“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
As I was preparing my homily for daily Mass recently, I was reflecting on these words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Our Lord’s statement reveals that a little faith doesn’t just go a long way, it also produces miracles. After all, it is impossible for a mulberry tree, or any other tree, to be planted in the sea!
But our faith can be shaken. A mustard seed is tiny and is easily lost if we don’t protect it. This is one of the reasons I continue to write this column. We need to be reminded that our faith is shared and we need to build one another up to keep up the fight. It is hard to be a Catholic in a land that has so few. It is hard to promote priestly vocations from our parishes when there are so many other forces in our culture that might distract young people from their calls. But it is a fight worth fighting, and with a little faith, God can work miracles through us!
Father Nick Adam
As Joanna King reported elsewhere in this edition of the Mississippi Catholic, our 3rd annual Homegrown Harvest Festival was a great success, and I have come away from that experience more confident than ever that the Lord is going to do great things in our vocation department. Our POPS group (Parents of Priests/Seminarians/Sisters) continues to solidify with many of our parents supporting one another and coming up with great ideas for the coming year. I am also working with our diocesan chancery on new ways to engage Catholics throughout the diocese to help more people get involved in our vocation initiatives and in supporting our seminarians.
But the most important thing we can all do is pray. Please continue or begin to pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life in our diocese. If everyone who reads this would pray regularly for this intention, I know that it would make all the difference. We ask for the intercession of Mary, Mother of Priests to nurture and protect the vocations of those who are discerning or who will discern the priesthood in the coming year.
The next time you attend Mass, I invite you to offer your Mass intention for an increase in vocations, or better yet, offer your Mass for a young man or woman you know in your parish who you think would make a great priest or religious. Some people ask me: how do I offer an intention at Mass? Well, when the gifts are coming up to the altar, in your mind’s eye ‘place’ your intention on the altar with the bread and the wine. God can work miracles with all that his people present offer to him in the Mass!
Thank you for your continued support of our mission for a Homegrown Harvest, let’s continue to build one another up so we can keep the faith because God is working and he will work miracles as long as we are open to his will for us!
– Father Nick Adam
If you are interested in learning more about religious orders or vocations to the priesthood and religious life, email nick.adam@jacksondiocese.org.
By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The COVID-19 pandemic has weakened many parishes, but that community “in the midst of homes, in the midst of people,” is still an essential place for nourishing and sharing faith, Pope Francis told Italian young adults.
The parish is “the normal environment where we learned to hear the Gospel, to know the Lord Jesus, to serve with gratuitousness, to pray in community, to share projects and initiatives, to feel part of God’s holy people,” the pope told leaders of the young adult section of Italian Catholic Action, a parish-based program of faith building and social outreach.
Meeting thousands of young adults Oct. 29, Pope Francis said he knows that in most cities and towns the parish church is not the center of religious and social life like it was when he was growing up, but “for our journey of faith and growth, the parish experience was and is important, irreplaceable.”
With its mix of members, the pope said, the parish is the place to experience how “in the church we are all brothers and sisters through baptism; that we are all protagonists and responsible; that we have different gifts that are all for the good of the community; that life is vocation, following Jesus; and that faith is a gift to be given, a gift to witness.”
Pope Francis shakes hands with a child during an audience at the Vatican with members of the young adult section of Italy’s Catholic Action, Oct. 29, 2022. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Part of that witness, he said, is to show concretely how faith leads to charity and a desire for justice. In the neighborhood, town and region, “our motto is not ‘I don’t care,’ but ‘I care!’” the pope said.
The “disease of not caring” can be “more dangerous than a cancer,” he told the young people. “Human misery is not a fate that befalls some unfortunate people, but almost always the result of injustices that must be eradicated.”
Pope Francis urged the young people not to be frustrated or put off by the fact that in their parishes “the community dimension is a bit weak,” something “which has been aggravated by the pandemic.”
Learning to see each other as brothers and sisters, he said, does not begin with some parish meeting or activity, but with each person through prayer and, especially, through the Eucharist celebrated and shared in the parish.
“Fraternity in the church is founded on Christ, on his presence in us and among us,” the pope said. “Thanks to him we welcome each other, bear with each other – Christian love is built on bearing with each other – and forgive each other.”
