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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic Church leaders in a Feb. 16 statement said they were encouraged that President Donald Trump may be considering an executive order to protect religious freedom and said they would be grateful if he would move forward with the pledge that his administration would "do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty."

"As Christians, our goal is to live and serve others as the Gospel asks. President Trump can ensure that we are not forced from the public square," said the statement from committee chairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The statement was jointly issued by: New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities; Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth; Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; and Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

The church leaders said an executive order would "implement strong protections for religious freedom across the federal government in many of the areas where it has been eroded by the preceding administration, such as health coverage, adoption, accreditation, tax exemption, and government grants and contracts."

"We ourselves, as well as those we shepherd and serve, would be most grateful if the president would take this positive step toward allowing all Americans to be able to practice their faith without severe penalties from the federal government," they said.

A draft version of the executive order was leaked in late January called "Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom." When it failed to appear on the president's desk, rumors were circulating that a scaled-back version might appear at his desk but there has been no word about it from the Trump administration.

The U.S. bishops posted an online letter for Catholics to send to the president urging him to sign the order after the draft version was leaked.

The Feb. 16 statement said the order would restore "the federal government's proper relationship with the First Amendment and other laws protecting conscience and religious freedom will enable us to continue our service to the most vulnerable of Americans."

The statement stressed that U.S. Catholic bishops have long supported religious liberty, adding that during the last several years "the federal government has eroded this fundamental right," most notably with the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate for religious employers who do not fit the mandate's narrow exemption including the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The USCCB leaders urged Trump to keep his promise and put an end to regulations and other mandates by the federal government "that force people of faith to make impossible choices. 

"We express our fervent hope that with new leadership in the executive branch, basic protections for religious practice may be restored and even strengthened," they said.

The statement said an immediate remedy to the threats against religious freedom is needed and without it the church's freedom to serve others "will remain in jeopardy and needless conflict between the faith community and the federal government will continue."

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Max Rossi, Reuters

By Carol Glatz

ROME (CNS) -- Addressing the fear of immigrants, dissatisfaction with a "fluid economy" and the impatience and vitriol seen in politics and society, Pope Francis told Rome university students to practice a kind of "intellectual charity" that promotes dialogue and sees value in diversity.

"There are lots of remedies against violence," but they must start first with one's heart being open to hearing other people's opinions and then talking things out with patience, he said in a 45-minute off-the-cuff talk.

"It necessary to tone it down a bit, to talk less and listen more," he told hundreds of students, staff and their family members and friends during a visit Feb. 17 to Roma Tre University.

Arriving at the university, the pope slowly made his way along a long snaking pathway of metal barricades throughout the campus, smiling, shaking hands and posing for numerous selfies with smiling members of the crowd. When handed a small baby cocooned in a bright red snowsuit for a papal kiss, the pope joked whether the child was attending the university, too.

Seated on a platform facing an open courtyard, the pope listened to questions from four students, including Nour Essa, who was one of the 12 Syrian refugees the pope had brought to Rome on a papal flight from Lesbos, Greece, in 2016.

The pope said he had received the questions beforehand and wrote a prepared text, but he preferred to answer "from the heart" and be "more spontaneous because I like it better that way."

Asked what "remedy" could counteract the world's violence and how to live well in such a fast-paced, globalized world of "social networks," the pope said today's frenetic pace "makes us violent at home."

Family members don't bother saying "good morning" to each other, they absentmindedly say "hi" or eat together in silence, each absorbed with a smartphone, he said.

The faster the pace in life, the more people become "nameless" because no one takes the time to get to know the other, ending up with a situation where "I greet you as if you were an object."

The tendency to de-personalize others, which starts in one's own heart, at home and with relationships, "grows and grows and it will become violence worldwide," he said.

"In a society where politics has sunk very low -- and I'm talking about society around the world, not here -- one loses the sense" of building up civic life and social harmony, which is done through dialogue.

Pope Francis commented on the way many electoral campaigns and debates feature people interrupting each other. "Wait! Listen carefully to what the other thinks and then respond," he said, and ask for clarification when the point isn't understood.

"Where there is no dialogue, there is violence," he said.

The pope said universities must be places dedicated to this kind of openness, dialogue and respect for a diversity of opinions and ideas.

An institution cannot claim it is offering higher education if there is no "dialogue, discussion, listening, where there is no respect for how others think, where there is no friendship, joy of play," he said.

People go to university to learn and listen, but not passively, the pope said. It is a place to actively seek the good, the beautiful and the true, as a journey done together over time.

He also critiqued the so-called "fluid economy," which leads to a lack of stable, "solid" employment.

Networked trades and transactions in which a person can make -- like a business friend of his did -- $10,000 in 10 minutes trading commodities is an example of this "fluid" economy, he said.

This "liquidity" erases "the culture of work" and everything that is "concrete" about labor "because you cannot work and young people don't know what to do," which can lead them to addictions or suicide.

"Or the lack of work leads me to join a terrorist militia. 'At least I have something to do and have meaning in my life.' It's horrible," he said.

Essa, the 31-year-old Syrian woman, told the pope she, her husband and small boy were living in a refugee camp in Lesbos until "our life changed in one day, thanks to you." Already possessing degrees from her studies in Syria and France, Essa was finishing a degree in biology at Roma Tre.

She asked the pope to address the fear of immigrants, saying she remembered a journalist on the papal flight a year ago asking about people's fear of those coming from Syria and Iraq and whether they threatened Europe's Christian culture.

