GIVE THANKS TO GOD FOR YOUR PARENTS

Vatican City, 29 May 2013 (VIS) – At the end of today's general audience, as he does every Wednesday, the Holy Father greeted the pilgrims of the various language groups in St. Peter's Square.

Pope Francis addressed a few words to the youth who will be gathering this Saturday, 1 June, at Lednica Lake in Poland for the yearly commemoration of the first Baptism of the Polish people in 966.

“Remember that God is our Father,” the Pope said to them. “He created us, bestowed our talents on each of us, and guides us along the path of life. He is with us in spite of our weaknesses, our sins, and our omissions. … He is the model of all parenthood, even earthly paternity.”

“”Don't forget,” he urged them, “to thank God for your parents … even if your relationship might not be so good. Parenthood is a gift from God and it is a great responsibility to give new life, which is an unrepeatable image of God. Don't be afraid to be parents. … Also, be open to being spiritual mothers and fathers.”

Man prayed over by Pope says he suffered from demons

Rome, Italy, May 30, 2013 / 04:12 pm (CNA).- A 43-year-old Mexican man whom Pope Francis prayed over in St. Peter’s Square on Pentecost Sunday said that he had suffered from demonic possession for more than a decade.

Father Gabriele Amorth, the famous exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, told CNA on May 22 that Angel had received a “prayer of deliverance” from the Pope, who laid hands on him and prayed after Mass on May 19.

In an interview published by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the man, identified as Angel, recalled that his problems began one day in 1999 as he returned from Mexico City to his hometown in Michoacan by bus.

“I felt an energy enter the bus. I did not see it with my eyes but I felt it,” he said. “I noticed that it approached me and stood in front of me. And suddenly, I felt like a knife stabbed me in the chest and then, little by little, I had the sensation that it was opening my ribs.”

Initially, Angel thought it was a heart attack, but he did not die. However his health worsened, because he vomited everything he ate.

“I felt punctures all over my body, as if it were full of needles,” he said. “Even the sheets hurt me. I started losing the ability to walk.”

Soon, he said that he began falling into trances, uttering blasphemies and speaking in unknown languages, with doctors who attended him unable to explain what was wrong.

Angel’s health became so poor that he received last rites on four different occasions. The anointing brought an improvement to his health, so he started praying with a particular devotion to the Divine Mercy.

In 2004, he attended a lecture in the Mexican city of Morelia by a Ukrainian priest who explained his case.

“I told him what was happening to me, how bad I felt. He touched a relic of Padre Pio to my chest and I saw a special light that surrounded me,” he recalled.

“I felt a great peace. But at the same time, I noticed something that began to scratch inside me. That something knocked me down and started to manifest itself. I couldn’t do anything, that presence was stronger than me and it overpowered me.”

That day, Angel said, it was clear that he was possessed, and this knowledge made him feel fearful and “very dirty.”

“My family reacted at first with disbelief and, in fact, between my siblings there are some who are still skeptics and who believe that what I have is the result of a psychological imbalance,” he stated.

Initially, a priest in Mexico City performed four or five exorcisms on Angel. During one of them, the priest “asked the demon how he had entered into me and it said it was because of a curse that someone put on me.”

Angel’s health continued to deteriorate despite several exorcisms. He became unable to work and had to close his advertising company. He was forced to sell his house in order to support his wife and two children.

However, he recently had a dream in which he saw Pope Francis “dressed in red and praying with an incense burner in his hand and surrounded by bishops and cardinals.”

He said that he initially didn’t give it much thought, but when he woke up, he turned on the television and saw “a Mass with the Pope dressed in red and with incense burning in his hand, surrounded by bishops and cardinals.”

“And a thought came to my mind: Do I have to go to Rome?” he said.

Although Angel was hesitant to travel because he was so sick, he eventually decided to make the trip to Rome with a priest that he knew.

He had been reading the book “The Last Exorcist,” by Fr. Amorth, “which states that both Benedict XVI and John Paul II had performed exorcisms and prayers of delivery over the possessed.”

Fr. Amorth witnessed the Pope’s prayer over Angel and said the next day, “there is no doubt that he is possessed.”

Dark moment reminded Pope to seek God's will above success

Vatican City, May 29, 2013 / 10:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At his daily Mass in St. Martha’s residence this morning, Pope Francis warned about the dangers of a Church that is too concerned with “organization and success” by recalling a “dark moment” of his spiritual life.

