(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has told a Catholic association of farmers not to sacrifice the rhythms of agricultural life for monetary gains.His address to the International Catholic Rural Association (ICRA) came on Saturday in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall.Listen to Devin Watkins’ report: The International Catholic Rural Association promotes the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of agriculture, as well as international food security.In his remarks, Pope Francis praised the association’s “concern for rural life, grounded in the vision of the Church’s social doctrine”.He said, “It is an eloquent expression of that imperative to ‘till and keep the garden of the world’ (Laudato Si’, 67) to which we have been called, if we wish to carry on God’s creative activity and to protect our common home.”Despite the centrality of agriculture to human life, the Holy Father said it is paradoxical that &...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has told a Catholic association of farmers not to sacrifice the rhythms of agricultural life for monetary gains.
His address to the International Catholic Rural Association (ICRA) came on Saturday in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall.
Listen to Devin Watkins’ report:
The International Catholic Rural Association promotes the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of agriculture, as well as international food security.
In his remarks, Pope Francis praised the association’s “concern for rural life, grounded in the vision of the Church’s social doctrine”.
He said, “It is an eloquent expression of that imperative to ‘till and keep the garden of the world’ (Laudato Si’, 67) to which we have been called, if we wish to carry on God’s creative activity and to protect our common home.”
Despite the centrality of agriculture to human life, the Holy Father said it is paradoxical that “agriculture is no longer considered a primary sector of the economy, yet it clearly continues to be important for policies of development and for addressing disparities in food security and issues in the life of rural communities”.
He also warned against the dangers of an exclusively economic focus in agriculture.
The Pope said farmers cannot focus on “making money above all else, even at the expense of sacrificing the rhythms of agricultural life, with its times of work and leisure, its weekly rest and its concern for the family”.
Pope Francis said ICRA shows that: "It is possible to combine being Christians with acting as Christians in the concrete circumstances of agricultural life, where the importance of the human person, the family and community, and a sense of solidarity represent essential values, even in situations of significant underdevelopment and poverty.”
He said, “May we never find ourselves “silent witnesses to terrible injustices”, as can happen when “we think that we can obtain significant benefits by making the rest of humanity, present and future, pay the extremely high costs of environmental deterioration” (Laudato Si’, 36).”
In conclusion, Pope Francis said the members of ICRA “are called to propose a sober lifestyle and a culture of agricultural work that has its foundations as well as its goals in the centrality of the person, in openness to others and in gratuitousness.”
Outer details of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Chicago. / Credit: Eric Allix RogersCNA Staff, May 15, 2024 / 12:12 pm (CNA).Catholics and city preservationists in Chicago are scrambling to try to preserve a historic parish on the city's North Side, one that has survived a century of the city's development including being fully moved to a new location after it was first built. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish will hold its final Mass on Sunday, May 19, before the parish merges with nearby St. Mary of the Lake. The consolidation is part of the Archdiocese of Chicago's ongoing "Renew My Church" initiative that has closed and merged dozens of parishes in order to address shrinking budgets and priest shortages. The archdiocese announced the Lourdes parish merger in 2021. Katerina Garcia, the president of the Our Lady of Lourdes Church Preservation Society, told "EWTN News Nightly" anchor Tracy Sabol this week that parishioners at the parish dispute ...
Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan, SJ, archbishop of Hong Kong, China. / Credit: Daniel IbáñezRome Newsroom, May 15, 2024 / 14:17 pm (CNA).Cardinal Stephen Chow recently visited three Catholic dioceses in mainland China, one year after the bishop of Hong Kong's first historic trip to Beijing.Chow led a 10-person delegation of Catholics from Hong Kong to the southern Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Shantou, and Shenzhen in April in his second official visit to China since becoming bishop of Hong Kong."We brought our people to have an encounter … where we share common concerns, for example, youth ministry, catechism, marriage and family," Chow said in a video interview published May 5.Here is a look at some of the Catholic communities Chow visited:St. Joseph's Cathedral in ShantouSt. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou, China. Credit: Kc1446 at Chinese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsHundreds of Chinese Catholics attended a Mass in St. Joseph's Cathedral in Shantou concelebrated...
Stained-glass window at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis. / Credit: Ella Manthey/ShutterstockSt. Louis, Mo., May 15, 2024 / 14:47 pm (CNA).Two St. Louis parishes that appealed to the Vatican after Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski ordered them to merge last year have had their appeals upheld by the Holy See, reversing the archbishop's prior decision.As part of the archdiocese's major pastoral planning initiative dubbed "All Things New," Rozanski announced a year ago that the number of parishes would be reduced by nearly 50 by way of parish mergers and closures.Under canon law, a diocesan bishop has the authority to alter parishes, but only for a just reason specific to each parish. Concern for souls must be the principal motivation for modifying a parish.Amid the All Things New process, a number of parishes announced their intention to send appeals to the Vatican, putting aspects of the mergers planned for the parishes on hold until the Dicastery for the Clergy's rulings. Af...