By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Violence against women, cultural pressures regarding women’s physical appearance, attitudes that subjugate women or that ignore male-female differences and the growing alienation of women from the church in some parts of the world are themes the Pontifical Council for Culture is set to explore.
The council, whose members are all cardinals and bishops, has chosen to discuss the theme, “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference,” during its plenary assembly Feb. 4-7. A document outlining the theme was published in late January, and four women involved in writing it joined Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, council president, at a news conference Feb. 2 at the Vatican.
The cardinal announced to the press that he was planning to establish within his office a special group of female consultants to provide women’s opinions and points of view on a variety of issues.
He also noted that if priests had to follow the Jewish rules for a quorum for prayer — 10 men must be present — many of them would not be able to celebrate daily Mass, even though there would be dozens of women present in the church.
The council’s discussion document, drafted by a group of Italian women and women who have lived in Italy for years, looked at the continuing quest to find balance in promoting women’s equality while valuing the differences between women and men; the concrete and symbolic aspects of women’s potential for motherhood; cultural attitudes toward women’s bodies; and women and religion, including questions about their participation in church decision-making.
The council said the theme was chosen “to identify possible pastoral paths, which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue with the world today in this sphere,” while recognizing that in different cultures and for individual women the situation will be different.
While cautioning against generalizations, the document rejects the notions that there are no differences between men and women, and that each person “chooses and builds his-her identity; owns him-herself and answers primarily to him-herself.”
In preparing the document and the plenary discussions, the council sought input from women around the world. However, the process was not without criticism, particularly for the English version of a video featuring an Italian actress, Nanci Brilli, asking women to send in their experiences. Many women felt the use of a heavily made-up actress ran counter to the point of seeking input about the real lives of most women. The council quickly took the English version off YouTube.
At the news conference, Brilli said, “as a woman, a professional, a mother, I feel like this is the first time we have been asked for our opinion” by the church. “The women who responded do not want to be cardinals, but want to take part in the discussion.”
Participating for a year in the group that drafted the document, she said, was such a positive experience that it led to a renewal of her faith, but also to a willingness to do the video and open herself to comments. Some people, she said, instead of wanting to dialogue, “felt represented by making insults. That’s their problem.”
Cardinal Ravasi said the reactions from across Europe were mainly positive and garnered a variety of helpful input about women’s concerns, but in Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the United States and Canada, the reaction focused so strongly on the video — and not on women’s concerns and experience — that they decided to pull it.
Everything he’s done, he said, has garnered strong reaction ranging from enthusiasm to “those who even found satanic dimensions” in what he was doing. Some feel a need to take part in a discussion “by yelling,” he said.
In the section on women and the church, the document described “multifaceted discomfort” with images of women that are no longer relevant and with a Christian community that seems to value their input even less than the world of business and commerce does.
Many women, it said, “have reached places of prestige within society and the workplace, but have no corresponding decisional role nor responsibility within ecclesial communities.”
Council members are not proposing a discussion of ordaining women priests, the document said and, in fact, statistics show ordination “is not something that women want.” However, it said, “if, as Pope Francis says, women have a central role in Christianity, this role must find a counterpart also in the ordinary life of the church.”
The vast majority of Catholic women today do not want a bishop’s “purple biretta,” it said, but would like to see church doors open “to women so that they can offer their contribution in terms of skills and also sensitivity, intuition, passion, dedication, in full collaboration and integration” with men in the church.
The preparatory document looked at how much pressure women face regarding their body image and the way women’s bodies are exploited in the media, even to the point of provoking eating disorders or recourse to unnecessary surgery.
“Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘season’ that is being lived out,” it said.
“’Plastic surgery is like a burqa made of flesh.’ One woman gave us this harsh and incisive description,” the document said. “Having been given freedom of choice for all, are we not under a new cultural yoke of a singular feminine model?”
The document also denounced violence inflicted on women: “Selective abortion, infanticide, genital mutilation, crimes of honor, forced marriages, trafficking of women, sexual molestation, rape –which in some parts of the world are inflicted on a massive level and along ethnic lines — are some of the deepest injuries inflicted daily on the soul of the world, on the bodies of women and of girls, who become silent and invisible victims.”

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM MANILA, Philippines (CNS) – Pope Francis said his September trip to the U.S. will take him to Philadelphia, New York and Washington – where he intends to canonize Blessed Junipero Serra – but he will probably not make other stops.
Pope Francis made his remarks Jan. 19, in an hourlong news conference with reporters accompanying him back to Rome from a weeklong trip to Asia. Four days after announcing he would canonize Blessed Junipero in the U.S. in September, the pope said he wished he could do so in California, the 18th-century Franciscan’s mission field, but would not have time to travel there.