“A Church that only thinks about triumphs (and) successes, does not know that rule of Jesus: the rule of triumph through failure, human failure, the failure of the Cross.

“And this is a temptation that we all have,” the Pope told employees of the Vatican City State Governorate at the May 29 Mass.

For Pope Francis, today’s Gospel reading from St. Mark reminded him of when “I was in a dark moment in my spiritual life and I asked a favor from the Lord.”

“Then, I went to preach the annual spiritual retreat to nuns, and on the last day they made their confession.

“One elderly nun, over 80 years of age, but with clear, bright eyes came to confession: she was a woman of God. In the end I saw that she really was a woman of God so I said ‘Sister, as penance, pray for me, because I need a grace, ok? If you ask the Lord for this grace on my behalf, I am sure to receive it.’

“She stopped for a moment, as if in prayer, and said, ‘Of course the Lord will grant you this grace, but do not be deceived: in His own divine manner,’” the Pope recalled.

“This did me a lot of good. To hear that the Lord always gives us what we ask for, but in His own divine way. And this is the divine way to the very end. The divine way involves the Cross, not out of masochism: no, no! Out of love. For love to the very end,” he said.

Pope Francis told the story to drive home his point that there is a risk of becoming “half-way Christians,” that is believers who shun suffering and only look for what they perceive to be success.

In the gospel reading for today, James and John ask Jesus – just after he has described how he will suffer, die and rise – if they can sit on his right and left when he enters into his glory.

Pope Francis said the disciples want to do things differently, they plan to go only half way, so they discuss among themselves how to arrange the Church and arrange salvation.

And this temptation is the same one that Jesus faced in the desert, the Pope said, when the devil proposed another path to him: “Do everything with speed, perform a miracle, something that everyone can see.

Let’s go to the temple and skydive without a parachute, so everyone will see the miracle and redemption will come to pass.”

Saint Peter was also confronted with the temptation when he at did not accept the passion of Jesus, the pontiff noted.

“It is the temptation of a Christianity without the Cross, a half-way Christianity” that is more concerned with apparent victory than with the Father’s plan.

It “is the temptation of triumphalism. We want the triumph now, without going to the Cross, a worldly triumph, a reasonable triumph,” Pope Francis preached.

“Triumphalism in the Church, impedes the Church. Triumphalism among Christians impedes Christians. A triumphalist, half-way Church, that is a Church that is content with what it is or has, well sorted – well organized - with all its offices, everything in order, everything perfect, no?” he said.

This kind of Church might be efficient, but it is one that “denies its martyrs, because it does not know that martyrs are needed for the Church's journey towards the Cross,” the Pope warned.

Nigerian bishops lament disunity among local Catholics

Abuja, Nigeria, May 23, 2013 / 04:06 am (CNA).- As the Catholics of the Diocese of Ahiara protested the appointment of a bishop from a nearby diocese as their shepherd, local bishops expressed sadness at the disunity in the Church of Nigeria.

Bishop Peter Ebere Okpaleke – formerly a priest of the Awka diocese – was consecrated bishop of the Diocese of Ahiara in Nigeria May 21, while many residents of the diocese rallied against the move.

Due to the strong opposition among the local Mbaise community, Bishop Okpaleke was installed outside his new diocese, at Seat of Wisdom Seminary in Ulakwo, in the Archdiocese of Owerri.

Bishop Okpaleke was consecrated by Archbishop Anthony J. V. Obinna of Owerri, Ahiara's metropolitan archbishop, with a cardinal and several bishops in attendance, as well as heightened security.

The homily was given by Bishop Lucius I. Ugorji of Umuahia, who said that “acceptance of the papal appointment is a respect for the Pope, while the outright rejection and inflammatory statements and protests are spiteful and disrespectful of papal authority,” according to The Sun of Lagos.

According to the Vanguard of Lagos, Archbishop Obinna said May 19 that “we decided to organize the ordination away from Mbaise so as to give peace a chance...it is sad that what we are experiencing is a war between Catholics and Catholics.”

Bishop Okpaleke comes from the Awka diocese, 62 miles from Ahiara, and is not an ethnic Mbaise. The Catholics of the diocese wanted one of their own to be appointed bishop over them.