Fifty years ago, on an overcast, cold, fall day in the gymnasium of the local public high school, I was ordained to the priesthood. Beyond the grey sky, another thing marked the event. This was a tender season for my family and me. Both our parents had died (and died young) within a year and a half just prior to this and we were still somewhat fragile of heart. In that setting, I was ordained a priest.
Within the few words allowed in a short column, what do I most want to say as I mark the fiftieth anniversary of that day? I will borrow from the novelist Morris West, who begins his autobiography this way: When you reach the age of seventy-five, there should only be three phrases left in your vocabulary, thank you, thank you, and thank you!
Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
I just turned seventy-five and reflecting on fifty years of priesthood, many thoughts and feelings come to mind; life, after all, has its seasons. However, the feeling that overrides all others is that of gratitude, thank you, thank you, and thank you! Thank you to God, to grace, to the church, to my family, to the Oblates, to the many friends who have loved and supported me, to the wonderful schools I have taught in, and to the thousands of people I have encountered in those fifty years of ministry.
My initial call to the priesthood and the Oblate congregation was not the stuff of romance. I didn’t enter religious life and the seminary because I was attracted to it. The opposite. This was not what I wanted. But I felt called, strongly and clearly, and at the tender age of seventeen made the decision to enter religious life. Today, people may well raise questions about the wisdom and freedom of such a decision at age seventeen, but looking back all these years later, I can honestly say that this is the clearest, purest, and most unselfish decision that I have yet made in my life. I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have chosen this life except for a strong call that I initially tried to resist; and, knowing myself as I do, it is by far the most life-giving choice that I possibly could have made. I say this because, knowing myself and knowing my wounds, I know too that I would not have been nearly as generative (nor as happy) in any other state in life. I nurse some deep wounds, not moral ones, but wounds of the heart, and those very wounds have been, thanks to the grace of God, a source of fruitfulness in my ministry.
Moreover, I have been blessed in the ministries that have been assigned to me. As a seminarian, I dreamed of being a parish priest, but that was never to be. Immediately after ordination, I was sent to do graduate studies in theology and then taught theology at various seminaries and theology schools for most of these fifty years, save for twelve years that I served as a provincial superior of my local Oblate community and on the Oblate General Council in Rome. I loved teaching! I was meant to be a religious teacher and religious writer and so my ministry, all of it, has been very satisfying. My hope is that it has been generative for others.
In addition, I have been blessed by the Oblate communities within which I lived. My ministry usually had me living in larger Oblate communities and through these fifty years, I estimate that I have lived in community with well over three hundred different men. That’s a rich experience. Moreover, I have always lived in healthy, robust, caring, supportive, and intellectually challenging communities that gave me the spiritual and human family I needed. There were tensions at times, but those tensions were never not life giving. Religious community is unique, sui generis. It isn’t family in the emotional or psychosexual sense, but family that is rooted in something deeper than biology and attraction – faith.
There have been struggles of course, not least with the emotional issues around celibacy and living inside a loneliness which (as Merton once said) God, himself, condemned. It is not good for someone to be alone! It is here too where my Oblate religious community has been an anchor. Vowed celibacy can be lived and can be fruitful, though not without community support.
Let me end with a comment that I once heard from a priest who was celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday and his sixtieth anniversary of ordination. Asked how he felt about it all, he said, “It wasn’t always easy! There were some bitter, lonely times. Everyone in my ordination class left the priesthood, every one of them, and I was tempted too. But I stayed and now, looking back after sixty years, I’m pretty happy with the way my life turned out!”
That sums up my feelings too after fifty years – I’m pretty happy with the way it has turned out – and deeply, deeply grateful.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)
THINGS OLD AND NEW By Ruth Powers Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. –1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 During the month of November, we in the United States traditionally focus on the virtue of gratitude, looking back to that feast celebrated by the Pilgrims as they gave thanks for a good harvest after the first terrible winter they spent in the New World. However, as Catholics and as Christians, we are called to make gratitude one of the central virtues in our lives. We are, first, called to gratitude by the Scriptures. Both the Old and the New Testament speak of the importance of giving thanks to God in all things and all circumstances. The psalms contain many beautiful hymns of thankfulness and praise, that God is the source of all things and that when we recognize this truth, we are moved to thanksgiving. St. Paul teaches about the virtue of Christian thankfulness in many of his letters even when the communities to whom he writes are undergoing trials. Gratitude is also a theme in the writings and teachings of too many saints to enumerate.
