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Pope Meets Cairo’s Grand Imam of Al-Azhar by Deborah Castellano Lubov
Pope Francis met the Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Ahmed al Tayyeb, at the Vatican, marking a first of such an encounter between a Pope and the Imam of Al-Azhar, who many Muslims consider to be the highest authority in Sunni Islam.
According to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office, the meeting between Francis and the Imam of Al-Azhar who heads Egypt’s Al-Azhar Mosque and Al-Azhar University, considered to be the most authoritative theological-academic institution of Sunni Islam, lasted about 30 minutes and their discussions were “very cordial.”
Upon his arrival in the Vatican, the Grand Imam was welcomed, and then accompanied to his audience with the Pope, by the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, and by the Secretary of the same dicastery, Bishop Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot.
The two religious leaders, the statement noted, acknowledged “the great significance of this new meeting in the framework of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam.” They also discussed “the common commitment of the authorities and the faithful of the great religions for peace in the world, the rejection of violence and terrorism, the situation of Christians in the context of conflicts and tensions in the Middle East and their protection.”
Those in the Imam’s delegation included: Dr. Abbas Shouman, Undersecretary of Al-Azhar; Dr. Mahmaoud Hamdi Zakzouk, member of the Council of Senior Scholars of Al-Azhar University and Director of the Center for Dialogue of Al-Azhar; Judge Mohamed Mahmoud Abdel Salam, Advisor to the Great Imam; Dr. Mohie Afifi Afifi Ahmed, secretary-general of the Islamic Research Academy; Ambassador Mahmoud Abdel Gawad, Diplomatic Advisor to the Grand Imam; Tamer Tawfik, Advisor; and Ahmad Alshourbagy, Second Secretary. The delegation was accompanied by Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the Holy See, Hatem Seif Elnasr.
During the meeting, Pope Francis gave the Grand Imam the medallion of the olive tree of peace and a copy of his Encyclical Letter on the environment ‘Laudato si‘.
After meeting with the Pope, the Grand Imam and his delegation met briefly with Cardinal Tauran and Bishop Guixot Ayuso.
There has been speculation this official visit would take place since February after a Vatican delegation visited Al-Azhar university and expressed the Holy See’s willingness to welcome the Grand Imam for a meeting with Pope Francis.
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On the NET:
English website of Al-Azhar University: http://www.azhar.edu.eg/En/u.htm
Pope’s Morning Homily: No Christian Can Exist Without Joy by Deborah Castellano Lubov
No Christian can exist without joy.
According to Vatican Radio, the Holy Father stressed this during his daily morning Mass today at Casa Santa Marta.
Through trusting in God, he said, Christians grow in joy. Because God always remembers His covenant, Francis continued, “the Christian knows that God remembers him, loves him, accompanies him, is waiting for him. And this is joy.”
Can’t Have 2 Masters
Reflecting on the First Letter of St. Peter the Apostle, the Pope highlighted that even if we are plagued by trials, we can never lose the joy of knowing that God “regenerated us in Christ and gave us hope.”
“The Christian ‘identity card,'” the Argentine Pontiff underscored, “is joy, the Gospel’s joy, the joy of having been chosen by Jesus, saved by Jesus, regenerated by Jesus; the joy of that hope that Jesus is waiting for us, the joy that – even with the crosses and sufferings we bear in this life – is expressed in another way, which is peace in the certainty that Jesus accompanies us, is with us.”
Turning to the day’s Gospel story where Jesus encounters a wealthy man, the Pope observed the young man had many possessions, but was miserable since he was “shackled to his belongings” and couldn’t open his heart.
“Jesus told us,” the Pope recalled, “that one cannot serve two masters: either one must serve God or serve riches. Riches are not bad in themselves, but slavery to wealth – this, is wickedness. The poor young man went away sad … ‘He frowned and he went away sorrowful’.
Warning those present against seeking happiness in the things that ultimately sadden us, Francis underscored, “They promise much, but they will not give us anything!”
“When in our parishes, in our communities, in our institutions we find people who say they are Christians and want to be Christian, but are sad, something is wrong there,” he said, stressing that Christians must help the sad find Jesus, take away that sadness, “so that they may rejoice in the Gospel and have this joy which is truly of the Gospel. ”
Pope Francis said we must help these people.