“The Mbaise people wanted their own bishop, who knows what's going on within the community,” George Awuzie, an Mbaise emigrant to California and a representative of Mbaise USA, told CNA May 20.

“They're sending someone from a different community, a different village, that doesn't know what we do within our area.”

The Mbaise are the most Catholic among Nigerian people – 77 percent of the population of 620,000 are Catholic. Surrounding diocese range between 4 and 64 percent Catholic.

Families in the rural diocese foster priestly and religious vocations, with at least 167 priestly ordinations for the diocese since its establishment in 1987.

The diocese is currently served by 127 priests and 113 religious, according to Vatican Radio. The Ahiara diocese covers 164 square miles – roughly one sixth the size of Rhode Island.

With such a wealth of priests, the Ahiara diocese sends many as missionaries to Western countries, and many Mbaise hoped that one of its own would become their bishop.

Ahiara's first ordinary, Bishop Victor A. Chikwe, served from 1987 until his death in Sept., 2010. The diocese was vacant for 26 months until Pope Benedict appointed Father Okpaleke last December.

Bishop Okpaleke was born in 1963, and was ordained a priest in 1992. He has served a pastor, university chaplain, and diocesan chancellor. After his ordination he studied canon law at Holy Cross Pontifical University in Rome, and has served on the tribunal for the Onitsha ecclesiastical province.

Both priests and faithful have made vocal, public protests against Bishop Okpaleke's appointment, blocking access to Ahiara's cathedral and disrupting both automobile and foot traffic in the area.

On May 16, some 400 Mbaise protested the appointment in the streets of the diocese, carrying signs with slogans such as “Awka has 5 bishops, Mbaise has 0 bishops” and asking for an “Mbaise son as Mbaise bishop.”

Conflict over the episcopal appointment highlights tribal tensions in Nigeria. Opposition to Bishop Okpaleke has not suggested any poor administration on his part, but focuses solely on his not being a member of the people whom he is to shepherd.

“They ended up going over (the priests of Ahiara) to get someone from another village; appointed a bishop from another village to be bishop of the Mbaise people,” Awuzie told CNA.

Awka, whence Bishop Okpaleke comes, is located in the state of Anambra. Ahiara, meanwhile, is located to the south in Imo state. Mbaise assert that the Nigerian hierarchy favors Anambra.

Mbaise note the appointment of bishops from the Onitsha province – based in Anambra – while few if any episcopal appointments are made of priests from the Owerri province, in Imo and Abia states.

The Mbaise, who are proud of their identity and strong Catholicism, resent what they call the “Anambranization” of the Church in southeast Nigeria, believing there to be corruption within the Church in Nigeria and a “recolonization” of the Mbaise.

The Mbaise are a tribe of the Igbo, one of the three major ethnic groups of Nigeria. Most Christians in Nigeria are Igbo, and reside in the south-east of the country. Soon after Nigeria gained independence from British colonialism, the government, led by the Yoruba and Hausa peoples, began to persecute the Igbo.

In 1967, the Igbo rebelled, forming the Republic of Biafra, resulting in the Nigerian Civil War. The rebellion was put down by 1970, and the region has yet to recover, having lost as many as one million of its population to war and famine.

Overall, Nigerian society is perceived as struggling with corruption, ranking at 139 among 176 countries considered by Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perception Index. It is just ahead of Bangladesh, and in the company of Pakistan and Kenya.

In the face of division among the Igbo, brought to light by the controversy over Bishop Okpaleke, there have been calls for greater Igbo unity and identity.

Father Stan Chu Ilo, who is Igbo and teaches theology at the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto, wrote Jan. 11 at “Sahara Reporters” that the crisis has caused him to note that “after the Civil War and the ongoing marginalization of Ndigbo in Nigeria, I believe that the Igbo people should unite and work together as brothers and sisters for the good of the ethnic nation and the wider Nigerian, African and international community.”

“Igbo Catholicism should be the veritable instrument for bringing unity in our communities, parishes, dioceses and states in Igbo land,” he concluded.

Don't create sacrament of 'pastoral customs,' Pope preaches

Vatican City, May 25, 2013 / 06:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis warned that some Christians establish the eighth sacrament “of pastoral customs” when they insist on protocol instead of seeking to meet spiritual needs.

He made his remarks during his May 25 homily on the Gospel reading from Mark 10 in which the disciples rebuked people who were bringing children to Jesus.