The pope said he planned instead to perform the canonization ceremony at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, saying Washington would be a fitting location because a statue of Blessed Junipero stands in the U.S. Capitol. The pope also confirmed he would visit the United Nations in New York. He had already announced his participation in the late-September World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
Asked about widespread speculation that he would visit the U.S.-Mexico border on the same trip, Pope Francis said “entering the United States by crossing the border from Mexico would be a beautiful thing, as a sign of brotherhood and of help to the immigrants.” But he said making such a visit would raise expectations that he would visit Mexico’s shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and he joked that “war could break out” if he failed to do so. “There will be time to go to Mexico later on,” he said.

By Cindy Wooden
MANILA, Philippines (CNS) – The realities of life described by young people, especially the tearful question of a 12-year-old girl about why God allows suffering, led Pope Francis to set aside the first text he had prepared for a meeting Jan. 18 with the young people of the Philippines.

Pope Francis is embraced by a child at a home for former street children in Manila, Philippines, Jan. 16. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

“Certain realities in life can only be seen through eyes cleansed by tears,” the pope said Jan. 19 after listening to Glyzelle Palomar, who used to live on the streets but now has a home thanks to the foundation for street children Pope Francis visited in Manila Jan. 16.
Palomar spoke after Jun Chura – a 14-year-old rescued from the streets by the same foundation – described life on the streets as a struggle to find enough to eat, to fight the temptation of drug use and glue sniffing, and to avoid adults looking for the young to exploit and abuse.
Covering her face with her hand as she wept in front of the microphone, Palomar asked the pope, “Why did God let this happen to us?”
As some 30,000 young people looked on at the University of Santo Tomas, the pope kissed the top of Palomar’s head and pulled her close for a big hug, then embraced her and Chura together.
He also listened to the testimony of two other young men and their questions: How do young people discover God’s will for them? What is love? How can young people become agents of mercy and compassion?
The pope’s gathering with the youths was emotional from the beginning. Opening the encounter, the pope spoke about 27-year-old Kristel Padasas, an employee of the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services, who died after being struck by a speaker stand knocked down by the wind Jan. 17 after the pope’s Mass in Tacloban.
She was “young, like yourselves,” the pope told the youths, asking them to join him in praying for her and for her parents. “She was the only daughter. Her mother is coming from Hong Kong (and) her father has come to Manila to wait,” he told them.
Pope Francis had received the texts of the young people’s testimonies and questions in advance and had begun rewriting his speech the night before to ensure he responded directly to what they planned to say, said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman. There was not time to have the new text translated, so Pope Francis, who did not read from the text, asked Msgr. Mark Miles from the Vatican Secretariat of State to translate from his Spanish. After more than half an hour, he made a passing attempt to return to the original text, but only to emphasize the challenges the youth face: the challenge of personal integrity, of helping the poor and of protecting the environment.
One of the first things he commented on talking to the youths was the fact that Palomar was the only female on the program.
“Sometimes we’re too ‘machista’ and don’t allow room for the woman,” he said. “But the woman is able to see things with a different eye than men. Women are able to pose questions that we men are not able to understand.”
“Pay attention,” the pope told the young people. Palomar was “the only one who posed a question for which there is no answer. And she wasn’t able to express it in words but tears.”
“When the next pope comes to Manila,” he told them, include “more women” on the program.
Speaking directly to Palomar, he told her, “You have expressed yourself so bravely.”
While it is impossible to explain why God would allow children to suffer, he told the young people, “only when we, too, can cry” can one approach a response.
“I invite each one of you here to ask yourself, ‘Have I learned to weep and cry when I see a child cast aside, when I see someone with a drug problem, when I see someone who has suffered abuse?” the pope told them.
Being moved to tears out of compassion and in the face of the mystery of suffering is holy, he said. It is not the same thing as crying to manipulate or get something from someone.
“Jesus in the Gospel cried, he cried for his dead friend,” Lazarus, “he cried in his heart for the family that had lost its child, he cried in his heart when he saw the old widow having to bury her son, he was moved to tears of compassion when he saw the multitude of crowds without a pastor,” Pope Francis said.
“If you don’t learn how to cry you cannot be good Christians,” he told them.
In the face of suffering like Palomar’s and Chura’s, he said, “our response must either be silence or the word that is born of our tears.”
“Be courageous, do not be afraid to cry,” the pope said.
