise us to the level at which the Paraclete operates: the enthusiasm, the boldness, and that “sober intoxication of the spirit” about which almost all the great authors of that century spoke. We cannot present a Christ in the anointing of the Spirit if we do not live, in some way, in that same anointing.
The great innovation hoped for by Father de Lubac is now coming to pass. In the last century there arose a “spiritual movement,” which is continually growing, that has created the basis for a renewal of pneumatology that begins from an experience of the Spirit and of his charisms. I am speaking about the Pentecostal and Charismatic phenomenon. In its first fifty years, this movement—born in reaction to the liberal and rationalistic tendency in theology, like Pietism and Methodism mentioned above—has deliberately ignored theology and has in turn been ignored (and even ridiculed!) by academic theology.
However, when around the middle of the last century that movement penetrated traditional churches in possession of a vast theological apparatus and received a basic welcome from those respective hierarchies, theology could no longer ignore it. In a book called Erfahrung und Theologie des Heiligen Geistes [The Experience and Theology of the Holy Spirit], the most noted theologians of the day, Catholic and Protestant, examined the significance of the Pentecostal and charismatic phenomenon for the renewal of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
What interests us in all of this at this point only concerns the knowledge of Christ. What understanding of Christ is emerging in this new spiritual and theological atmosphere? The most significant fact is not the discovery of new perspectives and new methodologies following the latest trends in philosophy (structuralism, linguistic analysis, etc.) but the rediscovery of a basic biblical fact: Jesus Christ is Lord! The lordship of Christ is a new world that can be entered into only “by the action of the Holy Spirit.”
St. Paul speaks of a “superior” or even “sublime” knowledge of Christ that consists in knowing him and proclaiming him precisely as “Lord” (see Phil 3:8). This is the proclamation which, accompanied by faith in the resurrection of Christ, can make a person “saved”: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). This knowledge is made possible only by the Holy Spirit: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). Anyone can of course just mouth those words without the Holy Spirit, but it would not then lead to the wonderful event we just referred to; it would not save a person.
What is so special about this affirmation that makes it so decisive? That can be explained from different points of view that are objective and subjective. The objective power of the statement, “Jesus is Lord,” is that it makes history, and in particular the paschal mystery, present. It is the conclusion derived from two events: Christ died for our sins; he was raised for our justification; therefore, he is Lord. “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom 14:9). The events that led to it are contained in this conclusion and become present and operative in it. In this case words are truly “the house of Being.” The proclamation “Jesus is Lord” is the seed from which the whole kerygma and subsequent Christian preaching developed.
From the subjective point of view, or what pertains to us, the power of this proclamation is the fact that it also entails a decision. Whoever proclaims it, is deciding the direction of his or her life. It is as if the person said, “You are my Lord; I submit myself to you, and I freely acknowledge you as my savior, my master, my teacher, the one who has all rights over me. I belong to you more than I do to myself because you have bought me at a price” (see 1 Cor 6:19-20).
The decision that is inherent in the proclamation of Jesus as “Lord” takes on a particular relevance today. Some people believe that it is possible, and even necessary, to lay aside the affirmation of the uniqueness of Christ in order to promote interfaith dialogue. However, to proclaim Jesus as “Lord” means precisely to proclaim his uniqueness. It is not without reason that the article has us proclaim, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ.” St. Paul writes,
Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor 8:5-6)
The apostle wrote these words at the time when the Christian faith, small and newly birthed, was facing a world dominated by powerful and prestigious cults and religions. The courage it takes today to believe that Jesus is “the only Lord” is nothing compared to the courage it took back then. But the “power of the Spirit” is not granted except to the one who proclaims Jesus as Lord in its powerful original meaning. It is a fact of experience. Only after a theologian or a preacher has decided to gamble everything on Jesus Christ, the “only Lord” —even at the cost of being “cast out of the synagogue”—only then does that person experience a new certainty and power in his or her life.
4. From the “Personage” of Jesus to the “Person” of Jesus
This luminous discovery of Jesus as Lord is, as I said, the innovation and the grace that God is granting in our time to his Church. I realized that when I questioned Tradition regarding all the other topics and words of Scripture, the testimony of the Fathers would come crowding into my mind. But when I tried to question it on this point, Tradition remained virtually silent. Already in the third century, the title “Lord” was no longer understood in its kerygmatic meaning. Outside of Jewish religious circles, the meaning of that word was not sufficient to express the uniqueness of Christ. Origen, for instance, considers “Lord” (Kyrios) to be a title used by someone who is still at the stage of fear; the relationship Lord–servant is inferior to the relationship Teacher– disciple.
People of course continued to speak of “the Lord” Jesus, but it became a name for Christ like other names, and most often it was one of the components of Christ’s complete name: “Our Lord Jesus Christ.” But it is one thing to say, “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and another to say, “Jesus Christ is our Lord!” One indication of this change is the way the text of Philippians 2:11 came to be translated in the Vulgate: “Omnis lingua confiteatur quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris,” “every tongue must confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” It is one thing to say, “Our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” and quite another thing to say, “Jesus Christ is our Lord to the glory of God the Father.” In this second rendering, which is what current translations say, it is not just a name that is being uttered but a profession of faith that is being proclaimed.
