Pope Francis interview with Norah O'Donnell - Texas border action considered "sheer madness"

In his first in-depth interview with a U.S. broadcast network, Pope Francis addressed a wide range of topics, including the war in Ukraine, antisemitism, and U.S. immigration policy.

Catholic News Service (CNS) by Daniel Payne*.

A portion of the full interview, on CBS, aired Sunday  on the network’s flagship magazine program, “60 Minutes.”

In the segment, the pope answered questions from “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell through a translator. CNA translated Pope Francis’ answers below from the original Spanish.

“[The threat is] not just in Gaza. Think of Ukraine. Many kids from Ukraine come here. You know something? That those children don’t know how to smile? I’ll say something to them [mimics smile]… They have forgotten how to smile. And that is very painful.”

On wars in Ukraine and elsewhere:  “Please, warring countries, all of them, stop. Stop the war. Seek to negotiate. Strive for peace. A negotiated peace is always better than an endless war.”

On growing antisemitism in the U.S. amid the Israel-Hamas war:
“All ideology is bad. And antisemitism is an ideology, and it is bad. Any ‘anti’ is always bad. You can criticize one government or the other, the government of Israel, the Palestinian government. You can criticize all you want, but not ‘anti’ a people. Neither anti-Palestinian nor antisemitic. No. … I pray a lot for peace. And also suggest, ‘Please, stop. Negotiate.’”

On immigration: “Migration is something that makes a country grow. [To O’Donnell:] They say that you Irish migrated and brought the whiskey, and that the Italians migrated and brought the mafia… [laugh] It’s a joke. Don’t take it badly. But, migrants sometimes suffer a lot. They suffer a lot.”

On Texas state effort to revoke registration of migrant-serving Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas:  “That is madness. Sheer madness. ❗To close the border and leave them there, that is madness. The migrant has to be received. Then you see how you are going to deal with him. Maybe you have to send him back, I don’t know, but each case ought to be considered humanely.”

On the “globalization of indifference”:  “Do you want me to state it plainly? People wash their hands! There are so many Pontius Pilates on the loose out there… who see what is happening, the wars, the injustice, the crimes… ‘That’s OK, that’s OK’ and wash their hands. It’s indifference. That is what happens when the heart hardens… and becomes indifferent. Please, we have to get our hearts to feel again. We cannot remain indifferent in the face of such dramas of humanity. The globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease. Very ugly.”

On sexual abuse cases in the Church: “[The Church] must continue working. Unfortunately, the tragedy of the abuses is enormous. And against this, an upright conscience and not only to not permit it but to put in place the conditions so that it does not happen. … It cannot be tolerated. When there is a case of a consecrated man or woman who abuses, the full force of the law falls upon them. In this there has been a great deal of progress.”

On the Vatican’s controversial Fiducia Supplicans document allowing for limited pastoral blessings of same-sex couples:
“What I allowed was not to bless the union. That cannot be done because that is not a sacrament. I cannot. The Lord made it that way. But to bless each person, yes. The blessing is for everyone. For everyone. To bless a homosexual-type union, however, goes against the law; the natural law, the law of the Church. But to bless each person, why not? The blessing is for all. Some people were scandalized by this. But why? For everyone! Everyone!”

When asked about criticisms from “conservative” bishops in the United States: “You use the adjective ‘conservatives.’ That is to say, a conservative is one who sticks to something and does not want to see anything else. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to take into account situations from the past, but another is to be closed inside a dogmatic box.”

On gestational surrogacy, which is forbidden by the Catholic Church: “In regard to surrogate motherhood, in the strictest technical sense of the term, no, it cannot happen. Sometimes surrogacy has become a business, and that is very bad. It is very bad. ... The other hope is adoption. I would say that in each case the situation should be clearly considered, considered medically and then morally. I believe in these cases there is a general rule, but you have to go into each case in particular to assess the situation, as long as the moral principle is not skirted.”