Responding to the questions of Leandro Santos II, a law student, and Rikki Macolor, a recent graduate who, with his friends, designed a solar-powered night light for typhoon victims, Pope Francis focused on love, compassion and the challenge of not just helping the poor, but allowing oneself to learn from and be evangelized by them.
“What is the most important subject that you have to learn in university, what is the most important subject you learn in life?” the pope asked. “To learn to love. This is the challenge that life offers you.”
“True love is to love and allow yourself to be loved,” he said. “It is harder to let yourself be loved than to love.”
Even when it comes to the life of faith, he said, it seems easier to love God than to really allow oneself to be loved by him. But when one succeeds, he continued, God responds with surprises.
“Don’t be like a computer, thinking that we know everything,” the pope said.
Pope Francis thanked Macolor and his friends for helping the poor victims of Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, but he asked them, “Do you allow yourselves to receive?” Putting his finger to his lips, the pope said he didn’t want them to respond immediately, but to ponder the other, essential Christian part of being with the poor, which is being willing to learn from them and to accept their gifts.
“The Sadducees and doctors of the law in the time of Jesus gave much to the people, they gave them the law and taught them, but they never allowed the people to give them something,” he said.
“Become a beggar,” the pope said. “Learn how to beg,” to receive with humility, “to be evangelized by the poor. The persons we help, the poor, the sick have so much to give us.”
Contributing to this story was Francis X. Rocca in Manila.

By Patricia Zapor
WASHINGTON (CNS) – A not-insignificant part of the diplomatic coup pulled off by the White House and Cuban leaders Dec. 17 was that hardly anyone knew they had been working toward a reset in relations between the two neighbors and longtime antagonists.
That the two nations had been negotiating in secret for 18 months and that the Vatican had played a key role in keeping the discussions moving were among the factors that no doubt made the dramatic shift in policies possible. By keeping negotiations among a small number of diplomats and out of the public eye, outside pressures were kept to a minimum.
In simultaneous news conferences that day, U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington and Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana announced that their countries were re-establishing official diplomatic relations. Obama detailed a lengthy list of things that will become easier – sales of materials to Cuba’s small-business owners, for Internet technology and for housing construction; visits to Cuba by more Americans; banking and use of credit cards by Americans visiting Cuba; remittances of greater amounts of cash – to name some of the major changes.
That’s not to say the 54-year U.S. embargo has gone away altogether. Congress still holds the reins to portions of the laws prohibiting trade with Cuba, intended as a sanction for repression and human rights abuses after the Marxist revolution that put Fidel Castro in power in 1959. He or his brother, Raul, who took over from the ailing Fidel in 2006, have ruled the country ever since.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower first imposed an embargo on Cuba in October 1960. President John F. Kennedy expanded the embargo, and every president since has maintained it until Obama. He is the first to significantly loosen the controls, in 2009 easing restrictions on travel for family and cultural visits and allowing Americans to send more money to their relatives there.
Critics of the shift in policy, most conspicuously a handful of Cuban-American members of Congress, say they will attempt to block the changes. Among the steps they suggested are opposing the nomination of an ambassador and restricting funds needed to reopen an embassy in Havana.
But Congress also holds the power to retain or end the key parts of the embargo, which were put in place by federal law. The law established the main prohibitions on commerce with Cuba and the ban on travel except as permitted for family, cultural, educational, religious and humanitarian purposes.
The most recent national polling on the embargo done by the Pew Research Center in 2009 found a bare majority, 52 percent, of respondents said the U.S. should renew ties with Cuba. But only 33 percent opposed renewing ties. That poll came not long before the Cuban government began a series of changes, including allowing individuals to buy and sell property and to open businesses. More recently, Cuba began allowing its citizens to travel freely, without government authorization.
Annual polling of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County by Florida International University has found steadily increasing support for ending the embargo, reinstating diplomatic ties and permitting U.S. citizens to freely travel to Cuba. This year, 68 percent favored reinstating diplomatic relations, with younger Cuban-Americans and recent arrivals backing the changes by even greater numbers, as much as 90 percent and 80 percent, respectively.
Tom Quigley, former foreign policy adviser on Latin America and the Caribbean to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service that it’s true what one of the chief critics, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, says about the need for more progress in changing the political systems in Cuba that prompted the call for an embargo in the first place.
“But it’s not going to get any better by leaving the status quo in place,” he added.
The Catholic Church in both countries has long worked to end the embargo. Yet Stephen Colecchi, director of the USCCB’s Office of International Justice and Peace, said he was unaware of the talks between Cuban and U.S. diplomats until the day of the announcement.