“I remember once, coming out of the city of Salta, on the patronal feast, there was a humble lady who asked for a priest’s blessing,” Pope Francis recalled in the chapel of St. Martha’s House.

“The priest said, ‘All right, but you were at the Mass’ and explained the whole theology of blessing in the Church. You did well: ‘Ah, thank you father, yes father,’ said the woman. When the priest had gone, the woman turned to another priest: ‘Give me your blessing!’

“All these words did not register with her,” the Pope underscored, “because she had another necessity: the need to be touched by the Lord. That is the faith that we always look for, this is the faith that brings the Holy Spirit. We must facilitate it, make it grow, help it grow.”

He also pointed to the story of the blind man of Jericho, who was rebuked by the disciples because he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

“The Gospel says that they didn’t want him to shout, they wanted him not to shout but he wanted to shout more, why? Because he had faith in Jesus! The Holy Spirit had put faith in his heart. And they said, ‘No, you cannot do this! You don’t shout to the Lord. Protocol does not allow it.’”

Pope Francis also used a more modern example by describing an encounter of a young couple with a parish secretary.

“‘Good morning, the two of us - boyfriend and girlfriend - we want to get married,’” the couple says.

“And instead of saying, ‘That's great!’ They say, ‘Oh, well, have a seat. If you want the Mass, it costs a lot ... .’ This, instead of receiving a good welcome – ‘It is a good thing to get married!’ – But instead they get this response: ‘Do you have the certificate of baptism, all right ... .’ And they find a closed door,” the Pope said.

He described the situation as one where a “Christian has the ability to open a door, thanking God for this fact of a new marriage” but instead the secretary controlled the faith when it was possible to have facilitated the couples’ faith.

“There is always a temptation,” he said, “to try and take possession of the Lord.”

Before finishing his homily, Pope Francis painted one final scenario, that of a single mother who wants to have her child baptized.

“Think about a single mother who goes to church, in the parish and to the secretary she says: ‘I want my child baptized.’

“And then this Christian, this Christian says: ‘No, you cannot because you're not married!’

“But look, this girl who had the courage to carry her pregnancy and not to return her son to the sender, what is it? A closed door! This is not zeal! It is far from the Lord! It does not open doors!

“And so when we are on this street, we have this attitude, we do not do good to people, the people, the People of God. But Jesus instituted the seven sacraments, (and) with this attitude and we are establishing the eighth: the sacrament of pastoral customs!” he warned.

The Pope noted, “Jesus is indignant when he sees these things” because those who suffer are “his faithful people, the people that he loves so much.”

He concluded his homily by asking everyone to think about “the Holy People of God, a simple people, who want to get closer to Jesus and we think of so many Christians of goodwill who are wrong and that instead of opening a door they close the door of goodwill ... So we ask the Lord that all those who come to the Church find the doors open, find the doors open, open to meet this love of Jesus. We ask this grace.”

Mideast Christians unite in prayer for abducted bishops

Aleppo, Syria, May 23, 2013 / 02:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Orthodox and Catholic Christians in the Middle East gathered this week to pray for and appeal for the realease of two Orthodox bishops who were kidnapped in Syria one month ago.

“We renew our request for the abductees to...release the two Archbishops without hurting their health or physical situation; and release all other abducted priests and innocent civilians,” the Syriac and Greek Orthodox archdioceses of Aleppo said May 22.

“We trust that the mercy of the one God whom we all believe in, will guide the abductees and induce them to release the Archbishops without any pre-conditions, because there is no price equals the freedom of the two Archbishops, and no condition equals their safe return to their communities and churches.”

Just over a month ago, on April 22, Archbishop John Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Archbishop Paul Yagizi of the Greek Orthodox Church were kidnapped by armed men who killed their driver, Deacon Fatha' Allah Kabboud.

The bishops were abducted on their way back from the Turkish border, where they were negotiating the release of two priests, Fathers Michael Kayyal and Maher Mahfouz, who had themselves been kidnapped Feb. 9.

Last weekend, Christians in Aleppo gathered for an ecumenical prayer service at the city's Greek Orthodox cathedral. It was attended by Bishop Antoine Audo, the Chaldean Catholic bishop of the Aleppo eparchy.