Ruth Powers
Often, though, we are more likely to forget that all we have we owe to God, and to become distracted by the concerns of our daily lives and forget to give God the thanks He deserves for all He gives to us. We are much more likely to complain about what is going wrong in our lives than to focus on the gifts we have been given. True gratitude (and not mere politeness) flows out of humility. It begins with the realization that we lack something that has been freely supplied by another because at that time we could not get or do it for ourselves. As people of faith, we also know that God is the ultimate source of “life, the universe and everything” and so must be the ultimate object of our gratitude. It’s easy to think of doing this when all is well, but St. Paul reminds us that we are to give thanks in all circumstances, not just the good ones, because we never know what part even seemingly bad or uncomfortable things may have in God’s plan for us. There is a passage in Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place where she and her sister give thanks for the fleas that infest the bunkhouse where they are living in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Later they realize that the guards have not searched their bunks and found their contraband Bibles because of the fleas. At the end of his life, St. Francis of Assisi was blind and in constant pain; yet in these seemingly terrible circumstances, he wrote his most famous prayer, which was a hymn of thanks: “Praise be my Lord for Brother Sun…, Sister Moon and the stars…, Sister Water …, Brother Fire…, our Sister Mother Earth…, Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks.” We are reminded to cultivate gratitude even when it seems things are going badly for us. The other issue that cultivating the virtue of gratitude will help to combat is the culture of entitlement that seems to permeate our society. Many people seem to feel that the world owes them preferential treatment for no other reason than an inflated vision of their own importance. Gratitude teaches us that our own labors, important as they may be, have their source in gifts given to us by God and thus should be sources of humility and gratitude toward the one who loves us enough to give us those gifts. We run into immeasurable trouble when we begin to give ourselves credit for what we have rather than giving thanks to the one who is the true source of all. Although November may be the time culturally when we think about giving thanks, gratitude needs to be nurtured and expressed daily. A very wise retreat master once challenged a group of retreatants to this meditation: “Think about what your life would be like if you woke up one morning and all you had left in your life was what you had thanked God for the day before.” We would do well to meditate on this frequently.
(Ruth Powers is the program coordinator for St. Mary Basilica Parish in Natchez.)
Did you know Jackson sits on an extinct volcano 2,900 feet under the Mississippi Coliseum, having erupted 75 million years ago and unlikely to blow any time soon? Well, who knows how many Mississippi agates (usually found in volcanic material) there might be?
Maybe you’d find a three-inch thunder-egg shape of varied colors. Agates are often rust-red from the oxidizing iron or yellow, brown, black, grey, pink and even sometimes green. White bands of quartz separate the colors. The translucence of the quartz allows light to shine through and even glow. Fossils are billions of years old, and many are found in our gravel pits. The Mississippi agate is a mere 323 million years old.
Sister alies therese
Shapes are important too, how the water has formed them in the streams as they travel down from the Nashville Dome in Tennessee to the Appalachian Mountains of Alabama. All these rivers are moving toward the gulf and their deposits are still to be discovered near where I live in Northeast Mississippi. They say these ancient gravel deposits were recycled by erosion and made new bars in modern rivers like the Tombigbee. Sometimes they were embedded in floating ice!
Treasures of the heart are frequently the result of much refining and pressure, often formed by the water of tears. Have you noticed? The diamond is beautifully created under pressure; who knew when the first person discovered the magnificent geode’s insides or that a bland and ‘regular-looking- outer- rock’ had a purple amethyst encrusted within?
Consider the Great Star of Africa, (Cullinan I), part of a larger diamond discovered beneath the earth in South Africa in 1905…the largest of the Crown Jewels we learned about during the passing of the queen. It was formed over 400 miles deep in the earth. Worth millions…whose money is it? South Africans think it’s theirs. Why not, it was a gift ‘taken’ from the people’s pocket.
What are the pressures we seem to be under that shave off our rough edges and when someone looks inside, they discover such magnificence? Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman reminds me of one whose guileless splendor exploded through the pressures!
I’ve always been a bit of a rockhound and often collected a small stone from places I’ve visited…a stone from St. Kevin’s Hermitage near Glendalough in Ireland (where his slab of sleeping rock remains), finding a rock with a fossil in a Kentucky creek. A friend brought me the plainest looking rock from her refugee camp in Iraq, another from Elijah’s cave on Mt. Carmel, and another from her workplace in Alaska.