Where in all this is the qualitative leap that the Holy Spirit leads us to make in our understanding of Christ? It is in the fact that the proclamation of Jesus as Lord is the door that leads us into the knowledge of the risen and living Christ! Christ is no longer a personage but a person; he is no longer a set of theses, dogmas (and corresponding heresies); he is no longer merely a figure to worship and remember, but a living person who is always present in the Spirit.
This spiritual and existential knowledge of Jesus as Lord does not lead to the neglect of objective, dogmatic, and ecclesial knowledge of Christ but instead revitalizes it. “By the Spirit of God,” St. Irenaeus says, revealed truth, “renewing its youth, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also.” We will dedicate our next meditation, God willing, to one of these truths, the dogma that constitutes the second part of that article of the creed: “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
I do not know a better practical resolution we can make at the end of these reflections than what we read at the beginning of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium by Pope Francis:
I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her. (no. 3)
___________________________
Translated from Italian by Marsha Daigle-Williamson
(Vatican Radio) The Holy See’s representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Thursday said freedom of the media requires ‘great responsibility’.Msgr. Janusz S. Urbanczyk told the OSCE that it is “important to stress that the great role of the media is accompanied by great responsibility. Because, with every right – such as freedom of expression – there follows obligations.”His address came after the presentation of a report by the OSCE representative on freedom of the media.Msgr. Urbanczyk cited Pope Francis’ address to journalists in September 2016: “In life not everything is black or white. Even in journalism, you have to know how to discern the shades of grey of the events that you are called to cover… This is the job – we could also say the mission, difficult and at the same time necessary – of a journalist: to get as close as possible to the truth of the facts ...
(Vatican Radio) The Holy See’s representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Thursday said freedom of the media requires ‘great responsibility’.
Msgr. Janusz S. Urbanczyk told the OSCE that it is “important to stress that the great role of the media is accompanied by great responsibility. Because, with every right – such as freedom of expression – there follows obligations.”
His address came after the presentation of a report by the OSCE representative on freedom of the media.
Msgr. Urbanczyk cited Pope Francis’ address to journalists in September 2016: “In life not everything is black or white. Even in journalism, you have to know how to discern the shades of grey of the events that you are called to cover… This is the job – we could also say the mission, difficult and at the same time necessary – of a journalist: to get as close as possible to the truth of the facts and never to say or to write anything which, in conscience, is known to be untrue”.
Below please find Msgr. Urbanczyk’s full address:
Mr. Chairman,
I join previous speakers in thanking Ms. Dunja Mijatovic for her final and, as always, insightful report to the Permanent Council concerning the activities of the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
My Delegation shares in a particular way the concern of the RFoM about freedom of expression, free media and free information. At the same time, the Holy See is convinced, as Pope Francis stressed during the audience for the Italian National Council of Journalists on 22 September 2016, that “the journalist has a role of great importance and, at the same time, a role of great responsibility. In some way you [journalists] write the first draft of history, building the agenda of the news and also introducing people to the interpretation of events” (1).
It is, in this regard, important to stress that the great role of the media is accompanied by great responsibility. Because, with every right – such as freedom of expression – there follows obligations. In fact, professional standards and ethics among journalists do not inhibit or weaken the media profession, but rather enables it to carry out its great responsibility, its important service for the good of all, something the RFoM has drawn attention to during her term.
In the abovementioned meeting with journalists His Holiness further underlined that: “In life not everything is black or white. Even in journalism, you have to know how to discern the shades of grey of the events that you are called to cover. Political debates, and even many situations of conflict, are rarely the result of distinctly clear dynamics, where it can be recognized in a definite and unambiguous way who is wrong and who is right. In the end, confrontation and at times conflict, derive precisely from this difficulty of reaching a synthesis among differing positions. This is the job– we could also say the mission, difficult and at the same time (1) necessary – of a journalist: to get as close as possible to the truth of the facts and never to say or to write anything which, in conscience, is known to be untrue”. (2)
Moreover, touching upon the important mission of journalists – to serve as an instrument of reconciliation and of encounter – the Pope stressed: “I hope that journalism may be increasingly and everywhere an instrument of construction, a builder of the common good, an accelerator for processes of reconciliation; may it overcome the temptation to foster clashes with a language that blows on the embers of division; may it instead favour a culture of encounter.” (3)
Since this is the final report that Ms. Mijatovic presents to the Permanent Council in her capacity as OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, the Holy See takes the opportunity to recognise the commitment and accomplishments she brought to the OSCE and to the participating States, not only to freedom of the media in general, but to journalists and their safety in particular. I also, on behalf of my Delegation, wish to thank you, Ms. Mijatovic, for the wide-ranging knowledge, professionalism and hard work that have characterized your seven years of service to this Organization , and I wish you the very best in your future endeavours.