He told Vatican Radio that it was a “sad” occasion, those attending having “tears in their eyes.” He said the situation has been confusing, as the kidnappers have made no ransom demands for their release, and added that “it's not a question of money.”

The Greek Orthodox in Damascus gathered May 20 to pray for Bishops Ibrahim and Yagizi, and Patriarch John X met May 22 with Eva Felipi, the Czech ambassador to Syria. They discussed the grievous Syrian civil war and the need for the return of the bishops, as well as all others kidnapped in the country.

In neighboring Jordan, some 2,000 Christians participated in a candlelight procession from a Greek Orthodox church to a Syriac Orthodox church in the capital, Amman.

Archbishop Maroun Lahham, an auxiliary bishop of the Jerusalem patriarchate, prayed at the procession for “tranquility and stability in beloved Syria” and for the release of the bishops, whom he called “two of the most significant Arab Christian personalities of our time.”

He told Fides after the prayers that “we prayed so that Jordan is not plagued by conflicts that are causing suffering to the peoples of neighboring countries.”

Two weeks ago, Syrian refugees already represented 10 percent of the Jordanian population. The nation's foreign minister said it could reach 25 percent by the end of the year. The flood of refugees are straining resources in the area.

The situation is so desperate that some refugee families are arranging marriages for their teenage daughters, or selling them, to older men so that they might have stability and escape the unsanitary conditions of the refugee camps.

The Syrian civil war has dragged on for 26 months. The United Nations estimates that 80,000 have died in the conflict. There are 1.5 million Syrian refugees in nearby countries, most of them in Jordan and Lebanon.

An additional 4.25 million Syrian people are believed to have been internally displaced by the war.

The Syriac and Greek Orthodox of Aleppo added that they are daily “living the nightmare” of lacking their abducted shepherds.

“We...express day after day our sadness and increasing pain about the abduction and the absence of these two eminent Prelates, and what they represent in terms of their holiness, their local and international rank, their active role on all levels including the spiritual, the thoughts, the academic, the education and the social (spheres).”

“But above all,” the archdioceses noted, “the humanitarian work which they were carrying within the current crisis which is engulfing our country Syria.”

Pope prays for Mafia's conversion

Vatican City, May 26, 2013 / 07:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Sicily celebrated the beatification of Father Giuseppe Puglisi yesterday, and Pope Francis used it as an occasion to pray for the conversion of the Mafia.

After he recited the Angelus on May 25, Pope Francis noted that Fr. Puglisi – a priest who was killed in 1993 by the Mafia – was beatified in Palermo on Saturday.

“Don Puglisi was an exemplary priest, devoted especially to youth ministry. He was teaching children according to the gospel and taking them out of the mob, and so they tried to defeat him and killed him. In reality, though, it is he that won, with Christ Risen,” the Pope told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square.

These gangs “cause so much pain to men, women and even to children,” he said, mentioning prostitution as one type of slavery or social pressure used by the mafia.

Pope Francis urged the faithful in the square to “pray for these gangsters so that they convert.”

The murder of Fr. Puglisi was a turning point for the Church in how it dealt with the Mafia.

Blessed Puglisi pursued a course of winning people away from the influence of the mob, as opposed to a protest model of resistance, which was more common among clergy at the time.

Shocked by his death and inspired by his example, many of Sicily’s priests began to follow the more influence-driven approach of Bl. Puglisi.

“We praise God for his luminous testimony,” Pope Francis said after the Angelus, “and we treasure his example!”

God is love but not in 'emotional' sense, Pope says

Vatican City, May 26, 2013 / 06:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As he celebrated the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Pope Francis spoke about how God is love, but not in an “emotional” or “sentimental” way.

“The light of Easter and Pentecost have renewed in us each year the joy and wonder of faith that recognizes that God is not something vague, abstract, but has a name: ‘God is love,’” the Pope said May 26, before reciting the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square.

And this love “is not sentimental, emotional, but the love of the Father who is the source of all life, the love of the Son who died on the cross and rose, the love of the Spirit who renews man and the world,” he stated.

Pope Francis then reflected on how the Trinity “is not the product of human reasoning, it is the face which God himself revealed, not from the top of a throne, but walking with humanity in the history of the people of Israel, and above all in Jesus of Nazareth.

“Jesus is the Son who made us know the merciful Father and brought to the world his ‘fire,’ the Holy Spirit,” he said.

