Category Archives: Vatican

Joy, gratitude over news of Acutis and Frassati canonization dates

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By Gina Christian
PHILADELPHIA (OSV News) – News that canonization dates have been set for Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, who have become popular patrons for teens and young adults, is being met with joy and gratitude by a number of Catholics in the U.S.

Pope Francis announced Nov. 20 that he will elevate Acutis and Frassati, both currently titled “blessed,” to sainthood in 2025, when the universal Catholic Church will mark a jubilee year. Acutis will be canonized April 27, during the April 25-27 Jubilee for Adolescents in Rome. Frassati’s canonization will follow amid the July 28-Aug. 3 Jubilee of Young People in Rome.

“This news ushers in great celebration for the Universal Church and especially for young Catholics,” said Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia in a Nov. 20 statement. “Both of these saintly young men reflect the call for today’s youth and young adults to live out their Catholic faith with courage, compassion, and divine love.”

Pope Francis recognized May 23, 2024, the second miracle needed for the canonization of Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15. He is pictured in an undated photo. (CNS photo/courtesy Sainthood Cause of Carlo Acutis)

“What a wonderful gift to the church militant both of these new saints will be,” Christine Wohar, president of FrassatiUSA – a Nashville-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting Frassati’s canonization, in collaboration with the Associazione Pier Giorgio Frassati in Rome – told OSV News in a Nov. 20 email.
Wohar, whose organization is planning a pilgrimage to the canonization, said that the canonizations are timely.

“Our culture so desperately needs Catholic models of courage, devotion to the Eucharist and Our Lady, true manhood and fidelity to the church,” she said.

Father Francesco Maria D’Amico, pastor of St. William Parish in Philadelphia who served as interpreter and guide for Acutis’ mother, Antonia, during her U.S. speaking tour in 2023, also sees these saints as particularly relevant.

“God is the Lord of history, and I think that nowadays, he sees youth being attacked by different ideologies, by secularization, by the false promises of technology,” he said. “So I think that God, by raising these two youth and young adults as saints, is showing fatherly concern … because they (youth and young adults) are the future of the world.”

Born 90 years apart, Frassati and Acutis both lived brief but faith-filled lives that saw them devoted to Christ, particularly in the Eucharist, and to those around them.

Dubbed the “Man of the Eight Beatitudes” by St. John Paul II, Frassati – born in Turin in 1901 to an influential family – began receiving daily Communion at a young age, while serving the poor through the St. Vincent de Paul Society and evangelizing his friends.

A lay Dominican, Frassati also participated in demonstrations to defend his faith against the Communist and Fascist parties in Italy. His passion for outdoor activities such as mountaineering has made him a patron of athletes. Frassati died in 1925 at age 24, having contracted polio, which doctors speculated he may have contracted from serving the sick. Pope St. John Paul II beatified Frassati in 1990.

Almost a century later, Acutis in many ways mirrored his predecessor’s qualities. The sunny-faced teen – who was born in London in 1991 and grew up in Milan, Italy – displayed an early attraction to the spiritual life, reciting the rosary and attending Mass daily, serving as a catechist, volunteering at a church soup kitchen and tutoring children with their homework. At the same time, Acutis was known for his enthusiasm for typical teenage interests, such as video games, pets, soccer and music.

Acutis died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15, having lived a brief life of extraordinary holiness that was marked by a profound devotion to Christ and the Eucharist. His desire to foster awareness of the Blessed Sacrament, along with his formidable computer skills, led him to create a database of Eucharistic miracles throughout the world. Pope Francis beatified him in 2020.

Italian Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was a struggling student who excelled in mountain climbing. He had complete faith in God and persevered through college, dedicating himself to helping the poor and supporting church social teaching. He died at age 24 and was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1990. Pope Francis said he will canonize him in 2025. He is pictured in an undated photo. (CNS file photo)

Michael Norton, president of the Malvern Retreat Center in Malvern, Pennsylvania – home to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Blessed Carlo Acutis Shrine and Center for Eucharistic Encounter – told OSV News he has seen firsthand how Acutis offers a relatable vision for holiness to kids and young adults.

“Students are absolutely fascinated and drawn to Carlo,” Norton told OSV News Nov. 20. “It’s like, ‘Wow, he looks like me. I’m just like him. … He lived in our lifetime.’ He talks their language – he’s a computer programmer, he played soccer. And so the kids are really drawn to him.”

Similarly, Frassati has had a profound effect on students at a high school in Texas named in his honor.

“For us, this is yet another special grace upon our community, which has really been under the intercession of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati,” said Tim Lienhard, director of enrollment, marketing and communications at Frassati Catholic High School in Spring, Texas.

Lienhard told OSV News Nov. 20 that the school has “really felt his spirit on our community, and you see that through our growth. We’ve grown from 46 students in our beginning year, 2013, to 350 today, and we continue to grow.”

The school is planning to send some 20 students to Italy during spring break in March 2025 for a pilgrimage that will trace some key places in Frassati’s life, Lienhard said.

Actor Jeromy Darling, who played Frassati in a 2021 play of the same name at Open Window Theatre in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told OSV News that encountering the saint-to-be through pre-production research had a profound effect on him.

“It changed my life completely,” said Darling, who as a convert to Catholicism said Frassati’s bold witness to the faith was personally inspiring, as the actor navigated rejection experienced for his decision to become Catholic.

“He’s an enormous, enormous part of my life,” Darling said. “He’s one of my best friends. I talk to him every day.”

Many Catholics have been inspired by an Italian phrase Frassati wrote on a well-known photo of him mountaineering: “Verso L’Alto,” which means “to the heights.”

“As St. Frassati reaches his ultimate summit, we pray he will guide each of us on our journey to the top,” said Wohar. “We also share in the joy of all those with a devotion to Blessed Carlo Acutis who likewise offers great inspiration to today’s youth.”

(Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @GinaJesseReina)

Briefs

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For the image on the 2024 religious Christmas stamp, the U.S. Postal Service has selected this 17th-century “Madonna and Child” painting that has been in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 1938. (OSV News photo/courtesy U.S. Postal Service)

NATION
INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) – Mary with the Christ Child has long been an iconic Christmas image for cultures and peoples around the world. Starting more than 60 years ago, the U.S. Postal Service began annually issuing Christmas stamps featuring various classic artistic portrayals of the image. This year, the USPS selected as the image for this stamp a painting that has been in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields in Indianapolis since 1938. The “Madonna and Child” was created in the workshop of the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato in the 17th century. Belinda Tate, the Melvin and Bren Simon director of the museum, said she and the staff were “deeply honored” by having one of its paintings chosen for a Christmas stamp this year. “This selection brings a beloved piece from our collection to a broad audience, allowing us to celebrate its beauty, historical significance and the spirit of the season,” Tate added. A broad audience indeed. The USPS has produced 210 million stamps featuring this painting.

FAIRFAX, Va. (OSV News) – Pro-life organizers aim to inspire pro-life youth attending the national March for Life in Washington Jan. 24 with the merger of two pre-march youth events, announced Nov. 14. The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, and host of Life is VERY Good since 2009, and the Knights of Columbus and the Sisters of Life, co-hosts of Life Fest since 2022, are joining forces to create one big pro-life rally called Life Fest. The two-day pro-life event will be held Jan. 23-24 at EagleBank Arena on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, 20 miles southwest of the National Mall and the March for Life. Life Fest 2025 will begin with a night of praise, held the evening before the March for Life with speakers, live music and Eucharistic adoration. The following day, a morning rally and Mass will be held hours before the March for Life. Attendees will have the chance to go to confession and to venerate the relics of Pope St. John Paul II, Blessed Carlo Acutis, the recently beatified Ulma family and Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus. Organizers hope to attract some 8,400 participants to the event each day.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – There are no second-class Christians, Pope Francis said. The laity, including women, and the clergy all have special gifts to edify the church in unity and holiness. “The laity are not in last place. No. The laity are not a kind of external collaborator or the clergy’s ‘auxiliary troops.’ No! They have their own charisms and gifts with which to contribute to the mission of the church,” the pope said Nov. 20 at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square. Continuing a series of talks on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, Pope Francis looked at how the Holy Spirit builds up the Body of Christ through the outpouring of charismatic gifts. The Holy Spirit “distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts, He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the church,” he said, quoting from the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “Lumen Gentium.” A charism is “the gift given for the common good, to be useful for everyone. It is not, in other words, destined principally and ordinarily for the sanctification of the person. No. It is intended, however, for the service of the community,” Pope Francis said. “They are ordinary gifts. Each one of us has his or her own charism that assumes extraordinary value if inspired by the Holy Spirit and embodied with love in situations of life,” he said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis, who will celebrate his 88th birthday in December, has approved simplified liturgical rites for the death of a pontiff. His body will rest in a zinc-lined wooden casket, according to the new rites. Recent popes had been buried inside a cypress wood coffin surrounded by another coffin made of lead, which was then covered by a third wooden coffin. Vatican News carried a story Nov. 20 about the second edition of the “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis” (“Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff”); the book updates the rites originally approved by St. John Paul in 1998, technically published in 2000, but released only when St. John Paul died in 2005. Modified versions of the rites were used after Pope Benedict XVI died Dec. 31, 2022. Archbishop Diego Ravelli, master of papal liturgical ceremonies, told Vatican News the revised edition was needed, “first of all because Pope Francis asked, as he himself stated on several occasions, to simplify and adapt some of the rites so that the celebration of the bishop of Rome’s funeral would better express the church’s faith in the risen Christ.”

WORLD
SAN SALVADOR (OSV News) – El Salvador has ordered a former president to stand trial for the 1989 murders of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter – a notorious crime from the Central American country’s civil war, which has languished in the realm of impunity. A judge in San Salvador issued a Nov. 18 decision ordering former president Alfredo Cristiani, a former congressman and nine others to stand trial as the intellectual authors of the attack on the Jesuits. Cristiani, who was president between 1989 and 1994, was charged with murder, conspiracy and terrorism in 2022. His whereabouts remain unknown, according to media reports. The priests were killed by soldiers in their residence on the campus of the Jesuit-run Central American University – an institution they accused of being infiltrated by guerrillas. The university has long rejected that accusation and demanded justice for the eight victims. Catholics in El Salvador expressed mixed feelings on the decision to bring Cristiani to trial. The judge’s decision came just two days after the 35th anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs’ murders, marked with a Nov. 16 memorial Mass. The slain priests’ memory continues to inspire Catholics in El Salvador and beyond. “The memory of the martyrs is very much alive,” said Jesuit Father Jeremy Zipple, who traveled with a group from Belize for the memorial.

PARIS (OSV News) – Miraculously missed by burning beams falling from the roof on April 15, 2019, and waiting for five years to make it back to Notre Dame Cathedral, the 14th-century statue of the Virgin of Paris returned home Nov. 15, accompanied by thousands of Parisians praying, singing and lighting candles as they walked their Virgin to Paris’ most iconic church, restored after the fire. Since the fire, the statue, also referred to as Virgin and Child, or the Virgin of the Pillar, has been housed near the Louvre in the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, from where the procession started at 6 p.m. local time. Transporting the real statue of the Virgin on foot was out of the question for security reasons. Instead, everyone was able to witness her departure by truck, before setting off, with candles and singing, behind a replica, illuminated and decorated with white flowers. The procession followed along the banks of the Seine River toward the Île de la Cité, one of two Parisian islands and home to Notre Dame Cathedral. Arriving in front of the cathedral at around 7 p.m., the pilgrims were greeted by the singing of the Maîtrise Notre Dame, the cathedral’s choir. The archbishop blessed the original statue, with the crate carrying it opened so that it could be seen. The truck then entered the cathedral’s construction site so the original statue could be installed inside the cathedral.