Furthermore, I would like to take this opportunity to convey the Holy See’s gratitude to the Austrian Chairmanship, for its ongoing efforts to secure the appointment of a new Representative on Freedom of the Media as well as to express its hope that such an appointment may be forthcoming as soon as possible, and that the future Representative carry out the Office’s important mission to the benefit of all the participating States.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[1] His Holiness Pope Francis, Address to the National Council of the Order of Journalists, 22 September 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
Almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India in 2016, a rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, government data released on Thursday showed. The Ministry of Women and Child Development told parliament that 19,223 women and children were trafficked last year against 15,448 in 2015, with the highest number of victims recorded in the eastern state of West Bengal. Police officials attributed the rise to increased public awareness of trafficking-related crimes and more police training. "It's difficult to claim these crimes are rising dramatically," said a senior Delhi police official, who declined to be named. "I think more victims are coming forward and reporting because of more information about trafficking," the official said. "Government and civil society groups are doing campaigns and people are also seeing more cases being reported in the media." The official said the actual fi...
Almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India in 2016, a rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, government data released on Thursday showed. The Ministry of Women and Child Development told parliament that 19,223 women and children were trafficked last year against 15,448 in 2015, with the highest number of victims recorded in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Police officials attributed the rise to increased public awareness of trafficking-related crimes and more police training. "It's difficult to claim these crimes are rising dramatically," said a senior Delhi police official, who declined to be named. "I think more victims are coming forward and reporting because of more information about trafficking," the official said. "Government and civil society groups are doing campaigns and people are also seeing more cases being reported in the media." The official said the actual figure could be much higher as many victims were still not registering cases with the police, largely because they did not know the law or feared traffickers.
South Asia, with India at its centre, is one of the fastest-growing regions for human trafficking in the world. Thousands of people – largely poor, rural women and children – are lured to India's towns and cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs, but sell them into modern day slavery. Some end up as domestic workers, or forced to work in small industries such as textile workshops, farming or are even pushed into brothels where they are sexually exploited. In many cases, they are not paid or are held in debt bondage. Some go missing, and their families cannot trace them.
The 2016 data from the National Crime Records Bureau showed that almost equal numbers of women and children were trafficked. Figures showed there were 9,104 trafficked children last year - a 27 percent increase from the previous year. The number of women trafficked rose by 22 percent to 10,119 in 2016.
India's West Bengal state - which shares a porous border with poorer neighbour Bangladesh and Nepal and is a known human trafficking hub for that reason - registered more than one-third of the total number of victims in 2016. The desert state of Rajasthan recorded the second highest number of trafficked children in 2016, while the western state of Maharashtra, where India's business capital Mumbai is located, showed the second highest number of trafficked women. (Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation)
Two Bangladeshi asylum seekers in Japan cleared up radioactive contamination from one of the world's worst nuclear disasters on the false promise doing so would win them permission to stay in the country longer, Reuters quoted media as reporting on Wednesday. The Fukushima nuclear plant suffered multiple meltdowns after being hit by a tsunami triggered by a big earthquake on March 11, 2011. Companies decontaminating areas around the plant, which usually involves removing radioactive top soil, have struggled to find workers willing to do the job. The two men, who arrived in Japan in 2013 saying they were escaping political persecution, said they were told by brokers and construction companies that their visas would be extended if they did decontamination work, the Chunichi newspaper reported. "We believed the visa story because they said it's a job Japanese people don't want to do," Chunichi quoted one of the men, Monir Hossain, as saying.&nbs...
Two Bangladeshi asylum seekers in Japan cleared up radioactive contamination from one of the world's worst nuclear disasters on the false promise doing so would win them permission to stay in the country longer, Reuters quoted media as reporting on Wednesday. The Fukushima nuclear plant suffered multiple meltdowns after being hit by a tsunami triggered by a big earthquake on March 11, 2011. Companies decontaminating areas around the plant, which usually involves removing radioactive top soil, have struggled to find workers willing to do the job.
The two men, who arrived in Japan in 2013 saying they were escaping political persecution, said they were told by brokers and construction companies that their visas would be extended if they did decontamination work, the Chunichi newspaper reported. "We believed the visa story because they said it's a job Japanese people don't want to do," Chunichi quoted one of the men, Monir Hossain, as saying. Reuters was not able to reach the two men.
The men did the decontamination work in Iitate village, about 50 km south of the plant, from January to March 2015, Chunichi said. Japan maintains tight controls on the entry of foreign workers but asylum seekers are allowed to work while their applications are reviewed. Many have permits allowing them to stay and work that have to be renewed every six months. Mitsushi Uragami, a justice ministry official who oversees refugee recognition, said there were no residence permits on offer for people doing decontamination. The department was investigating the case, he said.
Takuya Nomoto, an environment ministry official overseeing decontamination, said the Chunichi report did not give the names of the companies or labour brokers involved, and as such the ministry was not able to confirm it. The Fukushima Labour Bureau said this month more than half of the 1,020 companies involved in decontamination violated labour and safety laws last year.
Reuters revealed in 2013 that homeless men were put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima for less than the minimum wage. Reuters also found the clean-up depended on a little scrutinised network of subcontractors - many of them inexperienced with nuclear work and some with ties to organized crime. (Source: Reuters)
