Tag: Vatican Spring

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Catholics Want Justice For Abuse Victims And More LGBTQ Inclusion, Vatican Says

Pope Francis delivers his homily during the Wednesday General Audience at St. Peter’s Square on May

By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs

The Vatican on Tuesday released the results of a two-year canvassing of churches around the world that showed that rank-and-file Catholics want more rights for women in the clergy, justice for victims of widespread sexual abuse within the church and acceptance for previously shunned groups, including divorced and remarried and LGBTQ+ parishioners—but it’s unclear how the Vatican will act on the findings.

Key Facts

The document raises several key questions brought forward by members of worldwide parishes: Should women be ordained deacons in the church, should married priests be allowed to serve where there is a clergy shortage, how can the church better welcome LGBTQ+ members and should the church’s current hierarchy be restructured in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis?

The prospect of allowing women to be ordained as priests was not discussed, but the document found a “unanimous” and “crucial” call for women in positions of power.

The Vatican also said parishioners wanted “radical inclusion and acceptance” of LGBTQ+ people, minorities and poor people, and called to “reform structures, institutions and functioning mechanisms” that have allowed high-level clergy to get away with abuse.

This marks the first time the Vatican has used the phrase “LGBTQ+ Catholics” instead of “persons with homosexual tendencies,” the Associated Press reported, suggesting a new level of acceptance.

The church acknowledged that its credibility has been “eroded” in the wake of abuse scandals, which include sexual abuse at high levels as well as “abuse of power, money and conscience,” suggesting “conversion and reform” as ways to prevent future abuses and vowing to place “great emphasis on learning to exercise justice” for victims—but it didn’t specify concrete steps.

The study, called the Instrumentum laboris, is meant to be the starting document for the General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality–what the Pope calls his vision of a less bureaucratic church–which begins in the Vatican in October 2023.

Key Background

The Catholic church has been in crisis for more than two decades as a growing overall disinterest in organized religion collided with the 2002 breaking of the sexual abuse scandal in the church by the Boston Globe. The Globe’s investigation into the Boston Archdiocese launched similar efforts across the country and the world, which in turn revealed a disturbing pattern of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church. About 20 state attorneys general have mounted investigations that have cataloged decades of abuse by hundreds of clergy members, the New York Times reported. Americans’ membership in houses of worship has been dropping for decades, but the Catholic church has been hit the hardest, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, Pope Francis has expressed more support of LGBTQ+ people than anyone in the position before. He was hailed as revolutionary in 2013 when he responded to question about the topic of gay parishioners with a casual “Who am I to judge?” The comment was a stark juxtaposition to the actions of his predecessor, who had banned gay priests. Pope Francis went on to say earlier this year that homosexuality is not a crime, but has maintained the traditional stance that acting on homosexual urges is a sin and has said the Roman Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages.

Big Number

95%. That’s how many dioceses are expected to have been affected by the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and deacons, a study by John Jay College found. Of the 195 dioceses and eparchies that participated in the study, all but seven reported that allegations of sexual abuse have been made against at least one priest.

What To Watch For

Francis last year announced a plan to restructure the Vatican toward “transparency and coordinated action.” The Pope is looking to move toward a “synodal Church,” according to Vatican News, which is broken down into three main themes: growing in communion by welcoming everyone; valuing the contribution of any church member, rather than just ordained clergy; and restructuring the church toward more communal government.

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High-Profile French Nun Inspires Hope for Catholic Women

Sister Nathalie Becquart, the first female undersecretary in the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, poses for a photo in front of St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, May 29, 2023.

In her years running Catholic youth programs in France, Sister Nathalie Becquart often invoked her own experience as a seasoned sailor in urging young people to weather the storms of their lives.

“There’s nothing stronger than seeing the sunrise after a storm, the flat calm of the sea,” she said.

That lesson is especially applicable to Becquart herself as she charts the global church through an unprecedented — and at times, tempestuous — period of reform as one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican.

Pope Francis named the 54-year-old nun as the first female undersecretary in the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops office in 2021. Since then, she has been crisscrossing the globe as the public face of his hallmark call to listen to rank-and-file Catholics and empower them to have a greater say in the life of the church.

That process, which comes to a head in October with a big assembly, reaches a crucial point Tuesday with the publication of the working document for the meeting. It is shaping up as a referendum on the role of women in the church of the third millennium.

Becquart, who has overseen a canvassing of ordinary Catholics about their needs from the church and hopes for the future, says the call for change is unambiguous and universal, with demands that women have greater decision-making roles taking center stage at the meeting, or synod.