On giving hope to others as the pope: “You have to be open to everything. The Church is like that: Everyone, everyone, everyone. ‘That so-and-so is a sinner…?’ Me too, I am a sinner. Everyone! The Gospel is for everyone. If the Church places a customs officer at the door, that is no longer the church of Christ. Everyone.”

When asked what gives him hope: “Everything. You see tragedies, but you also see so many beautiful things. You see heroic mothers, heroic men, men who have hopes and dreams, women who look to the future. That gives me a lot of hope. People want to live. People forge ahead. And people are fundamentally good. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart is good.”

*Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. 

Father Joerg Meyrer dedicated to helping German flood victims

In flood-hit German town, a priest struggles to give comfort

https://apnews.com/article/europe-health-coronavirus-pandemic-floods-a5fa0b47d068168b06df42771f505350?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=AP&fbclid=IwAR0zYYXEJlOOfEXvqLpgJiIT_hR9TMWHvMYwTo54ifh_gLxcAjCxiCkghlE

German and European weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn't appear to have made it to many people in affected areas - often in the middle of the night.

Echo report published in the Associated Press:

“It came over us like a tsunami,” Father Meyrer recalls. “Bridges, houses, apartments, utility pipes — everything that actually constitutes this town, what it lives on, has been gone since that night.”

AHRWEILER, Germany (AP) — The Rev. Joerg Meyrer steels himself before making his way through the stinking piles of mud-caked debris that permeate this once-beautiful town in Germany’s wine-growing Ahr valley.

For the past five days, the 58-year-old Catholic priest has pulled on his galoshes and walked the streets to try to give comfort to his parishioners as they get on with the grim task of cleaning up what was destroyed by Wednesday’s flash flood — and recovering the bodies of those who perished in it.

“It came over us like a tsunami,” Meyrer recalls. “Bridges, houses, apartments, utility pipes — everything that actually constitutes this town, what it lives on, has been gone since that night.”

Residents of Ahrweiler had been told to expect the Ahr River, a tributary of the Rhine, to crest at 7 meters (nearly 23 feet), but Meyrer said few comprehended what that would mean.

Trucks and cars are pictured partially submerged along a highway in Erftstadt, Germany, July 16. Catholic bishops expressed deep concern about the catastrophic flooding in Germany as priests helped with the emergency response. (Catholic News Service - CNS, photo/Thilo Schmuelgen, Reuters)

In fact, the last serious flood in the area south of Bonn was more than a century ago.

Nearly 200 people were killed when heavy rainfall turned streams into raging torrents across parts of western Germany and Belgium, and officials put the death toll in Ahrweiler county alone at 110, making it the hardest hit region.

Meyrer, who expects that figure to rise significantly, said the victims came from all walks of life.

“Old people who died in bed because they couldn’t get up or because they didn’t hear it; young people who died minutes after helping others; people who died in their car because they wanted to drive it out when the flood wave surprised them.”

Townspeople recounted grim cases of delayed grief, as the realization began to sink in that those reported missing would not return.

Meyrer said he was called in when firefighters found the body of a woman he had known well.

“The husband knew his wife had been in the basement and he had to wait two days for her to be recovered,” he said.

For now, many residents are focusing on the cleanup before dealing with the longer task of rebuilding.

“We need to start over,” said Paddy Amanatidis, the owner of La Perla pizzeria, as she took a break from cleaning the rubble out of the restaurant.

“We fought our way through (the coronavirus pandemic) and the flood won’t get us down either,” she said, adding that the solidarity shown by neighbors and friends had helped to boost spirits.

Meyrer believes that even for those lucky enough not to have lost loved ones, the enormous impact of the disaster has not fully hit them.

“When the first lot (of debris) has been cleared and people have nothing to do, then I think many will understand for the first time what they’ve lost and what that means,” he said.

German officials have rejected allegations that they failed to properly warn people of the severity of the floods, but conceded that more lessons can be learned from the disaster. Experts say global warming may make such floods even more frequent.