The thing about these stones is that they are indeed plain, nothing could get a big WOW! They are a perfect example of ‘what you see is what you get’. Various sorts of collections like this provide us with ‘prayer-stones,’ reminding us of just who we are praying for. I have a stone from the gravel outside the prison in New Jersey where a friend was on death row. Another stone from Helen Keller’s place in Alabama, and one from a lonely wild cliff in Scotland. Other times I’ve challenged myself to collect perfectly round stones.
Markers have always shown up biblically, sometimes as treasures, sometimes as tablets of information, and sometimes as a place to rest while on an agonizing journey. Stones were piled up for altars and places of worship, as signals of the way to go, and as weapons of destruction; five small ones for David. Houses, fences and walkways, birdhouses, prisons and barriers, abound in various cultures. We find stone spirals or labyrinths. There is a power in the stone, stability, and a substance not easily blown over even by the strongest of storms. Jesus is our ‘cornerstone.’ That is a forever thanksgiving gift!
Of course, the gems that come from deep within are still the natural resources of the nations, looked for and often sold on markets that do not respect the miner’s work. You might remember the issues around diamonds…were they ‘blood diamonds’ or not, one would ask the jeweler…some knew what you were talking about, and others either did not or ignored the question.
These natural resources were part of what was wanted by colonizers and those who came to take the land (and gem resources) from indigenous peoples and tribes. Rubies, emeralds, agates, diamonds and sapphires are among the beauty God created under the pressure of earth and stone.
Consider this from Exodus 28:15ff: “On the breastplate of decision, you shall have made you shall mount four rows of precious stones: in the first row a carnelian, a topaz, and an emerald; in the second a garnet, a sapphire and a beryl; in the third row a jacinth, an agate and an amethyst; the fourth a chrysolite, an onyx and a jasper…each stone engraved like a seal with the name of one of the twelve tribes.”
How do you mark your breastplate of decision? Have you discovered your deep withins? Have you turned your pressures and ‘I’m going to blow up’ into something extraordinarily beautiful? Well, even though the Mississippi state stone is petrified wood, the Mississippi agate is there for you to find. Goin’ lookin’?
BLESSINGS.
(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)
NATION INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) – It was a time of Scripture, prayer, music and fellowship. It also was a night to honor the late co-founder of the National Black Catholic Men’s Conference. But for those teenagers and adults from across the United States in attendance, Franciscan Father Agustino Torres’ message Oct. 13 was simple, yet powerful: “The Lord has sent me to bless you.” Father Agustino, who ministers for his order in the New York borough of the Bronx and is founder of the Hispanic youth ministry Corazon Puro, was the keynote speaker on the first night of the four-day conference at St. Rita Church in Indianapolis. The gathering drew about 300 people. It was the first in-person gathering since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The priest said he ministers to people in the inner city, and the heart of his mission is trying to bring them hope. With that hope he also delivers his blessing, much like the blessing he offered to the attendees. “This blessing is meant to be shared, this blessing is meant to be given, this blessing brings joy,” he said. “This blessing brings life, this blessing heals. … And I love sharing the blessing because someone has shared the blessing with me.”
WASHINGTON (CNS) – For the world-renowned emblems of the Catholic faith, such as St. Teresa of Kolkata, elevation to sainthood comes fairly quickly following their deaths. For many others, the sainthood cause is a slow process that sometimes lurches to a stop. One example is Venerable Nelson Baker, the Buffalo, New York, priest who died in 1936 and is the only Civil War veteran with a sainthood cause. Father Baker, who served at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo after his ordination in 1876, was beloved in his lifetime for his charitable efforts for the poor, including serving thousands of meals during the depths of the Great Depression. Dubbed by local newspapers as “the padre of the poor,” he built the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory in Lackawanna, New York, an orphanage, a maternity hospital, a trade school and a home for infant care. The charitable work he began exists today as OLV Charities. Our Lady of Victory institutions include Homes of Charity, Baker Victory Services and Our Lady of Victory Elementary School. Born in 1842, Father Baker entered the priesthood after operating a successful feed and grain business with a partner. Before that, he served in the 74th Infantry of the New York State Militia, a unit that organized in the summer of 1863 and was stationed in Central Pennsylvania, although it didn’t see combat.