“There is this unanimous call because women want to participate, to share their gifts and charism at the service of the church,” Becquart said in an interview with The Associated Press in her offices just off St. Peter’s Square.

For a 2,000-year-old institution that by its very doctrine bars women from its highest ranks, Francis’ synodal process has sparked unusual optimism among women who have long felt they were second-class citizens in the church. Predictably, the prospects of change have provoked a strong backlash from conservatives, who view the synod as undermining the all-male, clerical-based hierarchy and the ecclesiology behind it.

Becquart and Francis aren’t daunted and see the criticism, fear and alarm as a good sign that something big and important is underway.

“Of course, there is resistance,” Becquart said with a laugh. “If there is no resistance, that means nothing is happening or nothing is changing.”

But she also puts it in perspective: “If you look at all the history of the reform of the church, where you have the strongest resistance or debated points, it’s really usually a very important point.”

Francis, the 86-year-old Argentine Jesuit, has already done more than any modern pope to promote women by changing church law to allow them to read Scripture and serve on the altar as eucharistic ministers, even while reaffirming they cannot be ordained as priests.

He has changed the Vatican’s founding constitution to allow women to head Vatican offices and made several high-profile female appointments, none more symbolically significant than Becquart’s.

As undersecretary in the Synod of Bishops, Becquart was de facto granted the right to vote at the upcoming October synod — a right previously held by men only. After years of complaints by women, who had been allowed to participate in synods only as nonvoting experts, auditors or observers, Francis not only gave Becquart a voting role, but expanded the vote to laypeople in general.

Sister Nathalie Becquart, the first female undersecretary in the Vatican's Synod of Bishops, shares a word with Cardinal Arthur Roche on her way to the Vatican, May 29, 2023.
Sister Nathalie Becquart, the first female undersecretary in the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, shares a word with Cardinal Arthur Roche on her way to the Vatican, May 29, 2023.

In April, the Vatican announced that 70 non-bishops would be voting alongside the successors of the apostles in October, and that half of them were expected to be women. While these represent less than a quarter of the bishop votes, the reform was nevertheless historic and a reflection of Francis’ belief that church governance doesn’t come from priestly ordination but by specific jobs entrusted to the baptized faithful.

Becquart has long held leadership roles in the French church, where she ran the bishops’ youth evangelization program. A graduate of Paris’ top HEC business school, Becquart said she has drawn strength from the women who preceded her at the Vatican and in her own religious community, the Xaviere Sisters, a Jesuit-inspired, Vatican II-era missionary congregation that she joined at age 26.

From them and her grandmother, who was widowed while pregnant with her fourth child, Becquart said she learned that women “carry on this message that life is stronger than death, and that even in the greatest difficulties, crises and sufferings, there is a possible path, especially when you are not alone.”

It’s a lesson she applies when sailing and leading spiritual retreats at sea.

“There will be good weather and bad weather, quiet seas and then big waves.” she said. But eventually, the storm will end.

“That’s our life and that’s the life of the church,” she added.

Australia’s ambassador to the Holy See, Chiara Porro, has praised Becquart’s leadership style, recalling how she managed a room full of bishops during the Oceania phase of the synod consultation process. Becquart’s presence as a female Vatican envoy traveling to Fiji to brief Pacific bishops on the pope’s agenda signaled a paradigm shift, Porro said.

“She doesn’t have any preconceived objectives or outcomes. For her, no issues are off-limits, I think, and that’s very important because people feel that they can bring up what they want to discuss,” she said.

Veteran Vatican-watchers, however, caution that even with women taking on high-profile appointments and winning the right to vote at the October synod, the men still run the show.

“All the reforms that have been made to date on governing at the Vatican, in my opinion, are just appearances,” said Lucetta Scaraffia, a church historian who participated in a 2016 synod and wrote a scathing account of her marginalized role in From the Last Row. Her experiences — of being forced to go through a metal detector and check in each day while the bishops waltzed in unimpeded — were emblematic.

“I realized how the Catholic Church really was another world and what it means for women to be nonexistent. To actually not exist,” she said.

Jean-Marie Guenois, chief religious affairs correspondent for Le Figaro, who has known Becquart for years, said her role at the Vatican and in the synod process would be revolutionary “if it marked a paradigm shift in the Catholic Church where women would achieve parity of power in government.”

“We’re a long way from that,” he said, while nevertheless calling Becquart’s position “simply prophetic.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pope Francis sends greetings to this year’s Outreach conference for LGBTQ Catholics

Pope Francis seen in St. Peter’s Square on November 27, 2013.