Hegseth controversy compounds Vatican institution’s concerns over religious symbols’ misuse

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By Gina Christian and Kate Scanlon
(OSV News) – Amid controversy over religious-themed tattoos sported by President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a U.S. office of a Vatican lay institution for the church in the Holy Land has expressed concern regarding the misuse of its historic insignia beyond strictly religious purposes.

The Jerusalem Cross and the phrase “Deus (lo) vult” (Latin for “God wills”), the elements of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, are symbols for an organization that “is set up to be a … visible presence of Christ and the people of Christ in the Holy Land,” and “of peace … of loving thy neighbor as thyself,” Deacon John Heyer, executive director of the order’s Eastern Lieutenancy, told OSV News Nov. 21.

The Equestian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem has responded to public speculation about tattoos with the order’s symbols worn by Pete Hegseth, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, amid accusations that the symbols may represent Christian nationalism. (OSV News photo/courtesy Eastern Lieutenancy)

The order – a lay institution under the protection of the Holy See with an estimated 30,000 members in close to 40 countries – aids the work of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, especially through efforts connected to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which encompasses Cyprus and Jordan as well.

But the Jerusalem Cross (a square cross inset with four smaller crosses) and particularly the Latin phrase that comprise the order’s insignia have drawn intense media scrutiny, as Hegseth – an evangelical Christian – has them tattooed on his chest and arm respectively.

Hegseth, a 44-year-old combat veteran and former Fox News host, is among Trumps’ more controversial nominees, as he has also been accused of sexual assault stemming from a 2017 incident he claimed was consensual, although he later paid the unnamed woman as part of a 2020 nondisclosure agreement.

The “Deus vult” tattoo prompted Hegseth’s fellow National Guardsman Sgt. DeRicko Gaither to flag Hegseth as a possible “insider threat” during President Joe Biden’s inauguration. In a 2021 email to Maj. Gen. William Walker ahead of the event – days after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol – Gaither described the image as “quite disturbing,” since the phrase “is associated with Supremacist groups,” both white and Christian. Army policy bars members from having tattoos deemed extremist, indecent, sexist or racist.
Several experts have cited the use of “Deus vult” by extremist groups. The phrase – attributed to Pope Urban II ahead of the First Crusade in 1095, which sought to regain Christian control of the Holy Land from Muslim rule – has become an online hashtag, and has also appeared in anti-Muslim graffiti, with two Arkansas mosques defaced in 2016 with the text.

OSV News reached out to Hegseth through the press office of the Trump-Vance transition team but did not immediately receive a response.

On Nov. 20, Deacon Heyer’s New York-based office issued a press release, noting the controversy over Hegseth’s tattoos and stressing the order’s political neutrality. While acknowledging that reports have asserted its symbols “have been embraced by what have been described as Christian and white nationalists,” it did not accuse the defense secretary nominee of espousing those views.

“The Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem is a non-partisan Catholic organization under the direct protection of the Holy See and as such does not express partisan political opinions on the qualifications or associations of the cabinet nominee, who is not a member of the order,” said the release.

Deacon Heyer’s office also clarified in its statement that “in today’s context, ‘Deus vult’ or ‘Deus lo vult’ (God wills) – once used to rally crusader knights in the Middle Ages to reclaim the Christian places in the Holy Land – reminds believers God alone has dominion over all, and commands us to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’”

The Jerusalem Cross itself “has been part of Christian iconography for more than a millennium and has been an inspiration to Christian pilgrims who no longer see it as a banner for crusades and war but of the passion and death of Jesus and his empty tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” said the release, adding, “For centuries, Christian pilgrims from around the world have had the Jerusalem Cross inked on their skin as an indelible reminder of their pilgrimage to the Holy City and of their faith in Christ.”

The symbolically rich image, with five crosses corresponding to the five wounds of Christ, “is particularly important as it reminds Christians of Jesus’ sacrifice to die for the salvation of the entire world, so that we ‘may have life and have it abundantly,’” said the order in its release, quoting John 10:10.
Deacon Heyer told OSV News he has seen “there are groups that have taken over this symbol … or rather are using the symbol in a way that is evocative of what they consider a Christian crusade to be.”

Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth speaks with the media as he departs a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington Nov. 21, 2024. The Equestian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem has responded to public speculation about tattoos with the order’s symbols worn by Hegseth, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, amid accusations that the symbols may represent Christian nationalism. (OSV News photo/Nathan Howard, Reuters)

“You often have to look at what is the motivation,” he added. “Are we using the church, are we using the faith to justify our political aspirations, or is our faith informing our decisions? Two very different things.”

The Jerusalem Cross is also the emblem of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and in the press release, Deacon Heyer’s office highlighted the widespread use throughout Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
The cross “is really meant to be not a symbol of war at all, but really a symbol of the sacrifice of Christ as well as his Gospel message of love,” Deacon Heyer told OSV News. “And so anything that goes beyond that is in strict contradiction … to the Gospel and to what that symbol represents.”

As of Nov. 21, it was not yet clear whether Hegseth would earn the requisite number of votes to be confirmed to the position by the U.S. Senate should he undergo a confirmation hearing in January. Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the new Senate as of January, meaning each of Trump’s nominees could only afford to lose three Republican votes – with Vice President-elect JD Vance’s tiebreaking vote – without earning any Democratic support.

Several Pentagon officials have also questioned whether Hegseth’s resume shows enough experience for the role.

(Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @GinaJesseReina. Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News based in Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.)