Boston daily and Catholic newspapers reported that Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, one of Pope Francis’ key advisers, played a behind-the-scenes role, helping relay messages between a Boston nonprofit group, Beyond Conflict, that encouraged Pope Francis to intervene with Obama to press for an end to the embargo. When Obama and Pope Francis met in March, Cuba was reportedly one of their main topics of conversation.
For years, the Cuban bishops have worked steadfastly to diminish the emotional distance between Cubans and their Cuban-American relatives. Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago de Cuba, president of the Cuban bishops’ conference, used the 2012 observance of the 400th anniversary of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, to encourage Cubans worldwide to unite across borders.
He became a regular visitor to the U.S., especially to Cuban emigre communities in Florida and New York.
By the time Pope Benedict visited Havana, Santiago and the shrine of El Cobre in 2012, thousands of Americans went to join him. From Miami alone, nearly 1,000 people went on flights chartered by the archdiocese.
Under Obama’s 2009 orders allowing more “people to people” travel to Cuba, the idea was for interactions between everyday citizens of both countries to help pressure Cuba’s leaders to bring about more improvements.
Archbishop Garcia’s goal was framed in more theological terms, but he was clear about what he hoped would happen if people would come together in a spirit of pilgrimage.
“La Caridad nos une,” (the Virgin of Charity unites us), Archbishop Garcia said repeatedly on visits to the U.S. preceding the anniversary. “Whether inside Cuba or outside Cuba, there is a sense that we are all one church.”
(Copyright © 2014 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

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VIENNA (CNS) – Tucked behind the Austrian capital’s well known Museumsquartier – a complex of art, natural history and cultural museums – is a little side street Christmas market called Spittelberg.
No more than a medieval alleyway, gray cobblestones and slightly wobbly Tudor-like white and dark timber buildings, Spittelberg is a place where old Vienna comes to life.
In the mellow splendor of muted Christmas glitter, with candlelight lamps in tones of red and wooden market stalls, the Spittelberg Christmas market is about vegetarian cheeses, wild boar sausages, sweet nuts and holiday biscuits. Add a variety of mulled wines and “Weihnachtspunsch” (Christmas punch), there’s enough to tempt any palate.
Here the spirit of Christmas comes to life. Less commercial than other markets across the city, Spittelberg’s quirkiness shines through in the homemade exquisite tree ornaments and in the friendly sense of community brought by three generations of vendors.
“My grandmother started selling waffles here and I used to come and help her,” says Anna Pichler, spooning a generous portion of plum jam onto a waffle made of organically grown spelt flour. “Then my mother came and now I’m here. We just like to keep this tradition going. Advent is a special time for us in Austria.”
Farther down the narrow street, the resident St. Nicholas wanders among the stalls, wooden staff in hand, bringing good cheer.
Invited to a decorated cup of mulled wine to keep away the chill, St. Nicholas hesitates.
“It’s too early in the evening,” he says.
Wandering from Spittelberg toward the old central market, Naschmarkt, shoppers emerge onto Maria Hilfe Strasse (Our Lady of Mercy Street) – and more Christmas market food, drink and craft stalls. One offers sheep slippers from Transylvania for sale, reminding visitors of Old Testament accounts of winter in Bethlehem.
“The most beautiful thing about the Vienna markets is that they are sort of nestled in between these elegant buildings,” says Susie Kelpie, who is from the United Kingdom.
Kelpie is one of 3 million annual visitors who attend Vienna’s at least two dozen Christmas markets, which traditionally open the Saturday before Advent.
Despite the number of visitors – albeit commercially important to the mainly rural Austrian economy of craftspeople – there is a certain magical quality about Christmas in this largely Catholic European capital.
Walking through the elegant sunken streets of the town’s center, known as the Graben, women in fur coats and men in old-fashioned hats and green loden capes mingle under pure white Christmas lights that represent the brightest stars on a winter’s night.
Appropriately, the most elaborate Christmas decorations are hung near St. Stephen’s Cathedral. They appear to align with the power of that emanates from the 12th-century church, the heart of the Archdiocese of Vienna.
Nearby, at yet another market, Am Hof, a group of young men warm the night with their baritone voices after a couple of glasses of hot wine or punch.
“My grandfather used to sing here during Advent,” said Constantin Spallart, one of the singers.
Moving outside the center city, Vienna’s Christkindlmarkt (Christ Child Market) on Parliament Square attracts busloads of tourists from Eastern Europe. But even there Vienna declines to take part in a commercialized idea of Christmas. A life-size Christmas manger, complete with Christ child and blonde-haired Mary, occupy a prominent part of the market.