BY Outreach Staff

In a letter dated May 6, 2023, Pope Francis has sent his greetings to attendees at the Outreach LGBTQ Catholic Ministry Conference, to be held at Fordham University, in New York City, from June 16 to 18. The handwritten letter, sent to James Martin, S.J., the editor of Outreach, thanks him for “all the good you are doing,” and promises his “prayers and good wishes” to all the participants of the conference.

“I send my best regards to the members of the meeting at Fordham University,” wrote the Holy Father. “Thank you for delivering it to them. In my prayers and good wishes are you and all who are working at the Outreach Conference.”

This is the third letter that Pope Francis has sent in relation to an Outreach conference. In June 2021, on the eve of an online conference, he wrote a letter thanking Father Martin for his “pastoral zeal,” for imitating the “style of God” and to commend him for caring for “your faithful, your parishioners.” In 2022, after receiving a copy of the program for the second conference, he wrote to Father Martin asking him to continue working “in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences.”

Last November, Pope Francis met with Father Martin for the second time in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace, where the two discussed ministry to LGBTQ Catholics.

“In my prayers and good wishes are you and all who are working at the Outreach Conference.”

“I’m grateful for the Holy Father’s warm letter, which is a wonderful blessing for everyone joining us this weekend at the conference,” said Father Martin. “And it’s a special grace for LGBTQ Catholics to know that the pope is praying for them.”

This year’s Outreach conference brings together some 250 LGBTQ Catholics, those who minister with them, and their family and friends, to build community, share best practices and worship together. Participants include theologians, writers, pastoral associates, clergy, members of religious orders, and lay women and men from around the world.

Keynote speakers this year are Tania Tetlow, the president of Fordham University; Juan Carlos Cruz, a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors; and Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA. The closing Mass on Sunday will be celebrated by Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, N.M.

A full list of the panels and panelists can be found here.

In another letter to conference attendees, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, welcomed the participants to his archdiocese and, echoing the Holy Father, wrote, “It is the sacred duty of the Church and Her ministers to reach out to those on the periphery and draw them to a closer relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church. Your vital and important ministry is a valuable and necessary contribution to that effort.”

Other letters of welcome to be published in the conference program include those from the Very Rev. Joseph O’Keefe, S.J., the Provincial Superior of the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus, and President Tetlow.

Pope Francis’s letter to Father Martin

6.5.23

R.P. James Martin, SJ

Querido hermano,

Muchas gracias por tu correo. Gracias por todo el bien que estás haciendo. ¡Gracias!

Rezo por vos, por favor hacélo por mi.

Les envio un cordial saludo a los miembros de la reunión en la Universidad de Fordham. Te agradezco se los haga llegar. En mi oración y buenos deseos están vos y todos los que trabajan en la Conferencia Outreach.

De nuevo, gracias, gracias por tu testimonio.

Que Jesús te bendiga y la Virgen Santa los cuide.

Fraternamente,

Francisco

English translation

5/6/23

R.P. James Martin, SJ

Dear brother,

Thank you very much for your email. Thank you for all the good you are doing. Thank you!

I pray for you, please do so for me.

I send my best regards to the members of the meeting at Fordham University. Thank you for delivering it to them. In my prayers and good wishes are you and all who are working at the Outreach Conference.

Again, thank you, thank you for your witness.

May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin take care of you.

Fraternally,

Francisco

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Who will Catholics follow? Pope Francis or the right-wing U.S. bishops?

Pope Francis welcomed President Biden to the Vatican for talks in October 2021, as U.S. Catholic bishops debated denying the president communion in American churches.

By Mary Jo McConahay

It’s time to take a clear look at the far-right politics of U.S. Catholic bishops. They won a 50-year campaign to turn back legal abortion, but they will not rest, it seems, until the country becomes a Christian nationalist state, with their moral principles codified into law. The religious right has long been identified with white evangelical Christians, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, some 250 men, mostly white and past middle age, ranks among the nation’s most formidable reactionary forces. As a Catholic, I must protest.

There was a time when I was proud of the principled but often unpopular positions of my faith leaders. During the Cold War, they spoke out against nuclear proliferation. When neoconservatives rose to power in Washington, the bishops issued a powerful letter on the economy, reminding government of its responsibility for making a “preferential option for the poor.” They stood against Ronald Reagan’s support for autocrats in wartime Central America — I was covering the region as a reporter and met several bishops who traveled south to see for themselves before making the policy decision.