Briefs

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NATION
WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that advocates for the abolition of capital punishment in line with Catholic teaching, issued a statement Nov. 6 urging President Joe Biden to take action on the practice during the remainder of his presidency while 40 lives on death row “hang in the balance.” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, CMN’s executive director, noted in a statement that Biden became the first U.S. president in 2020 to have campaigned on an openly anti-death penalty platform. After Biden was elected, his administration declared a moratorium on federal executions, but some activists say he should have gone further to end the practice. Vaillancourt Murphy argued the nation’s second Catholic president should follow through with concrete action in the post-election lame-duck period before President-elect Donald Trump, who has sought to expand the uses of capital punishment, returns to the White House. “As faithful anti-death penalty advocates, we know lives hang in the balance,” Vaillancourt Murphy said. She said CMN would “redouble its efforts to urge President Biden to commute the sentences of all 40 men currently on federal death row before he leaves office in January.” The group invited Catholics to sign a petition, hosted at catholicsmobilizing.org, calling on Biden to do so.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ $880 million abuse claims settlement, announced Oct. 16, brings the total payouts of U.S. Catholic dioceses for abuse claims since 2004 to more than $5 billion – and possibly more than $6 billion – OSV News has found. An aggregated total from two decades of reports issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shows the nation’s dioceses and eparchies paid some $4.384 billion to settle claims between 2004 and 2023. Data for fiscal year 2024 is still pending; however, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ $880 million settlement and a $323 million settlement announced Sept. 26 by the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, account for $1.2 billion within the span of less than a month. Those two settlements, plus the USCCB total for 2004-2023, add up to $5.59 billion. The USCCB 2004-2023 total does not appear to include a $660 million settlement announced in 2007 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles which, along with the Oct. 16 settlement, brings that archdiocese’s total to at least $1.54 billion in abuse-related costs over the past two decades. An archdiocesan official told OSV News the archdiocese was looking into how that settlement data was reported. The overall national total of diocesan settlement payouts for the past two decades could exceed $6.24 billion, if the USCCB data does not already include the 2007 Archdiocese of Los Angeles payout. Data from the USCCB’s reports does not include any settlements that dioceses reached with victims prior to 2004.

The Christmas tree is lighted in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Dec. 9, 2023. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A local Italian group launched an online petition urging Pope Francis, the Vatican and others to stop the “fir tree-icide” of cutting down a 200-year-old red pine to decorate St. Peter’s Square for Christmas. The Bears and Others Association, a land and wildlife conservancy group located in the northern Italian province of Trento, launched the petition on change.org Oct. 13. It had gathered more than 49,800 signatories by midday Nov. 15. Citing the pope’s teachings on caring for creation, the group said, “It is necessary to give clear and concise signals” to change people’s attitudes toward respecting nature, especially given the rapidly evolving climate change. The Christmas tree “is a pagan tradition and has nothing to do with the birth of Christ,” the petition said. Renato Girardi, mayor of Ledro, told the Italian state television network, RAI, that the donated tree comes from a certified sustainable working forest that follows strict forest management practices, which include thinning out towering, older trees to open up the canopy and facilitate the growth of multiple younger trees below. Renato Girardi, mayor of Ledro, said the tree was actually 60 years old, according to Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, Nov. 19.


WORLD
MEXICO CITY (OSV News) – The Mexican bishops’ conference expressed deep concern over an initiative in the Mexico City assembly “which seeks to completely eliminate legal protection for life in gestation” and could lead to the further removal of limits on abortion across the country. “This initiative, which seeks the total decriminalization of abortion in Mexico City, and which will probably be extended to other states in the Republic, would not only eliminate the current limit of twelve weeks of gestation, but would also open the door to the termination of pregnancy at any time,” the bishops’ said in a Nov. 6 statement signed by the conference president, Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera López of Monterrey, and its general secretary, Bishop Ramón Castro Castro of Cuernavaca. “As pastors, we cannot remain silent in the face of a measure that, under the pretext of defending rights, in reality ignores the most fundamental human right: ‘the right to life from conception to natural death,’ and abandons women to decisions that can dramatically affect their lives.” A pair of commissions in the Mexico City assembly voted Nov. 4 to eliminate abortion from the criminal code, along with any limits on how late an abortion could occur during pregnancy. Punishments of three to six months in prison or 100 to 300 days of community service for women who abort were also scrapped.

VIENNA (OSV News) – With new reports of human rights organizations in Europe, it is clear that anti-Christian discrimination is a hot-button issue in the old continent, and on the rise. The Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe revealed widespread intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe in its Nov. 15 report, published in cooperation with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. OIDAC Europe identified 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes which were documented by police and civil society in 35 European countries in 2023, including 232 personal attacks on Christians, such as harassment, threats and physical violence. These figures include data requested from governments, which found 1,230 anti-Christian hate crimes recorded by 10 European governments in 2023, up from 1,029 recorded by governments in 2022. While only 10 European governments submitted data on anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023, civil society reported incidents from 26 European countries. The report was published ahead of Nov. 16 observance of International Day for Tolerance, which was established in 1996 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Pope says he’ll canonize Acutis, Frassati, host meeting on child’s rights

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By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis announced that he will canonize Blesseds Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati next year and that the Vatican will host a world meeting on the rights of the child Feb. 3.
The pope will canonize Blessed Acutis April 27, during the Jubilee for Adolescents in Rome April 25-27 and Blessed Frassati during the Jubilee of Young People in Rome July 28-Aug. 3.

The pope made the announcement during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 20, which is World Children’s Day.

The annual celebration marks the date when the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and when the assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

Pope Francis recognized May 23, 2024, the second miracle needed for the canonization of Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15. He is pictured in an undated photo. (CNS photo/courtesy Sainthood Cause of Carlo Acutis) Editors: best quality available.

“On the occasion of the International Day of the Rights of the Child and Adolescents that is celebrated today,” the pope said he wanted to announce holding a world meeting at the Vatican.

The World Leaders’ Summit on Children’s Rights will be dedicated to the theme of “Let’s love them and protect them,” and it will include experts and celebrities from different countries, the pope said.

“It will be an occasion to pinpoint new paths directed at better assisting and protecting children still without rights who live in precarious conditions. They are exploited and abused and suffer the dramatic consequences of wars,” he said.

A small group of children involved in preparing for the Feb. 3 meeting joined the pope for a photograph after the announcement along with Franciscan Father Enzo Fortunato, coordinator of the church’s first World Children’s Day, which was held in Rome May 25.

