Tag: Vatican Spring

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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.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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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.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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In a historic shift

— Pope Francis allows women to vote at bishops’ meetings

Pope Francis leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 26, 2023.

By The Associated Press

Pope Francis has decided to give women the right to vote at an upcoming meeting of bishops, an historic reform that reflects his hopes to give women greater decision-making responsibilities and laypeople more say in the life of the Catholic Church.

Francis approved changes to the norms governing the Synod of Bishops, a Vatican body that gathers the world’s bishops together for periodic meetings, following years of demands by women to have the right to vote.

The Vatican on Wednesday published the modifications he approved, which emphasize his vision for the lay faithful taking on a greater role in church affairs that have long been left to clerics, bishops and cardinals.

Catholic women’s groups that have long criticized the Vatican for treating women as second-class citizens immediately praised the move as historic in the 2,000-year life of the church.

“This is a significant crack in the stained glass ceiling, and the result of sustained advocacy, activism and the witness” of a campaign of Catholic women’s groups demanding the right to vote, said Kate McElwee of the Women’s Ordination Conference, which advocates for women priests.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church, popes have summoned the world’s bishops to Rome for a few weeks at a time to debate particular topics. At the end of the meetings, the bishops vote on specific proposals and put them to the pope, who then produces a document taking their views into account.

Until now, the only people who could vote were men. But under the new changes, five religious sisters will join five priests as voting representatives for religious orders. In addition, Francis has decided to appoint 70 non-bishop members of the synod and has asked that half of them be women. They too will have a vote.

The aim is also to include young people among these 70 non-bishop members, who will be proposed by regional blocs, with Francis making a final decision.

“It’s an important change, it’s not a revolution,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, a top organizer of the synod.

The next meeting, scheduled for Oct. 4-29, is focused on the very topic of making the church more reflective of, and responsive to, the laity, a process known as “synodality” that Francis has championed for years.

The October meeting has been preceded by an unprecedented two-year canvassing of the lay Catholic faithful about their vision for the church and how it can better respond to the needs of Catholics today.

So far only one women is known to be a voting member of that October meeting, Sister Nathalie Becquart, a French nun who is undersecretary in the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops office. When she was appointed to the position in 2021, she called Francis “brave” for having pushed the envelope on women’s participation.

By the end of next month, seven regional blocs will propose 20 names apiece of non-bishop members to Francis, who will select 10 names apiece to bring the total to 70.

Cardinal Mario Grech, who is in charge of the synod, stressed that with the changes, some 21% of the gathered representatives at the October meeting will be non-bishops, with half of that group women.

Acknowledging the unease within the hierarchy of Francis’ vision of inclusivity, he stressed that the synod itself would continue to have a majority of bishops calling the shots.

“Change is normal in life and history,” Hollerich told reporters. “Sometimes there are revolutions in history, but revolutions have victims. We don’t want to have victims,” he said, chuckling.

Catholic Women’s Ordination, a British-based group that says it’s devoted to fighting misogyny in the church, welcomed the reform but asked for more.

“CWO would want transparency, and lay people elected from dioceses rather than chosen by the hierarchy, but it is a start!” said the CWO’s Pat Brown.

Hollerich declined to say how the female members of the meeting would be called, given that members have long been known as “synodal fathers.” Asked if they would be known as “synodal mothers,” he responded that it would be up to the women to decide.

Francis has upheld the Catholic Church’s ban on ordaining women as priests, but has done more than any pope in recent time to give women greater say in decision-making roles in the church.

He has appointed several women to high-ranking Vatican positions, though no women head any of the major Vatican offices or departments, known as dicasteries.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Francis: ‘infiltrators’ use Church to peddle hate

— Francis spoke to a group of ten young people in June last year, in a filmed discussion released on 5 April.

The Pope: Answers is available on the streaming services Disney+, Hulu and Star+.

By Christopher Lamb

Those using the Bible to promote hate speech and exclude gay or transgender Catholics are “infiltrators” taking advantage of the Church to promote their ideologies, Pope Francis has told a group of young adults.

The 86-year-old pontiff made his comments during an emotional discussion with ten individuals aged between 20 and 25, including Catholics, non-believers and a Muslim.