Since those days, the proportion of conservative U.S. prelates has increased with nominations by the two pontiffs who preceded Pope Francis, and the USCCB drifted far to the political right, narrowing its focus to the “preeminent threat” of abortion. Its members lead the country’s largest and hardly monolithic faith group — 73 million American Catholics — but it also attempts to sway the law with amicus curiae briefs on cases from gay rights to prayer in schools, and with a powerful lobbying arm, its Office of Government Relations, tasked with influencing Congress. The bishops are driving the U.S. church to the point of schism with opposition to Pope Francis, who emphasizes pastoral care more than doctrine, and who virtually slapped down their attempt to forbid Holy Communion to lifelong Catholic Joe Biden, who is pro-choice.

What shaped the conservatism of the America’s bishops?

The roots of today’s right-wing church hierarchy go back to the 1970s when Catholic activist (and Heritage Foundation co-founder) Paul Weyrich persuaded evangelical minister and broadcaster Jerry Falwell to join forces in a “moral majority” — Weyrich suggested the term. As a movement, ultraconservative Catholics and evangelicals would restore the values and morals of the founding fathers as Weyrich, Falwell and their followers saw them, a promise taken up by Reagan, their favored presidential candidate. Abortion became the Moral Majority’s flagship issue.

That highly politicized obsession has put U.S. Catholic bishops sharply at odds with the global church (and public opinion) in their animus to Pope Francis, who calls capital punishment, euthanasia and care for the poor equally important “pro-life” issues.  For moderate Catholics like me, the deviation hits close to home, pushing the U.S. church too far from too much of Christ’s most elemental teachings while engaging in modern culture wars.

About sexual orientation, Francis, who recently celebrated 10 years as pope, famously said, “Who am I to judge?” but U.S. bishops rail against the “intrinsic disorder” of homosexuality. They ignore his urgent call for action on climate change and its existential threats. They drag their feet on his unprecedented process to prepare for a global Synod this year in Rome, which asks people, and in particular women, at every level of the church’s life — not just bishops — to contribute assessments and aspirations meant to define the mission of today’s church.

During the COVID pandemic some U.S. prelates tried to undermine the authority of both church and state. Francis encouraged vaccination, but San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone distributed communion unmasked and unvaccinated and played the aggrieved victim (a Christian nationalist trope), claiming that “cultural elites” treated Catholics with “willful discrimination” by limiting public gatherings. Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the Military Services USA, contravened the pope by saying Catholic service members could request a religious exemption to the shot, despite Pentagon orders they get it. Broglio is the newly elected president of the USCCB.

The U.S. church has a history of discrimination against Black Catholics in parishes and seminaries, and now the bishops go wrong, with notable exceptions, by failing to adequately condemn white supremacy. After Black Lives Matter protests, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez — president of the U.S. bishops for three years until late 2022, and vice president of the group before that — called out social solidarity movements as “pseudo-religions” that are part of “a deliberate effort … to erase the Christian roots of society and to suppress any remaining Christian influences.”

Wealthy laity support the vision of far-right prelates. Southern California billionaire Timothy Busch, for example, is the founder of the Napa Institute and its influential summer conference where well-to-do conservative Catholics hobnob with bishops, archbishops and right wing politicians. Archbishops Gomez and Cordileone are advisors; last year Trump administration Atty. Gen. Bill Barr was a keynote speaker. Busch, who sees unregulated free markets as congruent with Catholic teachings, has little to say about Francis’ attack on the “sacrilized workings” of the global economy.

Perhaps of greatest concern, the USCCB has been increasingly willing to render the wall between church and state a mere gossamer curtain. Invoking novel theories of “religious liberty,” the bishops have fought legislation and court decisions most Americans support, notably laws protecting same sex marriage and access to contraceptives.

At age 86, Pope Francis is close to the end of his pontificate. Among American Catholics, a stunning 82% view him favorably. But he may not live to appoint enough like-minded cardinals to elect a similar successor.

Moderate U.S. prelates do not go along with the USCCB right-wing hardliners, but they are a minority. I can only hope their numbers grow in time, providing the church with the leadership devoid of political considerations that American Catholics deserve.

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Pope in Hungary urges Europe to unite to end war next door

Pope Francis, left, is greeted by Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the square of “Sándor” Palace in Budapest, Friday, April 28, 2023. The Pontiff is in Hungary for a three-day pastoral visit.

By Nicole Winfield and Justin Spike

Pope Francis on Friday blasted the “adolescent belligerence” that brought war back to Europe and said the continent must recover its founding spirit of peaceful unity to confront Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Francis outlined his vision for the future of Europe as he began a three-day visit to Hungary. In a carefully calibrated speech, he demanded that the European Union approve safe and legal ways for migrants to enter and for the Hungarian government not to hold Europe “hostage” to populist demands.