Pope Francis also established a new papal committee for World Children’s Day and named Father Fortunato its president.

The new committee, he said, will ensure that “World Children’s Day does not remain an isolated event” and that “the pastoral care for children increasingly becomes a more qualified priority in evangelical and pedagogical terms,” he said in the decree, also known as a chirograph, published by the Vatican Nov. 20.
The aim of the world day, he said, is to make a concrete contribution toward carrying out “the church’s commitment to children” by giving voice to children’s rights and making sure the church’s pastoral activities have the same kind of care and attention toward children Jesus had.

Other goals include helping the Christian community become more of “an educating community capable first of all of being evangelized by the voice of the little ones” and helping the church become more “like children” and let go of “signs of power” in order to become “a welcoming and livable home for all, starting with children,” the decree said.

Pope Francis said he wants the day to be celebrated at the universal, regional, national and local levels and, therefore, the committee will help promote and organize those celebrations with the universal event held “possibly every two years.”

“I entrust the preparation of World Children’s Day to the regional and national bishops’ conferences that will institute local organizing committees,” he said.

Synod calls for quick steps to involve more people in church life

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By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Parishes and dioceses must move quickly to give life to the consultative bodies and broad participation in mission and ministry already foreseen by church law if the Catholic Church is to have any hope of becoming a more “synodal” church, members of the Synod of Bishops said.

“Without concrete changes in the short term, the vision of a synodal church will not be credible and this will alienate those members of the People of God who have drawn strength and hope from the synodal journey,” the members said in the final document they approved Oct. 26.

Pope Francis convoked the synod in 2021 and called on parishes, dioceses and bishops’ conferences to hold listening sessions before the first synod assembly in Rome in 2023. The current assembly, including most of the same members, began with a Mass at the Vatican Oct. 2.

Members voted on each of the 155 paragraphs of the document, which made suggestions and requests to Pope Francis that included long-term projects, such as continuing discernment about the possibility of women deacons, the need to reform seminary training and the hope that more lay people would be involved in the selection of bishops.

Pope Francis speaks to members of the Synod of Bishops on synodality after they approved their final document Oct. 26, 2024, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

But they also included actions that could and should be implemented immediately, including hiring more women and laymen to teach in seminaries or having bishops make pastoral councils mandatory for every parish and pastors ensuring those bodies are truly representative of the parish members and that he listens to their advice.

Synod officials said all the paragraphs were approved by the necessary two-thirds of synod members present and voting; 355 members were present and voting, so passage required 237 votes. A paragraph devoted to increasing women’s profile in the church received, by far, the most negative votes of any paragraph with 97 members voting no and 258 voting yes. The paragraph, which required 66% of the votes, passed with 72%.

“In simple and concise terms,” members said, “synodality is a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the church to be more participatory and missionary, so that it can walk with every man and woman, radiating the light of Christ.”

In a synodal church, the document said, members have different roles, but they work together for the good of all members and for the mission of the church.

Like the synthesis report from the first assembly of the synod in 2023, the final document did not use the term “LGBTQ” or even “homosexuality” and spoke only briefly about the need to reach out to people who “experience the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital situation, identity or sexuality.”

The document repeatedly referred to the “equal dignity” of men and women by virtue of their baptism and insisted the Catholic Church needed to do more to recognize women’s contributions to the life and mission of the church and their potential to offer more.

“Women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and roles in all the various areas of the church’s life,” it said. “This is to the detriment of serving the Church’s shared mission.”

Members of the synod called for the “full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women,” and said, “there is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church. What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”

“Additionally, the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open,” they said. “This discernment needs to continue.”

The question of women deacons was among several questions Pope Francis assigned to study groups last spring. Synod members asked the General Secretariat of the Synod “to continue to watch over the synodal quality of the working method of the study groups,” which are supposed to report to the pope in June.

The synod process, members said, was a “call to joy and renewal of the church in following the Lord, in committing to service of His mission and in searching for ways to be faithful.”

But the document repeatedly acknowledged the crime and sin of clerical sexual abuse and abuse of power, and insisted that a commitment to synodality, particularly to learning to listen and to necessary forms of transparency and accountability, were essential to preventing abuse.

Synodality, members said, “will also help to overcome clericalism, understood as use of power to one’s own advantage and the distortion of the authority of the church which is at the service of the People of God. This expresses itself above all in forms of abuse, be they sexual or economic, the abuse of conscience and of power, by ministers of the church.”

Lay men and women have many talents that can and should assist bishops and parish priests in the smooth functioning of their dioceses or parishes, synod members said. Tapping into those talents can help bishops and priests, who often feel overworked.

Where church law requires the bishops to consult their priests’ or pastoral council or pastors to consult the parish council, the document said, they “may not act as if the consultation had not taken place.”
“As in any community that lives according to justice,” it said, “the exercise of authority does not consist in an arbitrary imposition of will.”

Synod members also said listening, consulting, praying and discerning before making a decision is not the end of the process. “It must be accompanied and followed by practices of accountability and evaluation in a spirit of transparency inspired by evangelical criteria.”

Ensuring accountability and regularly evaluating all those who minister in the church’s name “is not a bureaucratic task for its own sake. It is rather a communication effort that proves to be a powerful educational tool for bringing about a change in culture,” synod members said.

One issue that prompted debate during the synod involved the authority of national bishops’ conference, particularly when it came to doctrinal matters.

The synod members, in the final document, called for a study of the theological and juridical status of bishops’ conferences and for a clear definition of “precisely the domain of the doctrinal and disciplinary competence” of the conferences.

(Editor’s note: At press time on Nov. 1, 2024, the final document of the XVI Assembly of the Synod of Bishops was only made available in the original Italian. Visit https://www.synod.va/en.html in the coming days for additional language translations.)

Sacred Heart encyclical hailed as a ‘simple and powerful cure’ to rekindle love

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By Gina Christian
(OSV News) – Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus is being hailed as “a simple and powerful cure” for a fractured world, said the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference – and that sentiment was echoed by other experts on devotion to the Sacred Heart.