On today’s feast, he explained, “we praise God not for a particular mystery, but for himself, ‘for his glory is immense,’ as the liturgical hymn says. We praise him and thank him because he is love, and for how he calls us to enter the embrace of his communion, which is eternal life.”

Because of celebrations for the Year of Faith in previous weeks, today was the first time in a month that the Pope delivered his words from the window of the papal apartment.

Without those festivities, the crowd was also not as large as before, but it made up for it with the presence of a troupe of people dressed in medieval garb – accompanied by a section of drums and trumpets – a large delegation from an Italian military association and a group of faithful from China who came to Rome to pray for their local Church.

Pope Francis explained to the assembly that he had just finished making his first trip as pontiff to a parish in the Rome diocese and he thanked the Lord for the visit.

He also asked the crowd to “pray for my pastoral service in this Church, which has the mission of presiding in universal charity.”

Before reciting the Angelus with the faithful, Pope Francis said, “we entrust our praise to the hands of the Virgin Mary.

“She, the most humble of creatures, through Christ has already reached the goal of our earthly pilgrimage: she is already in the glory of the Trinity. She shines for us as a sign of sure hope and solace and accompanies us on the path.”

After the Marian prayer, the Pope highlighted a beatification that took place in Palermo, Sicily on Saturday for Father Giuseppe Puglisi, a priest who was killed by the Mafia in 1993.

“Don Puglisi was an exemplary priest, devoted especially to youth ministry. He was teaching children according to the gospel and taking them out of the mob, and so they tried to defeat him and killed him. In reality, though, is he that won, with Christ Risen.”

The murder of Fr. Puglisi was a turning point for the Church in how it dealt with the Mafia.

Blessed Puglisi pursued a course of winning people away from the influence of the mob, as opposed to a protest model of resistance, which was more common among clergy at the time. Shocked by his death and inspired by his example, many of Sicily’s priests began to follow the more pastoral approach of Bl. Puglisi.

“We praise God for his luminous testimony,” Pope Francis said after today’s Angelus, “and we treasure his example!”

Pope: power struggles outside Jesus' vision of Church

Vatican City, May 21, 2013 / 01:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- While acknowledging that power struggles have existed in the Church since it began, Pope Francis said Jesus’ teaching on power leaves no room for them.

“In the Church the greatest is the one who serves most, the one who is at the service of others,” said Pope Francis on May 21.
 
“This is the rule, yet from the beginning until now there have been power struggles in the Church, even in our manner of speech,” he said in his homily, which was based on the day’s Gospel reading from Mark 9.

In the reading, Jesus catches the disciples arguing about which of them is the greatest.

“In the Gospel of Jesus, the struggle for power in the Church must not exist because true power, that which the Lord by his example has taught us, is the power of service,” said the Pope.

But the Pope believes the struggle for power in the Church is “nothing new” and that it first appearing when Jesus was forming his disciples.

Pope Francis noted, “when a person is given a job, one that in the eyes of the world is a superior role, they say ‘ah, this woman has been promoted to president of that association, or this man was promoted.’”

“This verb, to promote, yes, it is a nice verb and one we must use in the Church,” he said.

“Yes, he was promoted to the Cross, he was promoted to humiliation,” the Pope remarked.

“True promotion,” he underscored, “is that which makes us seem more like Jesus.”

“If we do not learn this Christian rule, we will never, ever be able to understand Jesus’ true message on power,” said Pope Francis.

“Real power is service as he did, he who came not to be served but to serve, and his service was the service of the Cross,” he said.

The pontiff explained that Jesus “humbled himself unto death, even death on a cross for us, to serve us, to save us and there is no other way in the Church to move forward.”

Pope Francis also drove home his point by recalling that Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of his religious order the Jesuits, asked Jesus for the grace of humiliation.

“This is the true power of the service of the Church, this is the true path of Jesus, true and not worldly advancement,” said the pontiff.

“The path of the Lord is being in his service as he carried out his service, we must follow him, on the path of service, that is the real power in the Church,” he stated.

The congregation included the president and vice-president of the Focolare Movement, Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti, as well as the director of the magazine Civiltà Cattolica, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro.

Staff from Vatican Radio and the Office of the Vatican City State Governatorate also attended.

During the prayers of the faithful, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on the afternoon of May 20. The twister claimed the lives of at least 91 people, including 20 children.