"How many invasions has Europe had?" during its long history, the pope asked.

Europe has been built upon invasions and movements of peoples, he said. "Migration is not a danger, it is a challenge to grow," he said.

It is only logical that people migrate to escape from conflict, exploitation, hunger and lack of development, he said.

"Don't exploit. Don't be the bullies that go to exploit" these nations already suffering so much, he said.

Asking his audience to reflect on how the Mediterranean Sea has become "a cemetery" with the drownings of so many immigrants, he said those fleeing their homelands first must be seen as one's own "human brothers and sisters. They are men and women like us."

Each country must determine how many refugees and migrants it can properly welcome and integrate with structures and resources in place so the newcomers can become contributing members of the community and not isolated or "ghetto-ized."

While trying to grapple with the way times change, he said, it's also true some things just stay the same. "If we don't learn to understand life as it comes, we will never ever learn to live it."

Life is like being a "goalie" where people have to be alert and ready to grab the ball from whatever direction it comes, Pope Francis said. Today "is a different age, that is coming from somewhere I didn't expect, but I have to take it, I have to take it as it comes without fear."

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By Jonathan Luxmoore

OXFORD, England (CNS) -- Church leaders and organizations in Africa, Europe and the United States said it would be disastrous if U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order telling companies they no longer had to disclose whether their firms use "conflict minerals" from Congo.

Western firms have been accused of working with violent gangs in Congo to obtain minerals used for producing mobile phones, laptops and other consumer objects, and of allowing trade in resources to perpetuate human rights violations.

In the United States, the chairman of the U.S. bishops' International Policy Committee wrote the acting head of the National Security Council urging Trump not to suspend the rules related to Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

"Congolese die every day in the illegal mines and at the hands of the armed groups that destroy communities in order to expel them from potential mining sites," wrote Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, committee chairman. "The estimated death toll in the Congo is the highest since the end of World War II. The international community, including our own nation, nongovernmental agencies and the church, provides emergency assistance to displaced and traumatized persons and families -- assistance that has real financial costs that do not appear on the balance sheets of corporations."

Bishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Bokungu-Ikela, Congo, told Catholic News Service such a ruling would be "a victory for big mining companies" and would "worsen human suffering."

"Other Western countries have since adopted more modest regulations, and we fear the consequences if this law is now suspended," he told Catholic News Service in mid-February.

He said if such an order were signed, Congo's bishops would work with church organizations in the U.S. and Europe to have it reversed.

The 2012 Securities and Exchange Commission ruling, required by Section 1502, does not prohibit companies from buying such minerals, but was designed to force companies to disclose the chain of custody of such minerals in an effort to keep them from helping armed groups, particularly in Congo.

As with other executive orders signed by Trump, a draft was leaked to the press. The draft called for the SEC ruling to be suspended for two years and for the government to review ways of breaking the connection between armed groups in Congo and the sale of these minerals, often used in high-tech devices, including cellphones.

Bishop Cantu noted that in 2011, Bishop Nicolas Djomo, then president of the Congolese bishops' conference, visited the United States to argue for strong and effective regulations on conflict minerals. Bishop Cantu said people in Congo saw the U.S. legislation "as a true expression of solidarity with the women, families, and villages who have suffered at the hands of those who destroy their communities to mine their resources."

Bishop Cantu noted that "more than 70 percent of the world's smelters and refiners" for minerals such as tungsten, tantalum and tin have passed audits showing they were not supporting armed gangs disrupting the local area. "Trade in these minerals is now significantly less lucrative for armed groups because the price for certified minerals is higher than for illegal, illicit minerals. Thus, the free market is now working to offer the right incentives to encourage safe and legal mining activities."

Stefan Reinhold, advocacy officer for CIDSE, a network of 17 Catholic development agencies in Europe and North America, said "the trend globally, from China to Europe, has been toward introducing guidelines on conflict minerals. We must hope this encouraging trend continues."

Anne Lindsay, a private sector analyst at CAFOD, Britain's Catholic aid agency, told CNS Feb. 16 that such a move would contradict steps "now being implemented in 30 countries around the world."

"Too often people in countries rich in oil, gas and minerals haven't seen the benefits of their own natural resources -- and it was the U.S. which led the drive to ensure extractive companies had to be more transparent," Lindsay said.

"The U.S. provisions have sparked the passage of similar transparency laws, regulating use of conflict minerals in global supply chains -- and international standards for businesses are here to stay," she said.

Congress has already passed, and Trump has signed, a two-year suspension of another section of the Dodd-Frank bill, which required oil and gas mining companies to publish what they paid foreign governments in countries in which the companies operated.

Bishop Cantu had urged Congress to reject the legislation.

Opponents of the Dodd-Frank provisions said the disclosure rules cost jobs and put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage, and had worsened, rather than reduced corruption, violence and hunger in the developing world.

Bishop Ambongo Besungu said such claims were theories invented by "big companies out to destroy the law."

"What the big companies argue isn't based on any investigations on the ground," the bishop told CNS. "To say the Dodd-Frank law has set people apart, and pushed them into poverty and famine, is just the version put about by big capitalists at the behest of the mining companies."

He said research by the Congolese bishops' Natural Resources Commission at Walikale, in Congo's North Kivu province, showed extraction of minerals had been "taken over and militarized" by rebel gangs.

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Contributing to this story was Barb Fraze in Washington.

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