Holy Spirit Gives Joy, Amazement
When faced with God’s Revelation and love, Christians feel ‘joy and amazement,’ the Pontiff stressed. “Only through the strength of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,” Francis explained, do we have this Christian joy and we are saved from worldly attachments.
Pope Francis concluded, praying that the Lord “graces us with amazement in His presence, in the presence of the many spiritual treasures He has given us; and with this amazement, may He give us joy, the joy of our lives – and of having our hearts at peace, even when faced with many difficulties.”
“Remember well: a Christian is a man, and a woman, of joy, joy in the Lord; a man and a woman of wonder,” he said.
Benedict XVI Affirms 3rd Secret of Fatima Was Released in Full by ZENIT Staff
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said he never told anyone that publication of the Third Secret of Fatima in the year 2000 was incomplete, and has confirmed the document was published in its entirety.
This was expressed in a statement released by the Holy See Press Office Saturday in response to several articles on the secret.
“Several articles have appeared recently, including declarations attributed to Professor Ingo Dollinger according to which Cardinal Ratzinger, after the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima (which took place in June 2000), had confided to him that the publication was not complete,” it notes.
“In this regard, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI declares “never to have spoken with Professor Dollinger about Fatima”, clearly affirming that the remarks attributed to Professor Dollinger on the matter “are pure inventions, absolutely untrue”, and he confirms decisively that “the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is complete,” the statement concludes.
In Portugal, between May and October 1917, three children in Portugal saw the apparition of the Blessed Mother six times. According to Sr. Lucia de Jesus Rosa Santos, one of the witnesses, on July 13, 1917, Mary entrusted the children with three secrets, which Sr. Lucia later wrote down and delivered to the Pope. The third secret was not revealed with the others, but, in the Jubilee Year of 2000, St. Pope John Paul II decided to release it.
Benedict XVI Might Celebrate 65th Anniversary Publicly by Salvatore Cernuzio
“He prays, he loves to study and read, he dedicates himself to correspondence, he walks with the Rosary in his hand in the Vatican Gardens, he receives visitors.” This is Benedict XVI’s life in the renovated Mater Ecclesia Vatican convent, where the Pope Emeritus has chosen to reside after his historic renunciation, according to the man closest to him, his private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein. Archbishop Gänswein also serves the current Pontiff as Prefect of the Papal Household,
The Archbishop was “intercepted” by journalists on Friday, in an aside from the presentation at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Roberto Regoli’s book “Beyond the Crisis of the Church” (Lindau Publishers). It is a “fascinating and moving” volume, at times “brilliant” and always “well documented,” which attempts to reconstruct, year after year, step by step, Benedict’s eight years on Peter’s Throne.
From February 19, 2005, and the results of the conclave that everyone expected but him, to February 11, 2013, which changed for ever the papal ministry, until the present of these three years lived in the heart of the Vatican, a few steps from his Successor, but always “hidden from the world.”
However, it is possible that the Pope Emeritus — who we’ve seen publicly on a few official occasions, such as the canonization of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII, and the opening of the Jubilee — will again attend a public event “not too long from now,” given that on June 29 he will celebrate the 65th anniversary of his priesthood. In the pipeline, in fact, is an event to celebrate the occasion: “We’ll see what we are able to organize. It’s an objective occasion that makes one hope to be able to see him and to show that my phrase on the ‘candle’ was stupid,” said the archbishop, in reference to his remarks some time ago to an Italian weekly that compared the Emeritus Pope to a “candle that is being extinguished bit by bit.”
An ambiguous phrase, interpreted immediately as a worsening of the Pope’s health conditions. “I didn’t know that in Italian it could have a negative meaning,” explained the private secretary. “To say that he is like a candle means that the strength of his light is the same.” So, the Pope Emeritus “is well,” considering his 89 years. “He is serene, he is at peace with the Lord, with himself and with the world.” Moreover, said Archbishop Gänswein, there’s an increase in the flow of people that wish to meet him and that he receives, even though in recent times “we have had to slow down the visits because so many letters arrive every day to be read, and too many books, also manuscripts.”
In his intervention during the presentation of the book, Archbishop Gänswein reviewed, in keeping with the structure of the book and following the thread of his personal memories, the salient moments of Ratzinger’s Pontificate. Beginning with the Conclave of 2005, which saw him come out of the Sistine Chapel as Pope, with the name Benedict XVI and not “John Paul III, as perhaps many had hoped.” “Instead, he harked back to Benedict XV – the unfortunate great Pope of peace who was not listened to of the terrible years of World War I – and to Saint Benedict of Norcia, Patriarch of monasticism and Patron of Europe.”