Upriver, in the village of Schuld, which was largely destroyed, Mayor Helmut Lussi said the scars would last a long time. “Our lives changed from one day to the next,” he told German Chancellor Merkel, who visited on Sunday.

As for mourning the victims, Meyrer says that daunting task will require the help of clergy from across the town and beyond.

Aside from the sheer number of dead, authorities also must figure out where to bury them, because the local cemetery, too, was flooded, with hardly any tombstone left standing.

While the freshly renovated Gothic walls of the 13th century St. Lawrence Church remained miraculously untouched by the flooding, Meyrer plans to keep walking the streets for now, offering a helping hand, a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.

But even he is struggling, saying that prayer hasn’t come easily in the days since the disaster struck.

“I don’t have the words, the time, the peace,” he said. “I can’t do that right now.”

“In the evening I try to say, ‘Lord, somehow you have to take over now.’ That’s got to be good enough,” he added.

Roman Catholics in parishes without priests

Gérald Cardinal Lacroix prepares the dwindling number of Catholics in Quebec for the end of parish life as they know it.

America Magazine by Phillipe Vallancourt with Catholic News Service (CNS)

Cardinal Lacroix in Quebec Canada
Lacroix was born on 27 July 1957, in Saint-Hilaire-de-Dorset in the Archdiocese of Quebec and completed his secondary and higher education at Trinity High School in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Saint Anselm College, in the neighboring town of Goffstown. He then studied for his theological training at Université Laval, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in theology.

QUEBEC CITY (CNS) — The Archdiocese of Quebec announced its intention to reorganize its parishes to focus on local missionary activities. This move comes as human and material resources continue to diminish.

At least 75% of the parishes will be affected by this change, in both urban and rural areas.

In a video, Cardinal Gerald Lacroix stressed that the church of Quebec was born out of mission. But, he said, it is now clear that the parish system that had a strong impact on French Canadian society is not sustainable and needs to evolve.

“We can no longer be satisfied with giving good pastoral services to the people who faithfully participate in our assemblies and movements,” said Cardinal Lacroix. “These people now represent a tiny part of the population entrusted to us.”

Quebec Auxiliary Bishop Marc Pelchat added that in recent years, the life of the parishes has relied on teams that have carried out “almost everything” of the daily functioning, often focusing on “expected services.”

“We must now reorient our pastoral teams toward a more intensely missionary activity, turned toward the people and groups that we reach too little,” said Bishop Pelchat.

This call to go beyond the usual frameworks aims at “freeing energies” to better reach out to the population that is currently not reached by the church’s message.

Priests, deacons and laypeople must “envisage working to spread the Gospel message outside our usual frameworks,” with new means, in new territories, Cardinal Lacroix said.

Over the past decade, the number of parishes in the Archdiocese of Quebec decreased from 200 to 38. These 38 parishes were then organized into 29 large “pastoral units.”

“For a long time now, the resources available have not allowed us to appoint pastors and other pastoral collaborators in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of all the communities,” confirmed Marie Chrétien, diocesan pastoral coordinator. “We now lack the resources to assign a pastoral team to each of these large units.”

From now on, the diocese will constitute expanded pastoral units, which will be articulated around new teams that will collaborate with people involved in the various areas.

The communications director of the Archdiocese of Quebec, Valérie Roberge-Dion, said that, in a first step, 22 of the 29 pastoral units will become 10 missionary units. Human resources will be shared, but no juridical grouping of parishes — a process that ended in 2019 for the Archdiocese of Quebec — is expected initially.

These changes will be made for the pastoral year that begins Aug. 1. In the meantime, the diocese intends to continue consultations to “clarify the roles and responsibilities of each one” and to determine according to which new financial and administrative agreements the parishes will continue to operate.

Cardinal Lacroix said he believes it will be necessary to get used to a “new face of the organization of the church.” He called on employees to welcome these changes and invited them to see how they can collaborate.