VATICAN VATICAN CITY (CNS) – During the month of November, Pope Francis is asking people to pray for children who are suffering because of poverty, war and exploitation. “Let us pray for children who are suffering, especially for those who are homeless, orphans and victims of war. May they be guaranteed access to education, and may they have the opportunity to experience family affection,” the pope said in a video released Oct. 31. In the video message released by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, the pope explained his November prayer intention: “For children who suffer.” “An abandoned child is our fault,” the pope said in the message. “Each marginalized child, abandoned by his or her family, without schooling, without health care, is a cry! A cry that rises up to God and shames the system that we adults have built,” he insisted. Pope Francis noted that there are millions of boys and girls around the world living “in conditions very similar to slavery.”
Catholics and members of a Peruvian community living in Chile attend the procession of El Señor de los Milagros (The Lord of the Miracles), Peru’s most revered Catholic religious icon, in Santiago, Chile, Oct. 30, 2022. (CNS photo/Ivan Alvarado, Reuters)
WORLD LIMA, Peru (CNS) – The church in Latin America and the Caribbean is called to be a missionary church that heeds the cry of the poor and excluded; a synodal church where women, young people and laypeople have greater roles; and a church that is evangelized even as it evangelizes, according to the final document of the church’s First Ecclesial Assembly held a year ago in Mexico. The document of reflections and pastoral challenges resulting from the assembly was released by leaders of the Latin American bishops’ council, CELAM, Oct. 31 during a news conference at the Vatican. The conference was livestreamed on various platforms. The publication reflects a desire for a church that “goes out to the periphery … a Samaritan church … a church that builds fraternity, which is grounded in love, in the encounter with those who suffer most,” Archbishop José Luis Azuaje of Maracaibo, Venezuela, president of Caritas in Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a video message at the presentation. The document is the fruit of a monthslong process that included a “listening” period from April to August 2021, during which some 70,000 people throughout the region provided input, followed by the weeklong assembly Nov. 21-28. That process, which echoed the methodology used for the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon in October 2019, made the ecclesial assembly “a practical laboratory” for the Synod of Bishops on synodality, which began with listening sessions this year, to be followed by meetings in Rome in 2023 and 2024, said Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos of Trujillo, Peru, CELAM president.
BANGKOK, Thailand (CNS) – Catholic bishops in Asia have committed themselves to engage with governments, nongovernmental agencies and civil organizations to respond to issues affecting the church and society in their work for a better Asia. “We believe that peace and reconciliation is the only way forward. We have envisaged new pathways for our ministry based on mutual listening and genuine discernment,” the bishops said in a statement issued Oct. 30, at the end of a two-week general conference. Ucanews.com reported the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences organized its first general conference as a part of its golden jubilee celebrations that brought together 20 cardinals, 120 bishops, 37 priests, eight nuns, and 41 laypeople. The conference, with the theme “Journeying Together as Peoples of Asia,” sought to reaffirm the federation’s work of the past 50 years aiming to “revitalize the church and envision new pathways of service.” One of the paths they identified was “bridge-building” among religions and traditions and also “principled engagement with governments” and nongovernmental agencies on issues of human rights, eradication of poverty, human trafficking, care of the earth, and other common concerns. “The escalating violence and conflicts” in Asia call “for dialogue and reconciliation,” the bishops said without naming any issue or any nation.
By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Around the world, listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops gave many participants a sense of finally being listened to, but they also raised questions about how to promote greater inclusion in the Catholic Church while staying true to church teaching.
Two of the issues raised most often in reports sent to the Vatican were the need to respect and value the contributions women make to the church and the need to face “the impact of a lack of trust and credibility resulting from the abuse crisis,” according to the working document for the synod’s continental stage.
Titled “Enlarge the Space of Your Tent” – the Lord’s command to the people of Israel in the Book of Isaiah – the document said, “This is how many reports envision the church: an expansive, but not homogeneous dwelling, capable of sheltering all, but open, letting in and out, and moving toward embracing the Father and all of humanity.”
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, relator general of the Synod of Bishops, speaks at a news conference at the Vatican via video chat Oct. 27 to present the document for the continental phase of the synod on synodality. The document will guide discussions at the regional or continental level in preparation for the synod. (CNS photo/Junno Arocho Esteves)
The document released Oct. 27 is the result of a group reflection on the syntheses of synod discussions submitted by 112 of the world’s 114 bishops’ conference, all 15 Eastern churches, 17 of the 23 dicasteries of the Roman Curia, the men’s and women’s international unions of superiors general, dozens of Catholic associations and more than 1,000 individuals, it said.
