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Rome, Italy, Feb 12, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- One year ago marked a historic first meeting between a Pope and a Russian Orthodox Patriarch.Now, the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate will celebrate the meeting’s anniversary with a conference at Switzerland’s Freibourg University.The conference will take place Feb. 12, exactly one year after the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill at the St. Marti airport at the Havana.Christian brotherhood and unity were the focus of the 2016 meeting.“We spoke as brothers,” Pope Francis said of the meeting last year. “We have the same baptism. We are bishops. We spoke of our Churches.”Patriarch Kirill said their private discussion was conducted “with full awareness of the responsibility of our Churches, for the future of Christianity, and for the future of human civilization” and provided a chance to understand each other. He said the two Churches will work against war.Now, one ...
Vatican City, Feb 12, 2017 / 09:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christ's Sermon on the Mount shows that he wanted to fulfil the law of Moses, not abolish it, Pope Francis said Sunday during his Angelus address.He “wants to help his listeners to achieve a reinterpretation of the Mosaic law. What was said in the Old Covenant was true, but it was not all: Jesus came to fulfill and to enact definitively the law of God, down to the last iota,” the Pope said Feb. 12 in St. Peter's Square.“He manifests the Law’s original purposes and He fulfils its authentic aspects – and He does all this by His preaching and even more by offering Himself on the Cross.”Christ “teaches how to do the will of God fully – and He uses this expression: with a 'justice superior' to that of the scribes and Pharisees – a justice animated by love, charity, mercy, and therefore capable of realizing the substance of the commandments, avoiding ...
New Orleans, La., Feb 12, 2017 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Venerable Henriette DeLille, born a “free woman of color” before the Civil War, had all the makings of a life of relative ease before her.Born in 1812 to a wealthy French father and a free Creole woman of Spanish, French and African descent, Henriette was groomed throughout her childhood to become a part of what was then known as the placage system.Under the placage system, free women of color (term used at the time for people of full or partial African descent, who were no longer or never were slaves) entered into common law marriages with wealthy white plantation owners, who often kept their legitimate families at the plantations in the country. It was a rigid system, but afforded free women of color comfortable and even luxurious lives.Trained in French literature, music, dancing, and nursing, Henriette was prepared to become the “kept woman” of a wealthy white man throughout her childhood.H...
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2017 / 10:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of several contentious events surrounding the Vatican recently, Pope Francis' advisory board in his ongoing reform of the Roman Curia affirmed their support of the Pope and his work.On behalf of the group, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga greeted Pope Francis at the start of the councils of cardinal's Feb. 13 meeting.He thanked the Pope for his Christmas address to the Roman Curia Dec. 22, and acknowledging “his encouragement and direction for the work of the council,” a Vatican communique stated.“In relation to recent events, the Council of Cardinals expresses its full support of the work of the Pope, while ensuring full adhesion and support to his person and his Magisterium,” it added.The statement comes just over one week after posters criticizing the Pope were plastered on walls of the city center of Rome Feb. 4.Depicting a dour looking Pope Francis, they re...
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2017 / 10:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Monday spoke about what it means to kill your brother in your heart, which, may be something as small as envy or bitterness, and if left to grow, can lead to even worse things, such as war or actual murder.Most people have never actually killed someone, the Pope said in his homily for Mass at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta Feb. 13, but “if you have a bad feeling toward your brother, you killed him; if you insult your brother, you killed him in your heart. Killing is a process that starts from little things.”Reflecting on the story of Cain and Abel, the Pope said it is one “which begins with a little jealousy: Cain is irritated because his sacrifice does not please the Lord and he begins to cultivate a feeling of resentment, a feeling he could control but does not.”“The speck of sawdust becomes a plank in our eye,” he continued, “our life revolves around it and it ends up...
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2017 / 01:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump’s administration will stop fighting in court to implement the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policy, leading to applause from a religious freedom legal group. “This is good news for the privacy, safety, and dignity of young students across America,” stated Gary McCaleb, senior counsel with the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.On Friday, the Trump administration announced that it was dropping the government’s appeal on behalf of the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom guidance. That guidance had directed schools to allow students to use the bathroom or locker room of the gender they currently identify with, not the facilities of their birth or biological sex.In August, the Northern District of Texas federal court placed an injunction on the policy, halting it from going into effect. In response to the injunction, the Obama admini...
Portland, Ore., Feb 13, 2017 / 02:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An Oregon bill on advanced medical directive rules could allow patients who suffer from dementia or mental illness to be starved or dehydrated, opponents warned.“These are patients who are awake, can chew and swallow and want to eat, even though in some cases they may need help in delivering food to their mouths,” Gayle Atteberry of Oregon Right to Life said Jan. 31. “Current safeguards in Oregon’s law protect these patients from this type of cruelty. This bill take away these safeguards.”The legislation, S.B. 494, would create an appointed committee empowered to make changes to the advance medical directive governing end-of-life decisions.According to Oregon Right to Life, the bill was drafted in response to the case of Ashland, Ore. resident Nora Harris, who suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She lost the ability to communicate and the fine motor skills needed to feed herself....
Madrid, Spain, Feb 13, 2017 / 04:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Josefa Rodríguez and Amaro Pesquero were not expecting to receive a letter from Pope Francis.But that's exactly what happened last September, when the Pope himself thanked them in his own handwriting for the donation they had made for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East.Josefa and Amaro are a married couple from Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain, who made a pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Holy Year of Mercy in August 2016.“My wife bought a prayer book on Divine Mercy and got in contact with this apostolate so they could send her more books so she could to give them away to others. Then they informed her that there was going to be a pilgrimage to Rome and we signed up,” Amaro Pesquero told CNA.But in addition to going on pilgrimage for the Jubilee, the retired couple brought a gift that they had gathered together with a lot of effort and that they wanted to give to the Holy Father: a sum of mo...
Springfield, Ill., Feb 13, 2017 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic advocacy group is warning the governor of Illinois that he will face massive political opposition if he signs an abortion funding bill into law.“Let me be clear. If Governor Rauner signs the bill as written, we will urge our members along with every pro-life voter in the state to support an alternative candidate – or to abstain from voting for his re-election. And we won’t be the only group doing so,” Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, stated on Monday of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R).The Illinois H.B. 40 would allow for the state’s Medicaid recipients to have their abortions covered, as the program currently pays for abortions done in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.Illinois Right to Life has estimated that abortions in the state could increase by 12,000 per year.The bill would also repeal the state’s “trigger” law, which was ena...
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2017 / 06:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Objectors to abortion need stronger conscience protections in federal law, the U.S. bishops have said in a letter to Congress supporting a bill being considered by Congress.“While existing federal laws already protect conscientious objection to abortion in theory, this protection has not proved effective in practice,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said. They said the proposed Conscience Protection Act of 2017 is essential to protect health care providers’ fundamental rights and ensure that they are not “forced by government to help destroy innocent unborn children.”Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Archbishop William Lori, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom, backed the legislation in a Feb. 8 letter to Congress.They said the bill would benefit the “great majority” ...