Francis didn’t mince words when he addressed President Katalin Novak and Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, whose lukewarm support for Ukraine has rankled other EU countries. The pontiff recalled the lofty ideals behind the bloc’s founding and lamented that rising nationalism and “adolescent belligerence” had replaced them.

“We seem to be witnessing the sorry sunset of that choral dream of peace, as the solists of war now take over,” Francis said. “At this historical juncture, Europe is crucial. … It is called to take up its proper role, which is to unite those far apart, to welcome those other peoples and refuse to consider anyone an eternal enemy.”

Hungarian officials said the pope’s visit, his second to Budapest in as many years, was designed primarily to let him minister to the country’s Catholic community. But with the war in neighboring Ukraine and Orban butting heads with other EU nations over rule of law issues and LGBTQ+ rights, Francis’ words and deeds in the heart of Europe carried strong political undertones.

He has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution to the war and expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people, although his trip to Hungary brought Francis the nearest he’s gotten to the front line of the fighting.

The pope plans to meet Saturday with some of the 35,000 Ukrainian refugees who remain in Hungary. Nearly 2.5 million refugees entered the country early on in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Orban has called for a cease-fire. But the nationalist prime minister has refused to supply Kyiv with weapons and threatened to veto EU sanctions against Moscow while maintaining Hungary’s strong dependence on Russian energy. His government also said it would not arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the subject of an international arrest warrant on war crimes charges, if he came to Hungary.

While sharing his hopes for Europe, Francis appeared to call out the country’s growing isolation.

“I think of a Europe that is not hostage to its parts, neither falling prey to self-referential forms of populism nor resorting to a fluid, if not vapid, supra-nationalism that loses sight of the life of its peoples,” the pope said.

Novak, for her part, praised Francis as a man of peace and asked him to confer with “Kyiv and Moscow, to Washington, Brussels, Budapest and to anyone without whom there can be no peace. Here, in Budapest, we ask you to act personally for a just peace as soon as possible!”

Francis has expressed appreciation for Hungary’s recent welcome of Ukrainian refugees, but his views on the moral imperative to welcome all people fleeing conflict, poverty and climate change contrast with Orban’s hard line on migration. In 2015-2016, Hungary built a razor wire fence on the border with Serbia to stop people from entering – .

Francis said time was up for Europe’s “excuses and delay” in responding to the hundreds of thousands of migrants who risk their lives trying to reach the continent each year. He called for the EU to agree on “secure and legal corridors” that would provide a safer route.

Europe must come up with “shared mechanisms to confront an epochal challenge that cannot be faced by pushing back, but must be welcomed to prepare a future that, unless it is shared, will not exist,” the pope said.

The 86-year-old pontiff, who walks with difficulty because of bad knee ligaments, is testing his frail health with his latest trip. He spent four days in the hospital last month with bronchitis. Hungarian officials had hoped Francis would travel around the country, but the Vatican opted to keep him in Budapest, where he spent seven hours in 2021 to close out a church congress.

The visit comes as the European Union’s legislature continues to put pressure on Hungary to counter what EU lawmakers consider a deterioration in the rule of law and democratic principles, including media freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.

The four biggest groups in the European Parliament have called on the bloc’s executive commission to withhold pandemic recovery funds for Hungary until liberal democracy principles are met.

Francis didn’t wade in directly to the dispute, but he quoted the Hungarian Constitution and the founder of the Hungarian state, St. Stephen, in calling for the country to remain open toward others, another apparent reference to Orban’s nativist rhetoric.

On LGBTQ+ rights, the pope and the Hungarian government’s policies were not totally at odds. Catholic doctrine forbids gay marriage, though Francis has backed legal protections for people in same-sex unions.

He also has long ministered to gay and transgender Catholics while condemning “gender ideology” as an alleged form of the West’s ideological colonization of the developing world.

Hungary outlaws same-sex marriage, and the government has prohibited same-sex couples from adopting children. The government has also outlawed the depiction of homosexuality or divergent gender identities to minors in media content.

Francis repeated his condemnation of “gender ideology” Friday along with what he described as “the so-called right to abortion.” He praised Hungary for promoting family values.

“How much better it would be to build a Europe centered on the human person and on its peoples, with effective polices for natality and the family – policies that are pursued attentively in this country,” he said.

Francis’ arrival was met with a quiet welcome, with small groups of people cheering his motorcade as it entered the city center. Zoltan Gozner, a religious education teacher from Esztergom, north of Budapest, took his class to a place on the motorcade’s route so students could see it.

>“Hungary is still a Christian country, and we are a guardian of this faith,” he said.

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