The general secretariat of the synod chose an international group of laity, religious, priests and bishops to read the submissions, pray about them and then draft a document that would help participants in the next phase reflect on the faith, hopes and concerns witnessed to in the reports. The document was approved by the cardinals and bishops belonging to the synod’s general council.
What emerged from the reports, it said, “is a profound re-appropriation of the common dignity of all the baptized. This is the authentic pillar of a synodal church and the theological foundation of a unity which is capable of resisting the push toward homogenization. This enables us to continue to promote and make good use of the variety of charisms that the Spirit with unpredictable abundance pours out on the faithful.”
Those who most often feel unwelcome in the church or undervalued, it said, include: women, young people, people with disabilities, the poor, those who are divorced and civilly remarried, single parents, those in polygamous marriages and members of the LGBTQ communities.
Responding to experiences of exclusion and discrimination shared by Catholic with disabilities, the document said that “in spite of its own teachings, the church is in danger of imitating the way society casts them aside.”
Reflecting the central place of the Eucharist in the life of the church, it said most submissions included a call for greater participation by all Catholics in the liturgy, working to ensure that it is less “concentrated on the celebrant,” involves more young people and women, including in preaching, and is more reflective of local cultures.
At the same time, the document also noted that in several reports, including that from the United States, some participants in the local listening sessions “lamented” Pope Francis’ decision to limit celebrations of the Latin-rite Mass according to the rite used before the Second Vatican Council.
“The quality of homilies is almost unanimously reported as a problem,” it said.
But the document also highlighted a common desire to find solutions to various forms of “sacramental deprivation,” including for people in remote towns and villages without a priest, as well as for civilly remarried Catholics and those in polygamous marriages.
While the reports were not “against priests or the ministerial priesthood,” the document said, many of them cited “clericalism” as an obstacle to being a “synodal church,” one where all the baptized share responsibility for the life of the community and for its mission of spreading the Gospel.
“Clericalism is seen as a form of spiritual impoverishment, a deprivation of the true goods of ordained ministry, and a culture that isolates clergy and harms the laity,” it said. Clericalism produces “rigidity, attachment to legalistic power and an exercise of authority that is power rather than service.”
In synod listening sessions around the world, participants noted that women are the majority of Catholics regularly attending the liturgy and staffing most paid and volunteer parish activities, yet it is mostly men who make the decisions in the church.
“Many reports ask that the church continue its discernment in relation to a range of specific questions: the active role of women in the governing structures of church bodies, the possibility for women with adequate training to preach in parish settings, and a female diaconate,” the document said. “Much greater diversity of opinion was expressed on the subject of priestly ordination for women, which some reports call for, while others consider a closed issue.”
Between January and March, smaller groups of church representatives are to meet on a continental or regional level; organized by bishops’ conferences, the groups are to include bishops, priests, religious and laypeople to read the document, pray about it and discuss which issues raised it in are most important and urgent for Catholics in their region to address in order to increase participation, a sense of communion and a commitment to missionary outreach.
By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Nativity scene that will sit under a 98-feet-tall silver fir tree in the middle of St. Peter’s Square this year will feature 19 life-sized figures carved in cedar by artisans in the northeastern Italian town of Sutrio.
The tree comes from Rosello, a village of only 182 residents, in Italy’s central Abruzzo region, said a news release issued Oct. 28 by the office governing Vatican City State. The decorations on the tree are being made by young adults at a residential psychiatric facility in Rosello.
These two Vatican Christmas stamps were painted by Francesco Canale, an artist born without arms or legs who paints holding a brush between his teeth. The Christmas stamps will go on sale at the Vatican post office Nov. 16, 2022. (CNS photo/Vatican Philatelic Office)
The tree will be lighted, and the traditional Nativity scene unveiled Dec. 3, the office said. The display will remain up until after the feast of the Baptism of the Lord Jan. 8. The cedar for the Nativity scene figures, the Vatican said, came from trees selectively cut by gardeners to improve the health of other trees in several public and private gardens. None of the trees were cut specifically for the sculptures. The Holy Family, the ox and donkey and an angel will be under an arched structure made of larch. The other figures – including the Three Kings, the shepherdess, a carpenter, a family and a “Cramar,” or local wandering salesman – will be on the surrounding platform or ramps leading to it.