“Dilexit Nos” was released Oct. 24, following Pope Francis’ announcement in June, a month traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart, that he planned to issue a document about the devotion to “illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is depicted in a stained-glass window at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in the Forest Hills section of the Queens borough of New York. (OSV News photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

“The ills of modern society can read like a litany of uncurable diseases: consumerism, secularism, partisanism,” said Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, in an Oct. 24 statement. “In his latest encyclical … the Holy Father teaches us that devotion to the heart of Jesus can open our own hearts to renewed ways we can love and be loved.”

Subtitled “On the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ,” the 28,000-word text – available on the Vatican’s website in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish – draws on Scripture, church teaching and the writings of various saints regarding the devotion, which has a centuries-long history.
The encyclical adds to the numerous papal documents on the Sacred Heart since 1899, and is intended to complement Pope Francis’ previous two encyclicals on social teaching, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home” and “Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship.”

“The present document can help us see that the teaching of the social encyclicals … is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis wrote. “For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”

“We need this timely counsel,” Archbishop Broglio said in his statement.

“In an age where we are at each other’s throats – whether it’s simply disagreeing with positions or even going to war – appealing to the heart of not only of people, but more importantly of Christ, refocuses us on what really matters to being human,” Father Thomas Dailey, a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and author of “Behold This Heart: St. Francis de Sales and Devotion to the Sacred Heart,” told OSV News.

Timothy O’Donnell, president emeritus of Christendom College and author of “Heart of the Redeemer,” said the pope’s new encyclical “could really go a long way to help people get back to what’s really essential in Christianity.

“Devotion to the Sacred Heart really is a summary of the whole mystery of our redemption, as Pope Pius XII and numerous other popes have said,” O’Donnell told OSV News. “And if anything, that call … is even more urgent now in our current times, with the loneliness, the isolation, the sort of secular miasma that we all have to breathe, where oftentimes we are affected far more by this atmosphere of secularity, (rather) than drawing from the riches of a relationship with Christ.

And it is Christ, O’Donnell said, “who brings love to a world that really is starving for it.”

The timing of the document is “intentional,” added Father Dailey, who is the chair of homiletics and social communications, as well as project director of the Catholic Preaching Institute, at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

He stressed the need to approach others not in terms of “policy to policy, war to war, or nationality to nationality,” but “heart to heart,” since “the heart is what makes us the same.”

The encyclical stands to call attention to “the personhood and the importance of the uniqueness of each individual,” said Father Donald Calloway, a member of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception and author of numerous books, including “Sacred Heart Gems: Daily Wisdom on the Heart of Jesus.”

Father Calloway said that in his initial perusal of the encyclical he was struck by the document’s emphasis on “an aspect of being” that is often neglected in current society.

“Being devoted to the heart is being devoted to the person,” he told OSV News. “I think it’s time to get back to some of these fundamentals. We live in this robotic, technological age where, I think, we’re forgetting that things have consequences. You can be on social media and you crank out a post, not realizing that you’re actually hurting people. You’re hurting hearts, not just some robot or some machine. … It affects people.”

He also stressed the need to attend to “the heart of our God.”

“There’s so much going on in the world right now that I think is offending our Lord’s heart,” Father Calloway said.

“It’s a good time to be reminded of the heart of our God, and that he loves us and wants us even to console him, to make reparation to him for our own sins and the sins of others,” he said.

“Jesus has a heart just like you and I do,” Father Dailey emphasized. “That heart loves just as yours and mine does. That heart breaks; that heart, poured out in love for humanity, is the ultimate sign of God’s love for human beings.”

(Gina Christian is a national reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GinaJesseReina.)

Briefs

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NATION
FORT WORTH, Texas (OSV News) – Members of a women’s religious community in Arlington have been dismissed from the Carmelite order and Catholic religious life, according to Oct. 28 statements from Bishop Michael F. Olson of Fort Worth and Mother Marie of the Incarnation, whom a Vatican office appointed as the community’s major superior in April. The bishop and major superior attributed the dismissal to the nuns’ decisions “to break faith with their Mother, the Church of Rome” through denying the authority of the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, their bishop and the dicastery-appointed major superior. The nuns also entered into an unlawful, formal association with the Society of St. Pius X Sept. 14 and soon after illicitly transferred ownership of their Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity to a nonprofit organization of laypeople, the statement notes. The affected nuns did not immediately respond on their website, which has been their mainstay for public communication over the past 18 months as they have openly feuded with Bishop Olson following his allegations in April 2023 that their community-elected prioress had committed unspecified sins against chastity. The saga has included church and civil courts, the nuns’ public rejection of the bishop’s governance authority over them, and their formal affiliation with the Society of St. Pius X.

LONG BEACH, Calif. (OSV News) – This year’s National Catholic Youth Conference theme “El Camino / The Way,” seeks to resonate with attendees, said Natalie Ibarra, the communications manager for the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, emphasizing the focus is on walking alongside peers and families in faith. The three-day conference, scheduled for Nov. 14-16 in Long Beach, California, is designed for high school students and their chaperones, and provides a central location that is more accessible for West Coast participants. NCYC 2024 will include a variety of engaging activities, including over 20 youth breakout sessions on topics ranging from pro-life activism to vocational discernment. Notable speakers and artists will enhance the experience, while an interactive exhibit hall will allow youth to explore various aspects of Catholic life and ministry. Ibarra noted efforts to reach Latino youth, acknowledging the financial barriers some families face. Organizers stressed that NCYC aims to unite young Catholics from across the country, fostering a sense of belonging and shared faith among participants. Pat Clasby, a parish director of confirmation and youth ministry at St. Patrick Church in Carlsbad, California, who is involved in organizing this year’s NCYC, said the conference will allow youth to see the larger Catholic Church. “It’s an opportunity for the youth to see other young people from around the country practicing their faith and realize they are not the only ones that are teenagers who are Catholic,” he said. “They are not the only ones trying to live their faith out loud.”