“I could appear as a key witness to testify that, in the preceding years, Cardinal Ratzinger never presumed to rise to the highest office of the Catholic Church. He already dreamt of writing some final books in peace and tranquillity. The election came as a ‘real shock’ and he felt ‘anxiety,’” added Ganswein.
Stepping aside
Another, totally negative shock for the German Pope was the sudden death of Manuela Camagni, one of the Memores Domini who was killed in a tragic accident in 2010. A year that Regoli describes as “black” for Ratzinger with the case of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson and the series of ever more malicious attacks in his relations, in addition to the death of one of the members of the small “Papal Family.”
“Faced with such misfortunes the sensationalism of the media in those years, though having a certain effect, did not strike the Pope’s heart as much as Manuela’s death, torn from our midst so suddenly,” said Gänswein. “Benedict wasn’t an ‘actor Pope,’ and even less so an insensitive ‘automaton Pope’; on the Throne of Peter he was and remained a man, and he has remained such up to today.”
Therefore, he was very shaken when he discovered the betrayal of his butler Paolo Gabriele, which exploded the Vatileaks scandal. “He suffered very much,” confirmed Archbishop Gänswein, however “it is good that I say once and for all with all clarity that in the end Benedict did not renounce because of the poor, misguided butler, or because of the ‘tidbits’ coming from his apartment that in the so-called ‘Vatileaks affair’ circulated in Rome like false coins but were commercialized in the rest of the world as genuine gold ingots.”
“No traitor or ‘crow’ or any journalist was able to push him to that decision,” stressed the Prefect of the Papal Household. “That scandal was too small for [a decision] of that nature, something so much greater, a deeply-pondered step of age-old historical importance, which Benedict XVI took.” For him “it was appropriate” to resign, because “he was aware that increasingly he had less strength for the very weighty office.”
Therefore, Archbishop Gänswein specified, since Francis’ election on March 13, 2013, “there are not two Popes, but de facto a wider ministry – with an active member and a contemplative member.” “As in Peter’s times, today also the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church continues to have only one legitimate Pope. And yet, for three years now, we have been living with two Successors of Peter living among us, who are not in a competitive relation between them, and yet both with an extraordinary presence!”
“Therefore, Benedict XVI has not renounced either his name or the white cassock. So the correct appellative with which to address him still today is ‘Holiness,’” added Gänswein. And it is because of this that he “has not retired to an isolated monastery, but inside the Vatican.” It is as if he had taken “a step aside,” to make room for his Successor and to open a new chapter in the history of the papacy that “with that step has enriched it with the ‘power plant’ of his prayer and his compassion placed in the Vatican Gardens.”
Pope’s Message to World Humanitarian Summit by ZENIT Staff
Here is the message Pope Francis sent to the first World Humanitarian Summit. It was delivered by his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who is leading the Holy See’s top-level delegation at the event.
The summit was convened by the secretary-general of the United Nations and began today in Istanbul. It aims to bring together representatives from governments and the private sector to address humanitarian crises.
The Pope on Sunday asked the faithful to pray for the participants’ resolve to save “the life of every human being, with no one excluded, in particular the innocent and most defenseless.”
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To His Excellency Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General of the United Nations
I wish to greet all those taking part in this first World Humanitarian Summit, the President of Turkey together with the organizers of this meeting, and you, Mr Secretary-General, who have called for this occasion to be a turning point for the lives of millions of people who need protection, care and assistance, and who seek a dignified future.
I hope that your efforts may contribute in a real way to alleviating the sufferings of these millions of people, so that the fruits of the Summit may be demonstrated through a sincere solidarity and a true and profound respect for the rights and dignity of those suffering due to conflicts, violence, persecution and natural disasters. In this context, the victims are those who are most vulnerable, those who live in conditions of misery and exploitation.
We cannot deny that many interests today prevent solutions to conflicts, and that military, economic and geopolitical strategies displace persons and peoples and impose the god of money, the god of power. At the same time, humanitarian efforts are frequently conditioned by commercial and ideological constraints.