In the filmed discussion, The Pope: Answers, Francis was not just asked questions but accepted challenges and rebukes, including over the Church’s handling of the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

On the Church’s approach to LGBTQ matters, Celia, a Spaniard who identifies as non-binary, asked the Pope what he thinks about “people or priests” who use the Bible to promote hate and exclusion.

“Those people are infiltrators,” he replied. “They are infiltrators who use the Church for their personal passions, for their personal narrowness. It’s one of the corruptions within the Church. Those narrow-minded ideologies.”

The Pope has faced deep hostility in some quarters for his refusal to take a “culture warrior” stance on sexual teaching. Throughout his pontificate, Francis has adopted a pastorally sensitive approach to LGBTQ Catholics, supported civil protections of same-sex couples and called for the de-criminalisation of homosexuality.

He has also publicly backed the ministry to LGBTQ people conducted by Fr James Martin SJ, who himself has faced sustained, at times vitriolic opposition to his work.

The Jesuit Pope told the young people that “deep within” those who promote hate are “severe inconsistencies” and that they judge other people due to their sinfulness.

“They judge others because they can’t atone for their own faults,” Francis said.

“In general, people who judge are inconsistent. There’s something within them. They feel liberated by judging others, when they should look inside at their own guilt.”

The Pope insisted that every person is a “child of God” and that when the Church stops welcoming everybody – “the blind, the deaf, the good, the bad” – it will “stop being the Church”.

The discussion, which was filmed in Rome in June 2022 and released on Disney+, Hulu and Star+ on 5 April, covered a range of topics. These include abortion, pornography, masturbation, feminism, migration, online dating, depression and the disconnect between the Church and young people.

The Pope was also asked whether he takes a salary or has a mobile phone, with Francis explaining why he has neither.

Francis, speaking in Spanish, said that the Church’s teaching on sex still needs to develop, saying that the “catechism regarding sex is still at a very early stage [‘in nappies’]. I think we Christians haven’t always had a mature catechism regarding sex.”

He emphasised: “Sex is one of the beautiful things God gave human beings. To express oneself sexually is something rich. Anything that diminishes a true sexual expression diminishes you as well, it renders you partial, and it diminishes that richness.”

One of the participants, Alessandra, told the Pope that she makes her living by posting pornographic content on social media. She was challenged by Maria, a practising Catholic, who said that pornography is harmful.

Francis responded: “Those who are addicted to pornography are like being addicted to a drug that keeps them at a level that does not let them grow.”

Quite early on in the discussion, a disagreement broke out over abortion. Milagros, a young woman from Argentina who teaches the Church’s catechism, said she supports women, whatever their choice. Francis said he tells priests to “be merciful, as Jesus is” when it comes to abortion, but hiring a “hitman” to solve a problem cannot solve the problem.

Some of the group supported Milagros and take issue with the Pope’s use of language. Others did not. Francis listened and thanked them for their sensitivity to the topic.

“A woman who has had an abortion cannot be left alone, we should stay with her. She made that decision. She had an abortion. We shouldn’t send her to hell all of a sudden or isolate her, no. We should stay by her side,” he said.

“But we should call a spade a spade: staying by her side is one thing, but justifying the act is something else.”

Later, a young man, Juan, talked about how he was abused when he was 11 years old by his teacher, a numerary of Opus Dei, in Bilbao, Spain.

Francis thanked Juan for coming forward with his story and pledged to have his case reviewed by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The young man said the dicastery was presented with details but no further action was taken. The civil courts convicted the man who abused him but with a reduced sentence.

At this point, one participant rebuked the Pope for the Church’s handling of cases pointing out that Juan “had to come here so you would say that the issue would be solved” but asking about those not afforded that opportunity.

Finally, a woman who had been in formation to be a religious sister told the Pope that she was no longer a believer. She described her training as “abusive”, that she could not talk to her family and that her communications were monitored.

She added that the “wealth and power” of the Church in Rome was partly why she lapsed.

“The true Church is on the peripheries,” Francis replied. “In the centre, there are good people, holy people, but there is also much corruption, and that needs to be acknowledged.”

He added that what she said about the abuse of power in some religious orders is “true” and that he has had several of them inspected.

At the end of the discussion, Francis thanked the participants and said this kind of dialogue should be promoted as a “path of the Church”.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!