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Migrants demonstrate what hope is, and the Catholic Church must support them to keep that hope alive, Pope Francis said. “If migrants are to preserve the strength and resilience necessary for them to continue on their journey, they need someone to attend to their wounds and to care for them in their extreme physical, spiritual and psychological vulnerability,” the pope told members of the Scalabrinians during an audience at the Vatican Oct. 28. “Effective pastoral interventions that demonstrate closeness on the material, religious and human levels are required in order to keep their hope alive and to help them advance on their personal journey toward God, their faithful companion on the way,” he said. The pope lamented “the hostility shown by rich countries that perceive those knocking at their door as a threat to their own well-being.” Migrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, supported and integrated in the host communities, he said. Regardless of who they are or where they came from, all immigrants are to be “viewed as a gift of God, unique, sacred, inviolable, a precious resource for the benefit of all,” he said.

A person walks in a flooded street Oct. 30, 2024, in Llombai, in Spain’s Valencia region, after the Spanish meteorological agency put the region on the highest red alert for extreme rainfalls. (OSV News photo/Eva Manez, Reuters)

WORLD
DHAKA, Bangladesh (OSV News) – Amid signs of changes and more religious inclusivity in the country, church leaders in Bangladesh called for Easter Sunday to be a public holiday. The United Church Council of Bangladesh, the Catholic bishops’ conference and Bangladesh’s Christian Association have separately demanded a public holiday from the interim government on Easter Sunday. On Oct. 17, Bangladesh’s United Church Council president, Archbishop Bejoy Nicephorus D’Cruze of Dhaka, sent a letter to the chief adviser to the interim government. After the student uprising in August that left hundreds of people dead, the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, stepped down and fled the country to India. In his letter, Archbishop D’Cruze welcomed the interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus and said that Easter Sunday celebrates “the triumph of Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death” and is an important day for Christians. “Unfortunately, the government has not given it a (status of) holiday, despite repeated appeals to the previous government. As a result, many Christians cannot observe Easter Sunday,” the archbishop of Dhaka wrote. According to the 2022 national census by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the Muslim-majority country has about 500,000 Christians out of about 180 million, including 400,000 Catholics told ACN. “But even if the terrorists burned everything, they didn’t burn our faith!”

VALENCIA, Spain (OSV News) – The archbishop of Valencia expressed “grave concern” and said Mass for those affected after at least 72 people died, and many more went missing amid torrential rains that caused massive flooding in southeastern Spain. The flooding turned roads into rivers of floating cars and cut off highways and access points, with water reaching the first floor of buildings. Archbishop Enrique Benavent said Oct. 30 he “hopes that the victims and missing persons will be found safe and sound as soon as possible,” according to Spanish Catholic news outlet Alfa y Omega. The archbishop celebrated Mass for all those affected on the morning of Oct. 30 in a local basilica. In a letter sent to Archbishop Benavent and Msgr. Julián Ros, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Albacete, West from Valencia, Spanish bishops said that they share “their pain at the difficult times that they are experiencing in their dioceses.” The horrendous flooding that left piles of cars stuck in between buildings in historical narrow streets of Valencia and trapped dozens of residents was caused by storm Dana – described as an “unprecedented phenomenon” by Spain’s defense minister, Margarita Robles. King Felipe VI spoke of his “devastation and concern” over the flash flooding. Speaking of “enormous destruction” Oct. 30, he said accessing some areas was still difficult. Spain declared three days of mourning after the flash floods devastated parts of the country.

Synod leaders share lessons learned in listening with U.S. students

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By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The listening that has been part of the Synod of Bishops changes people, can change the Catholic Church and can change the world for the better, four synod members told U.S. university students in Rome.

“The person with a different opinion is not an enemy,” Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the synod, told about 140 students gathered Oct. 18 in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall at the tables used by synod members.

The students, from 16 Catholic universities in the United States – along with a small group of young adults from Germany, Austria and Switzerland – had spent a week in Rome studying synodality and had questions for synod leaders.

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, center, speaks to the artist who made a mosaic with thoughts about the Synod of Bishops and prayers for the synod written by U.S. university students as Cardinal Mario Grech, kneeling, adds his prayer to the mosaic in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Oct. 18, 2024. (CNS photo/Pablo Esparza)

The questions included: whether the listening sessions held at the beginning of the synod process reached enough people; why young people who are not involved in the church should care; how they could guarantee that the synod’s outcomes would be faithful to the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church; and would the synod really change anything.

Maltese Cardinal Mario Grech, general secretary of the synod, told the students that “it aches me” when people say the listening sessions reached only a small percentage of Catholics when the outreach for the 2021-2024 synod was much broader than anything achieved before and will keep growing.

Cardinal Hollerich, noting that most of the students were from the United States, told them, “When I see on television about the elections in the States, there are two worlds which seem to be opposed, and you have to be enemy of the other – that thinking is very far from synodal thinking.”

The synodal listening, he said, helps people experience that “together we are part of humanity, we live in the same world, and we have to find common solutions.”

Company of Mary Sister Leticia Salazar, a U.S. synod delegate and chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, California, told the students that learning to really listen changes a person.

“We come together, we get to know each other, we pray. We listen to one another,” she said. Members hear from people with similar ideas and experiences, but also hear “our differences, our cultures, our way of seeing things, our ways of experiencing God. And at the end, we realize that we are in communion, that we are the church and that we are one church, and we are transformed by that.”

“Once you are touched with that experience, you take it with you,” she said, “and you prolong it in time, and you share it with the people that you encounter.”

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, one of synod’s presidents delegate, said he was asked in his own diocese about the purpose of the listening sessions and whether there were plans to change church teaching.

“The aim of synodality is for the sake of the mission,” he said. “And the mission is to announce the Gospel and to invite (people) to a richer, fuller life that comes through Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.”
But, he said, “we really do have to be real.”