For this reason, what is needed today is a renewed commitment to protect each person in their daily life and to protect their dignity and human rights, their security and their comprehensive needs. At the same time, it is necessary to preserve freedom and the social and cultural identity of peoples; without this leading to instances of isolation, it should also favour cooperation, dialogue, and especially peace.
“Leaving no one behind” and “doing one’s very best” demands that we do not give up and that we take responsibility for our decisions and actions regarding the victims themselves. First of all, we must do this in a personal way, and then together, coordinating our strengths and initiatives, with mutual respect for our various skills and areas of expertise, not discriminating but rather welcoming. In other words: there must be no family without a home, no refugee without a welcome, no person without dignity, no wounded person without care, no child without a childhood, no young man or woman without a future, no elderly person without a dignified old age.
May this also be the occasion to recognize the work of those who serve their neighbour and contribute to consoling the sufferings of the victims of war and calamity, of the displaced and refugees, and who care for society, particularly through courageous choices in favour of peace, respect, healing and forgiveness. This is the way in which human lives are saved.
No one loves a concept, no one loves an idea; we love persons. Self-sacrifice, true self-giving, flows from love towards men and women, the children and elderly, peoples and communities… faces, those faces and names which fill our hearts.
Today I offer a challenge to this Summit: let us hear the cry of the victims and those suffering. Let us allow them to teach us a lesson in humanity. Let us change our ways of life, politics, economic choices, behaviours and attitudes of cultural superiority.
Learning from victims and those who suffer, we will be able to build a more humane world.
I assure you my prayers, and I invoke upon all present the divine blessings of wisdom, strength and peace.
From the Vatican, 21 May 2016
FRANCISCUS PP.[Original text: English]
© Copyright – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
US Bishops Release 2015 Report on Child Protection by ZENIT Staff
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection and the National Review Board released its 2015 Annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People on Friday.
Protection and prevention efforts continue being a priority. Over 4.3 million children and 2.4 million adults have been trained to identify the warning signs of abuse and how to report them. Over 99 percent of priests (35,987), deacons (16,251), educators (162,803), and 98 percent of volunteers (1,930,262) and candidates for ordination (6,473), and 97 percent (260,356) of other employees received training.
Over 2.4 million background checks were performed on adults at parishes and schools. These include, background checks performed on 99 percent of priests (35,720), deacons (16,257), 98 percent of volunteers (1,935,310) and other employees (263,690), and 96 percent of educators (158,556).
189 dioceses and eparchies were compliant with the Charter and one diocese was partially compliant specifically with Articles 12 and 13, which require proof that training programs are in place and that background checks are conducted on employees, clergy and volunteers. Ongoing efforts continue toward full participation of the one diocese and five eparchies that did not participate in the last cycle. Next year all dioceses and a majority of the eparchies will be involved in data collection or an on-site audit for the 2016 evaluation.
Between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, a total of 26 allegations against clergy received were from current minors, of those, seven were substantiated. All allegations were reported to local civil authorities.
“When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002, we made a pledge to heal and a promise to protect. These promises remain essential priorities for our Church,” said Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the USCCB. “We remain ever vigilant in the protection of children and the outreach to those most harmed by sexual abuse. The Church cannot become complacent with what has been accomplished. We look for new ways of addressing the issue and showing others a model of protection.”
Out of the 838 people who reported to have suffered past abuse as minors, 46 percent or 386 accepted diocesan outreach and healing. Continued support has been provided to 1,646 victims/survivors. All dioceses and eparchies have offices and personnel whose primary role is to assist victim/survivors, treating them with respect and offering them pastoral care.
The information in the report was gathered between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. The report on the response of the Catholic Church in the United States to clergy sexual abuse includes an annual survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) and an annual audit to numerous dioceses and eparchies.
The full report is available at: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/15-118-CYP-Annual-Report.pdf.
Pope Meets President of Belarus by ZENIT Staff
Pope Francis met President of the Republic of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Saturday in the Vatican.
According to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office, the discussions were cordial and expressed satisfaction for the good state of bilateral relations between Belarus and the Holy See.
“Various themes of mutual interest were considered,” it noted, “with particular reference to the life of the Church in Belarus and the peaceful co-existence between Catholic and Orthodox communities, and with other religious confessions, in the country.”
“Finally, the role played by the city of Minsk, which hosted recent discussions with the aim of seeking solutions for peace in the region, was underlined,” the statement concluded.
After meeting with the Pope, the president met with Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, accompanied by Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher.
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