The day before the office announced the plans for St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican’s Philatelic Office published a notice about the Vatican’s 2022 Christmas stamps, which were painted by Italian artist and activist Francesco Canale, who was born without arms or legs and paints holding a brush between his teeth.
He painted two stamps – one of an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to a shepherd and one of a shepherd adoring the baby Jesus.
By Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) – With a renewed membership, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met at the Vatican in late October and laid the groundwork for devising an annual report on child protection efforts by the Catholic Church globally.
Oblate Father Andrew Small, commission secretary, told reporters Oct. 28 that members also looked at the commission’s new relationship to the disciplinary section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and continued their efforts to promote greater transparency and fuller reporting to victims about the outcome of their cases.
“In our engagement with victim survivors, the acknowledgement of the wrong that was done to them is primary, being listened to, being believed,” Father Small said. “There’s nothing that takes the place of being believed and heard.”
But, he said, “seeing the wrongdoer continue to flourish at times or to appear without sanction is also very painful,” so victims are understandably confused or upset when they are not informed about actions taken by the church against an accused offender.
Because the commission is not involved in individual investigations and disciplinary procedures, Father Small said he could not comment on the case of Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, France. When the Vatican announced in 2021 that the bishop was retiring, the bishop had said it was for health reasons. No one contradicted him publicly until mid-October when the Diocese of Créteil confirmed he had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct and disciplined by the Vatican.
The Vatican still needs to find a way to be more open while respecting local laws that protect the reputation of someone who is not guilty of a civil crime but may have violated church law, Father Small said. If the church cannot figure that out, he said, not only will it be bad for the institutional church, “but it will be continually painful for the victims, who are the source and summit of the commission’s focus.”
When Pope Francis reorganized the Roman Curia, he linked the commission to the disciplinary section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Father Small, writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said the move ensures the commission “would maintain its independence as an advisory body to the pope, with access to the bodies that exercise leadership within the church and with the mandate to oversee the adequacy of the church’s policies and procedures in the area of abuse prevention and safeguarding.”
So, Father Small wrote, the commission “will continue to be led by a president delegate, appointed by the pope and reporting directly to the pontiff. And decisions regarding the personnel, the members of the commission, as well as the proposals it produces, will remain independent of the dicastery. Pope Francis has been very clear that the independent voices of the members of the commission and those it serves should not be compromised.”
U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston has been president of the commission since its establishment in 2014.
During the commission’s meeting Oct. 27-29, it also announced the launch of a fund to help finance the establishment of “suitable centers where individuals who have experienced abuse, and their family members, can find acceptance and an attentive hearing, and be accompanied in a process of healing and justice, as indicated in the motu proprio ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi.’”
Father Small told reporters that he believed 70 to 80 of the 114 bishops’ conferences in the world do not have stable, publicly accessible reporting mechanisms called for in Vos Estis, mainly because they do not have the resources. But with major funding from the Italian bishops’ conference and contributions from others, those listening and reporting posts will be established.
As for the annual report on the church’s child protection efforts worldwide, a report the pope asked the commission in April to develop, Father Small said commission members outlined a design for the report. The first section, he said, would summarize reports bishops give to the commission while making their “ad limina” visits to the Vatican regarding their guidelines and implementation of Vos Estis.
For the second section, commission members will divide into teams to look at the church in specific geographical areas, focusing on giving a broader overview of child protection efforts in Africa, in Asia and Oceania, in Europe and in the Americas.
A third section will look at how dicasteries of the Roman Curia are including safeguarding in their activities; for example, how the Dicastery for Clergy promotes safeguarding awareness in seminaries, he said.
The final section will look at broader church efforts to protect children in the world by, for example, rescuing child soldiers, protecting migrant and refugee children, ensuring their safety in orphanages and foster care homes.
While Father Small said the commission should have something to give the pope in 2023, he does not expect to collect enough “actionable data” to begin doing a full annual report until 2024.
JACKSON – St. Jude parish engaged in their Feed My Sheep ministry led by Beth Paczak. The group served lunch at Poindexter Park on Sunday, October 23. (Photos by Rhonda Bowden)