“That is to say, you can’t keep announcing the Gospel if you don’t have a sense of the reality people are living,” the bishop told the students.

The listening is not just about hearing someone’s words, he said. It is trying to hear “the realities under the words – the experiences, the pains, the hopes and the longings, because underneath a lot of the words there is a longing. And one of the church’s convictions is that the longing is for a sense of belonging and a sense of communion.”

“It is a gift when somebody tells you something about their life,” Bishop Flores said. “It’s a gift that you should appreciate as something rather sacred.”

But the synod also is listening “to the voice of those who have gone before us” – Catholic tradition – and, especially, to the Scriptures and to the voice of the Holy Spirit in prayer.

“I trust the Holy Spirit,” the bishop said. “I really do. I mean, the church has been messy for 2,000 years, and the Holy Spirit still manages to keep us together. It’s bumpy, it’s messy, but I have faith that we will be faithful to the teaching of the church.”

Briefs

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A pilgrim wears a scarf featuring an image of St. Elena Guerra ahead of her canonization Mass, presided over by Pope Francis, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Oct. 20, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

NATION
WASHINGTON (OSV News) – National Eucharistic Pilgrimage organizers are seeking eight young adults to spend six weeks traveling with the Eucharist from Indiana to California next summer as perpetual pilgrims in the United States’ second national Eucharistic pilgrimage. The route is scheduled to begin Pentecost Sunday, May 18, following a Mass of thanksgiving in Indianapolis and end in Los Angeles on the feast of Corpus Christi June 22 with a special event hosted by the National Eucharistic Congress Inc. and a citywide Eucharistic procession. The pilgrimage route will cover several Southwestern states, with route details forthcoming in early 2025. The pilgrimage expects to visit the tomb of Father Emil Kapaun, a servant of God, in Wichita, Kansas, and the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City. The route’s perpetual pilgrims will be accompanied by two chaplains and participate in weekly service projects in communities they visit. The 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage was inspired by last year’s first-ever National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that preceded the National Eucharistic Congress in July. Perpetual pilgrim applications are due Nov. 1. More information is available at eucharisticpilgrimage.org.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. bishops are gathering in Baltimore Nov. 11-14 for their 2024 fall general assembly, which takes place just weeks after the conclusion of the second session of the Catholic Church’s synod on synodality in Rome. Only two days of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ meeting, Nov. 12-13, will be public and livestreamed on the conference’s website. As in years past, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio to the U.S., and Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, president of the USCCB, will both address the assembly. Although the conference said its agenda for the November assembly is subject to change, the bishops plan to consider updates for a collaborative effort on Dignitas Infinita which concerns human dignity; an update on the interim implementation of Antiquum Ministerium, which concerns the ministry of the catechist; the pastoral implementation of Pope Francis’ teaching document Laudato si’, which concerns environmental stewardship; as well as the conference’s mission directive for the years 2025-2028. The bishops also plan to have a consultation on the sainthood causes of Sister Annella Zervas, a professed religious of the Order of St. Benedict, and for the Servant of God Gertrude Agnes Barber. During the assembly, the bishops will vote for the new conference treasurer, as well as chairmen-elect of five conference committees.

VATICAN
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis called on the faithful to yearn to serve, not thirst for power, as he proclaimed 14 new saints, including Canada-born St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, and 11 martyrs. “Those who dominate do not win, only those who serve out of love,” he said Oct. 20, World Mission Sunday, in St. Peter’s Square. “When we learn to serve, our every gesture of attention and care, every expression of tenderness, every work of mercy becomes a reflection of God’s love,” he said. “And so, we continue Jesus’ work in the world.” The pope said the new saints lived Jesus’ way of service. “The faith and the apostolate they carried out did not feed their worldly desires and hunger for power but, on the contrary, they made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing the good, steadfast in difficulties and generous to the end.” “This is what we should yearn for: not power, but service. Service is the Christian way of life,” he said.

WORLD
LIVERPOOL, England (OSV News) – A court has convicted a British army veteran of violating a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic after he prayed silently within the boundary. Adam Smith-Connor was given a conditional discharge – in which a fine or prison sentence will be imposed if he repeats his offense in the next two years – and ordered to pay prosecution costs of 9,000 British pounds (US $11,700). The Oct. 16 judgment of the Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Council, or court, on England’s south coast, represents the first time anyone has been convicted for praying silently outside an abortion facility in the U.K. The court decided that his posture had expressed “disapproval for abortion,” noting that his hands were joined in prayer and his head was bowed solemnly. Afterward, Smith-Connor said: “Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts – silent thoughts – can be illegal in the United Kingdom. That cannot be right. All I did was pray to God, in the privacy of my own mind – and yet I stand convicted as a criminal.” Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, described the ruling as “a legal turning point of immense proportions.” “A man has been convicted today because of the content of his thoughts – his prayers to God – on the public streets of England,” he said.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (OSV News) – In an early October massacre, at least 150 people, including many Christians, were killed in northeastern Burkina Faso’s town of Manni, in what turned out to be a brutal terrorist rampage. Days after the massacre, Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical charity working for the cause of persecuted Christians globally, learned that the attack had occurred Oct. 6. Manni is home to a large Catholic community, and many Christians, as well as Muslims, were killed in the massacre, ACN said on the organization’s website. Sources told ACN that the terrorists first cut mobile phone networks before attacking the local market, where many people had gathered after Sunday Mass. “They then opened fire indiscriminately, looted shops and set fire to several buildings, burning some victims alive. The same sources reported that the next day, the perpetrators returned to attack medical staff and kill the many wounded in the city’s hospital,” ACN said. A new incursion took place two days later, when the terrorists again invaded the town of Manni, massacring all the men they could find. Many of the victims were residents from nearby villages who had sought refuge in Manni after being driven out of their homes by terrorists. “The situation is beyond horrific,” one of the local sources told ACN. “But even if the terrorists burned everything, they didn’t burn our faith!”