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(Vatican Radio) June 18th marks the first anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical Laudato Si’, focused on the care of our common home.The document, presented at a high profile press conference in the Vatican, explores the interconnected concerns of caring for human life and protecting the environment, calling for action based on an interior ecological conversion.Named after the words of St Francis in his Canticle of the Creatures, the encyclical asks what kind of world do we want to leave to our children and urges humanity to work together to solve the most pressing problems of inequality, injustice and environmental destruction.One year on, numerous conferences and encounters are taking place to examine the impact of the encyclical and ask how it is changing hearts, minds and practical policies.Among the interreligious organisations that have taken the Pope’s call to heart is the Jerusalem based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Devel...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis wants to see the laity more and more involved in the Church’s mission to evangelize in light of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The Pope made that affirmation in an address Friday to participants of the last Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity ahead of the reform process that will bundle the department together with the Council for the Family and the Academy for Life. As one phase comes to a close, a new horizon opens for the mission of the laity in the Church, Francis told participants at Friday’s audience. In this, the last plenary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Pope began by thanking those who have worked in this institution of the Curia for their commitment. The Council was set up after the Second Vatican Council with the blessings of Pope Paul VI.No to lay people acting on "proxy" of the hierarchyThe Pope recalled the many fruits born over the last 5...
239 Catholic couples were able to celebrate their marriage in style in Indonesia, thanks to collaboration between the Diocese of Atambua and local authorities in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province. The event was held under a huge tent in St Filomena Church in Mena, where Fr Kanis Oki and several priests concelebrated the nuptial Mass organised as part of the Jubilee of Mercy "to reiterate the beauty of marriage”. Practical reasons brought about the mass wedding, most notably a desire to facilitate the issuance of marriage certificates, a notoriously painful process in Indonesia. A few months ago, Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa spoke publicly about the importance of marriage and birth certificates, something that many Indonesians fail to grasp. He noted that 85 per cent of all children in NTT, the country’s most Catholic province, do not have a birth certificate. Some 36 million Indonesian children out of a total of 87 ...
An Indian court jailed 11 Hindus for life on Friday for murdering dozens of Muslims during riots in Gujarat in 2002 that shook India at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state's chief minister.The court sentenced 12 other people to seven years in jail for arson and their role in rioting in which 69 Muslims were killed, while another was handed a 10-year sentence, prosecutors said. The massacre came during a series of religious riots that flared for two months in Gujarat, killing more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. The court called the massacre the "darkest day" but rejected prosecutors' demand to sentence the defendants to death after ruling that the attack was not planned. A Hindu mob scaled the boundary wall of a housing complex in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, in February 2002 before torching the homes in which Muslim families were trapped. Among the victims were children and women who were burned to death.Th...
The Islamic State group is committing genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes against the Yazidi community in Iraq and Syria, a U.N. panel said Thursday, calling on countries to do more to stop it. The Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued its first report on Thursday specifically looking at IS crimes against Yazidis after the extremist group's attack on unarmed Yazidi communities in northwestern Iraq in August 2014. Many Yazidis were taken into Syria, and over 3,200 Yazidi women and children are still captive, the report said. The 41-page report, based on 45 interviews with survivors, religious leaders, activists, medical staffers and others, seeks to put allegations of rape, sexual slavery and other crimes in a wider context of crimes against humanity and genocide by alleging that such practices are part of a IS strategy to wipe out the Yazidis, whom the radicals see as infidels.The U.N. estimates that some 5,000 Yazidi men were killed by IS m...
Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jun 17, 2016 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic faithful shouldn’t believe a misleading newspaper ad that says Sunday Masses are being held in a hotel room in the city of Colombo, the Archbishop of Colombo has said.The ad appeared on the first page of the late City Edition of the Daily Mirror June 9. It was titled “Celebrating Women in Ministry” and said there was a Mass every Sunday in the Cinnamon Grand Hotel.Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo warned about the ad in a letter to his parish priests, saying it “has nothing to do with the Catholic Church” and “is not in any way to be canonically considered equivalent to the Sunday Mass celebrated by the Church.”He emphasized that Mass is “celebrated only by a priest duly ordained to that ministry by a bishop of the Catholic Church.”Cardinal Ranjith cautioned the faithful not to be misled by the ad’s claim that its religious service was equivalent t...
Vatican City, Jun 17, 2016 / 08:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Since 2015, when the refugee crisis reached a fever pitch in Europe, five Syrian families fleeing civil war have found refuge in Italy with the help of the Vatican. As of Thursday, nine more people have been added to that list.“Following the visit of the Holy Father to the Island of Lesbos, in Greece, when he accompanied three families of refugees back to Rome, a second group of nine refugees, including two Christians, arrived in Rome yesterday,” a June 17 communique from the Vatican announced.The refugees, consisting of six adults and three children, arrived to Rome Thursday. They are all Syrian citizens who had been living in the Kara Tepe camp on Lesbos after making the perilous boat ride from Turkey to the small Greek island.According to the Vatican communique, the Vatican Police force, called the “Gendarmeria,” alongside the Interior Ministry of Greece, the Greek Asylum Service, and the Community of...
IMAGE: CNS/Paul HaringBy Paul HaringROME (CNS) -- Forty-nine votive candles burned in front ofthe altar in a Rome church as people gathered to pray for the victims of themassacre June 12 in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub.The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and Santa Susanna parish,the parish serving U.S. Catholics in Rome, planned the evening prayer serviceJune 16. About 100 people attended.Paulist Father Steve Bossi, vice rector of Santa Susanna,spoke about the need to build a culture where everyone is accepted.Peace begins in each person's daily life, he said. "If we are not at peace with thosenear us, how can we be at peace with those far away?"In brief remarks at the service, Ken Hackett, U.S. ambassadorto the Holy See, said there is "no reason any individual needs to own anassault weapon."Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, 29, was identified by police asthe lone gunman responsible for the massacre at the Pulse, a gay nightclub. Police say he used a semi-automaticrifle and a semi-automati...
IMAGE: CNS/ReutersBy Cindy WoodenROME (CNS) -- Because most people today do not understandthat sacramental marriage really is a bond that binds them to each other forlife, many marriages today can be considered invalid, Pope Francis said.Raising a point he has raised before, and one also raised bynow-retired Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis insisted June 16 that the validityof a marriage implies that a couple understands that sacramental marriage is abond that truly binds them to another for their entire lives."We are living in a culture of the provisional,"he told participants in the Diocese of Rome's annual pastoral conference.Answering questions after giving a prepared talk, Pope Francistold the story of a bishop who said a university graduate came to him saying hewanted to be a priest, but only for 10 years.The idea of commitments being temporary "occurseverywhere, even in priestly and religious life. The provisional. And for thisreason a large majority of sacramental marriages ...
DETMOLD, Germany (AP) -- A 94-year-old former SS sergeant was found guilty Friday of 170,000 counts of accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison for serving as an Auschwitz guard, in a verdict that survivors from the Nazi death camp hailed as a long overdue victory....