Pope Francis helped young addict in struggle against drugs

Rome, Italy, May 21, 2013 / 12:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- According to an Argentine priest, Pope Francis when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires helped save a young mailman from the abyss of drug addiction and became his spiritual father.

Jesuit priest and Vatican Radio commentator Father Guillermo Ortiz recounted to CNA knowing then-Cardinal Jorge Bergolio when he was still provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, as well as his own personal introduction to the young man.

“When I was living in Buenos Aires,” he recalled, “I met this guy. He listened to me on the radio and since he was a mailman, he knew the address of my office and he began seeking me out to talk about spiritual questions. He was getting out of drugs thanks to prayer, and he always asked for spiritual guidance.”

After a while, however, the young man stopped coming to visit, and Fr. Ortiz began to worry, until one day he ran across him on the street and found that he had completely recovered.

“Do you know who I have been with, Father? Cardinal Bergoglio!” the young man said. “I went by the chancery and I left a note with my name and number saying I wanted to speak with him, and the next Saturday I was in my room resting and my father knocked on the door.”

“I said, 'Don’t knock, this is my day off and I want to sleep a little bit more!' But my father said, 'No, you can’t right now, the cardinal is on the phone,'” he remembered.

“The cardinal himself had called to tell him when he could meet,” Fr. Ortiz said. “Without any calendar, he answered him immediately! These things are wonderful and one can only ask, 'How did he find the time?'”

Fr. Ortiz said the young mailman eventually overcame his addition through prayer and spiritual direction from priests and in this case from Cardinal Bergoglio, who helped him “continue his struggle against drugs.”

What he most admired about the cardinal was his “closeness to the people. He didn’t have any boundaries. Even as bishop and as cardinal he didn’t have a secretary and he called people himself and met with everyone that he could,” Fr. Ortiz said.

Fr. Ortiz is currently the director of Vatican Radio's Spanish-language broadcast. Since the election of Pope Francis, he has spoken with the pontiff on several occasions.

Texas abortionist accused of killing babies born alive

Houston, Texas, May 21, 2013 / 12:02 am (CNA).- A Houston doctor is under investigation on charges that he performed illegal late-term abortions after former employees alleged that several babies were born alive and then killed in gruesome ways.

Deborah Edge, a former assistant to Dr. Douglas Karpen, gave her account of Karpen’s abortion work in a video produced by the pro-life group Life Dynamics.

“When he did an abortion, especially an over 20 week abortion, most of the time the fetus would come completely out before he either cut the spinal cord or he introduced one of the instruments into the soft spot of the fetus in order to kill it ... or actually twisting the head off the neck with his own bare hands,” she said.

Edge emphasized that the babies were still alive, moving and breathing. Another former employee in the video, Gigi Aguliar, said one baby opened its eyes and grabbed the abortionist’s finger before he killed it.

One employee said she did not know what Karpen was doing was illegal.

The allegations concern deaths in 2011 at the Aaron Women’s Clinic in Houston. A third former employee appears in the Life Dynamics video, while another anonymous staffer has filed an affidavit Texas Department of State Health Services, the Daily Mail reports.

The former employees took cell phone pictures of babies with gashes in their necks after they were allegedly killed at the clinic, LifeNews.com says. They allege that Karpen killed babies well after 24 weeks into pregnancy, at a cost between $4,000 and $5,000.

Karpen also runs two other abortion clinics in Texas.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he read “with disgust” about the allegations that Dr. Douglas Karpen performed “illegal late-term abortions surrounded by appalling sanitary conditions in his clinic.”

“The Harris County authorities should perform a full-scale investigation and take action against those who broke state law,” he said in a May 15 statement.

Sara Marie Kinney, a spokeswoman for the Harris County District Attorney, said several district attorney employees are looking into the allegations.

Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, told the Houston Chronicle the agency is aware of the allegations and investigating it with “a very high priority.”

Dewhurst invoked the case of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist convicted last week on three charges of first degree murder for killing babies who survived abortions.

The pro-life group Operation Rescue has said it has been investigating Karpen for three years.

“For nearly three years, authorities have ignored our complaints and done nothing while horrific late-term babies continued to be aborted in an apparently illegal and barbaric manner,” group  president Troy Newman said May 16.

“Now, thanks to the outpouring of public pressure that has been brought to bear by the pro-life community, the authorities in Texas are finally beginning to act. It’s a big step in the right direction.”