(Copyright © 2014 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

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By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Preceded by a procession of flags from the nations of the Americas and the recitation of the rosary in Spanish, Pope Francis and thousands of Catholics from across the Atlantic celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Vatican.
The Argentina-born pope celebrated the Dec. 12 Mass to the sounds and rhythms of many of South America’s indigenous peoples; the principal sung parts of the Mass were from the “Misa Criolla,” composed 50 years ago by the late Ariel Ramirez. His son, Facundo Ramirez, conducted the choir that featured Patricia Sosa, a famous Argentine singer, as well as guitars and traditional instruments from the continent.
With St. Juan Diego’s vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531, the pope said, Mary “became the great missionary who brought the Gospel to our America.”
In his homily, Pope Francis prayed that Mary would “continue to accompany, assist and protect our peoples” and that she would “lead all the children who are pilgrims on this earth by the hand to an encounter with her son Jesus Christ.”
“Imploring God’s forgiveness and trusting in his mercy,” the pope prayed that God would help the people of Latin America forge a future of hope, development and opportunity for the poor and suffering, “for the humble, for those who hunger and thirst for justice, for the compassionate, the pure of heart, peacemakers and those persecuted for the sake of Christ’s name.”
Mary’s “Magnificat,” her hymn of praise to God, he said, proclaims that God “overturns ideologies and worldly hierarchies. He raises up the humble, comes to the aid of the poor and the small, and fills with good things, blessings and hope those who trust in his mercy.”
Pope Francis said the day’s reading from Psalm 66, with its “plea for forgiveness and the blessing of the peoples and nations and, at the same time, its joyful praise, expresses the spiritual sense of this Eucharistic celebration” in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, “for whom devotion extends from Alaska to Patagonia.”
The dark-skinned image of Our Lady of Guadalupe traditionally believed to have been miraculously impressed on Juan Diego’s cloak, the pope said, proclaimed to the indigenous peoples of the Americas “the good news that all its inhabitants shared the dignity of children of God. No more would anyone be a servant, but we are all children of the same Father and brothers and sisters to each other.”
Mary did not just want to visit the Americas, the pope said, the image on the cloak or “tilma” is a sign that “she wanted to remain with them.”
“Through her intercession, the Christian faith began to become the greatest treasure” of the American peoples, Pope Francis said, a treasure “transmitted and demonstrated even today in the baptism of multitudes of people, in the faith, hope and charity of many, in their precious popular piety and in that ethos of the people who show that they know the dignity of the human person, in their passion for justice, in solidarity with the poor and suffering.”
(Copyright © 2014 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

ROME (CNS) – In the heart of Rome’s high-end shopping district, sparkling with Christmas lights and shiny baubles in the windows of famous designers, Pope Francis prayed that people would spend time in silence and in service as they prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth.
Celebrating the feast of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8, Pope Francis prayed for Mary’s intercession so that, “in us, your children, grace also will prevail over pride, and we can become merciful like our heavenly Father is merciful.”
Before laying a basket of cream-colored roses at the foot of a statue of the Immaculate Conception near Rome’s Spanish Steps, Pope Francis recited a special prayer he composed for the occasion.
Pope Francis said Mary being conceived without sin should give all Christians hope and strength “in the daily battle that we must conduct against the threats of evil,” because her immaculate conception is proof that evil does not have power over love.
“In this struggle we are not alone, we are not orphans,” he said, because Jesus gave his mother to be our mother.
“Today we invoke her maternal protection on us, our families, this city and the world,” the pope said, praying that God would “free humanity from every spiritual and material slavery.”
“In this time that leads up to the feast of Jesus’ birth, teach us how to go against the current,” Pope Francis prayed to Mary. Teach people how to be unencumbered, “to give ourselves, to listen, to be silent, to not focus on ourselves, but to leave space for the beauty of God, the source of true joy.”
Commenting on the feast day’s Gospel reading – Luke’s story of the annunciation to Mary that she would be Jesus’ mother – the pope said it was important that Mary did not respond, “I will do what you say,” but “May it be done unto me.”
“The attitude of Mary of Nazareth,” he said, “shows us that being comes before doing, and that we must let God do in order to be truly as he wants us to be. He will accomplish marvels in us.”
“We, too, are asked to listen to God, who speaks to us and accept his will,” the pope said. “According to Gospel logic, nothing is more effective and fruitful than listening and accepting the word of the Lord.”
And while Mary was conceived without sin – a special and unique privilege – “we, too, always have been ‘blessed,’ that is loved, and therefore ‘chosen before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him,’” as the day’s reading from Ephesians said.
Recognizing how blessed they are, the pope said, Christians must be filled with gratitude and ready to share their blessings with others.