He also announced other changes anticipated for the church of Quebec. He raised the possibility that eucharistic celebrations could eventually be centered around “a few central churches.”

“The use of our places of worship and other buildings will have to be reevaluated, for the financial weight of these has increased and considerably restricts our ability to fulfill our essential mission,” he said. “The number of eucharistic celebrations will also have to be reviewed, because priests, far fewer in number than before, cannot limit themselves to multiplying sacramental celebrations while neglecting other forms of presence.”

He said he also expected the diocese will have fewer paid personnel and more volunteers.

Tyrants and tyranny create political terrorists

T+T=t x 2 (tyrants plus tyranny = terrorism x 2)

When voters respond to fear messages they are buying into political terrorism.

Pope Francis in Rome has a point of vew about this equation.

Acts of Faith  

As election nears, Pope Francis warns against fear, building walls

Pope Francis condemned the political use of fear and the building of walls, describing the refugee crisis as “a problem of the world” and urging political leaders to do more, according to America magazine.
The pope did not name names and did not refer to the upcoming U.S. presidential election, but he spoke about issues that have come up in the 2016 campaigns, including immigration and refugees. The speech, given in Spanish, included a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“No tyranny can be sustained without exploiting our fears,” the pope said, according to comments published by the Vatican Radio. “Citizens are walled-up, terrified, on one side; on the other side, even more terrified, are the excluded and banished.”

Fear “is fed and manipulated,” Pope Francis said. “Because fear – as well as being a good deal for the merchants of arms and death – weakens and destabilizes us, destroys our psychological and spiritual defenses, numbs us to the suffering of others, and in the end it makes us cruel.”

Pope Francis gave his remarks Saturday evening during a meeting at the Vatican with participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, a collection of grass-roots organizations that include the poor and the unemployed. The pope urged the defeat of “false prophets who exploit fear and desperation, who sell magic formulas of hatred and cruelty or selfish well-being and illusory security,” according to comments published by Catholic News Service.

Francis said that mercy is the “best antidote” to fear, according to CNS. It works better than antidepressants, he said, and is “much more effective than walls, iron bars, alarms and weapons. And it is free.”

Trump has proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep undocumented immigrants from entering the United States. After he visited the border during a visit to Mexico in February, the Pope said that politicians who propose building walls instead of bridges are “not Christian,” leading to a scuffle with Trump. Vatican officials said later that the pope was not speaking about specific candidates.

Trump also proposed a ban on Muslims and refugees from countries experiencing terrorism. A newly named cardinal, Archbishop of Indianapolis Joseph Tobin, made headlines last year when he openly defied Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s decision to try to block Syrian refugees from the state. Pence, who is Trump’"s vice presidential running mate, joined dozens of governors last year in objecting to the federal government’s program to resettle refugees from Syria in the Unites States, citing security risks. The bishops, including Tobin, openly challenged the governors.

"No one should be forced to flee his or her homeland,” Francis said on Saturday, according to Catholic News Service. “But the evil is doubled when, facing terrible circumstances, the migrant is thrown into the clutches of human traffickers to cross the border. And it is tripled if, arriving in the land where he or she hoped to find a better future, one is despised, exploited or even enslaved.”

The Obama administration announced in September that the United States is planning to accept 110,000 refugees in 2017. A vice president at Catholic Relief Services said that aid organization welcomed the news, but that it was not sufficient enough to address “the 65 million globally displaced people around the world right now.”

On Saturday, Francis quoted from one of the sermons of King, the late civil rights activist. “Hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe,” he said.

Francis said politics is not the place for “anyone who is too attached to material things or to the mirror, those who love money, lavish banquets, sumptuous houses, refined clothes, luxury cars.” Seeking power or money “sullies the noble cause” of politics as service, the pope said.

“Fight the fear with a life of service, solidarity and humility on behalf of the people, especially those who suffer,” he said, according to CNS. “Against the terror, the best remedy is love. Love heals all.”