Cloning shows science must dialogue with philosophy

Portland, Ore., May 21, 2013 / 04:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The recent production of stem cells from cloned human embryos has prompted a researcher to consider the need for scientists to take other disciplines into account before engaging their work.

“Scientists...do not consider bio-ethical issues to be issues at all; they don't see the bio-ethical argument, or any philosophical argument,” Massimo Bionaz, assistant professor of animal sciences at Oregon State University, told CNA May 17.

The May issue of the journal “Cell” included a paper from scientists at Oregon Health and Science University announcing they have produced embryonic stem cells by transferring the DNA of a human skin cell into a human egg to produce an embryo.

After the egg's own nucleus was removed, the nucleus from another person's skin cell was added into the egg, and with electricity and caffeine the researchers were able to induce the normal development of an embryo. The embryos were thus genetic copies – clones – of the persons whose DNA was inserted into the eggs.

The harvesting of the embryonic stem cells necessarily included the destruction of the embryos.

“This,” Bionaz reflected, “is the problem. Those scientists, they went ahead and did the cloning; they thought this was absolutely fine and justified because based on their criteria there was no reason not to do that. So, they jump completely the question of what a human is.”

Bionaz, a member of the Euresis Association as well as the Catholic ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, said that scientific researchers often see arguments of philosophy or bioethics as “problems to be overcome.”

He warned of “scientism,” which he called the “presumption that science is the only discipline which can say something true about reality.” This, Bionaz emphasized, is “dangerous.”

For scientism, “any argument outside the utilitarian argument” is seen as being “of no use.” Too many, he said, view that “whenever something is possible to do, I ought to do it.”

While the aim of the research was good: to produce stem cells for therapies to treat diseases which will not be rejected by patients' bodies because they will be genetically identical, it required an evil, the destruction of human beings.

“It's the paradox of the short sight of science. They begin in this way, with the justification of providing tissue, maybe even life-saving tissue, but they don't care about destroying” another human being, said Bionaz.

Aside from lacking “a clear bio-ethical judgement,” he said, “those scientists didn't even ask the question.”

Rather than presuming to do any research which is “possible, technically, to do,” researchers should take the time to ask ontological questions, about the nature of the human being.

“It goes to the point of understanding what a person is, of what is a human being.”

While noting that scientists “are trained very well on the technical side,” they “lack completely the way of thinking of the philosopher, or bio-ethicist, or any other discipline,” Bionaz said.

He emphasized the importance of different fields of study working together to paint a complete picture of existence.

“Reality is very complex, and every aspect of reality requires its own discipline. It's against reason to try to study or assess a reality with a discipline that does not conform to the method of that specific reality.”

“Science can study the material phenomenon, what it is possible to reproduce, to measure.” But, Bionaz added, science cannot address “the ontological significance of a human life...because it's not the proper discipline for that area of reality.”

“That pertains to philosophy, to theology, even to bioethics in some way.”

Without the perspectives of these fields, science will regard the human person as “only a mass of cells to which you can do whatever you want,” which is why respect for the human person “now is falling apart.”

The researchers who produced the cloned human embryos “want to provide tissue to help or to save a human being,” but they “didn't consider the significance of what they were doing.”

Bionaz attributed his thought about the importance of considering philosophy and other disciplines when doing scientific research to Blessed John Henry Newman's “The Idea of a University.”

In those lectures, Newman “described exactly” the follies of using the wrong discipline to study a given segment of existence, and that when this happens “reality can get confused, and we misunderstand it.”

“For instance this one of the human being: to understand what is a human person, you need several disciplines,” Bionaz said. “Science is not enough; it allows you to unravel a part of the human being of course, but not the totality of the human being.”

“For this reason, it is so important as scientists to have the humility to understand our limits, and we should actually have deep discussions with people of other disciplines.”

Dialogue with philosophy, he said, will remind researchers that “the human being has a value, and then we scientists will work for the human being, not against it.”

The manufacture and subsequent destruction of a human embryo for the production of embryonic stem cells, is an instance of “destroying the human being and not helping him.”

“Even though the purpose is to help someone else, because of course the idea is to help human beings, the problem is if the end justifies the means,” Bionaz concluded.

“It's not an issue that scientists can assess. You need a bio-ethicist together with a philosopher.”