(Vatican Radio) As Pope Francis makes his 17th Apostolic visit to Sweden for a joint commemoration of the Reformation together with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation, the President of the Federation says he reciprocates the Pope's feeling of closeness between the two Churches.Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s interview with Bishop Munib Younan, President of the Lutheran World Federation Bishop Munib Younan, speaking about his own personal hopes for the visit notes, “we have behind us fifty years of deep dialogue between the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church and this dialogue is built on issues and this is the reason we sighed the joint declaration…” He also says this commemoration consolidates that closeness which shows “we are brothers and sisters in Christ”.He stresses that, “the division of the past must not determine our future today” and like the Pope, he emphasizes the urgency of Christian unity because of th...
(Vatican Radio) As Pope Francis makes his 17th Apostolic visit to Sweden for a joint commemoration of the Reformation together with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation, the President of the Federation says he reciprocates the Pope's feeling of closeness between the two Churches.
Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s interview with Bishop Munib Younan, President of the Lutheran World Federation
Bishop Munib Younan, speaking about his own personal hopes for the visit notes, “we have behind us fifty years of deep dialogue between the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church and this dialogue is built on issues and this is the reason we sighed the joint declaration…” He also says this commemoration consolidates that closeness which shows “we are brothers and sisters in Christ”.
He stresses that, “the division of the past must not determine our future today” and like the Pope, he emphasizes the urgency of Christian unity because of those being persecuted and killed for their Christian faith in different parts of the world including the Middle East .
Bishop Younan says when he returns to the Middle East he wants to bring back with him a message of unity, underlining that, “only unity will strengthen the Churches in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land and in the whole Middle East. This unity is not our work, it is the work of the Holy Spirit and we must take it seriously.”
Pope Francis shared a stage with Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on May 12, 2023, to speak at a two-day conference on "The General State of the Birth Rate," held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNARome Newsroom, May 2, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).The Vatican announced on Thursday that Pope Francis will speak at an event on Italy's demographic crisis as the country's birth rate sits at a historic low.Pope Francis will address "The General State of the Birth Rate" conference on May 10 at the Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican.The two-day event organized by the Forum of Family Associations and the Foundation for Births seeks to address the 50 years of steady decline in births across Europe, and especially in Italy, and what can be done to reverse it. Births in Italy dropped to a historic low in 2023. Italy's national statistics bureau recorded 379,000 births last year, a 3.6% decline from 2022 and a 34.2% drop from 200...
Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/ Stigmatines) and former Media and Communications Officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC), was found dead of gunshot wounds in South Africa, on April 27, 2024. / Credit: SACBCACI Africa, May 2, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/Stigmatines) and former media and communications officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC), was reportedly murdered last weekend in South Africa.According to a notice from the congregation's South Africa-based provincial secretary, Father Jeremia Thami Mkhwanazi, Tatu died on Saturday, April 27, "after sustaining a gunshot."Tatu, a native of Lesotho's Archdiocese of Maseru, was ministering in South Africa's Archdiocese of Pretoria. According to reports, his lifeless body was found with gunshot wounds in his car on a national road in South Africa, which r...
God "is our peace" and "prayer leads us to meet him," said the archbishop of Bogotá, Cardinal Luis José Rueda Aparicio. / Credit: Colombian Bishops Conference / ScreenshotACI Prensa Staff, May 2, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).The Colombian Bishops' Conference (CEC by its Spanish acronym) has called on all Catholics to join on May 3, Day of the Holy Cross, in a day of prayer for peace and reconciliation in the country."The call is made directly by the bishops and is based on recognizing the serious humanitarian crisis that multiple territories face amid armed conflict and other types of violence, as well as the complex sociopolitical panorama that the nation is experiencing today, permeated by division and polarization," the CEC announced on its website.Since Pope Francis' visit to Colombia in September 2017 and his meeting with victims of the armed conflict, the Church in that country has established a National Day of Prayer for Reconciliation and Peace to be celebrated every May...