The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday clarified that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.

Answering the question “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded, “negative.”

In an accompanying note, the doctrine office explained that blessings are sacramentals, and “consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”

“Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church,” the CDF said.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

The ruling and note were approved for publication by Pope Francis and signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The CDF’s note did not state the origin of the dubium submitted to the doctrinal office, but noted that “in some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced.”

In recent years, German bishops in particular have been increasingly outspoken in demanding “discussions about an opening” towards acceptance of practiced homosexuality and the blessing of homosexual unions in the Church.

Following consultations in Berlin in late 2019, the chairman of the marriage and family commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the German bishops agreed that homosexuality was a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

The topic also plays a central role in one of four forums that constitute the controversial “Synodal Process” underway in Germany.

The CDF explained in 2003 that “the Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

German bishops who have publicly voiced support for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Catholic Church include Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

Bishop Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, in December 2020 called for changes to the section on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Expressing openness to blessings of homosexual unions, he said, “we need solutions for this.”

On Feb. 23, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz defended his support for a book of blessings and rites for homosexual unions. The book followed a May 2020 publication from Austria about how same-sex couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing. Kohlgraf suggested that Catholics with homosexual inclinations cannot all be expected to live chastely.

The call for liturgical blessings of same-sex unions is part of a wider push by some German bishops to change the Church’s teaching on a number of issues, including on the sacraments of priestly ordination and marriage.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German partner agency, reported that Bishop Bätzing has suggested that the Vatican Synod of Bishops on synodality, scheduled for October 2022, could help implement German “Synodal Way” resolutions not only in Germany, but throughout the Catholic Church.

Source: National Catholic Register

Cardinal Robert Sarah on Wednesday rejected claims that he and Pope Francis are enemies, in his first interview since stepping down from his Vatican post.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper published March 10, the Guinean cardinal said that he had “tried to be a loyal, obedient, and humble servant of the truth of the Gospel.”

“Even though some journalists continually repeat the same nonsense,” he told Il Foglio, “I have never opposed the pope.”

An English translation of the cardinal’s interview was published on Wednesday by the National Catholic Register.

On Feb. 20, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Sarah’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Sarah had submitted his resignation to the pope when he turned 75 in June 2020, as Church norms dictate.

Before his resignation, Sarah was the most senior African prelate at the Vatican, appointed head of the liturgy department by Pope Francis in November 2014.

Sarah said in his interview that when Pope Francis told him that he had decided to accept the resignation, “I immediately replied that I was happy and grateful for his decision.”

“I am happy and proud to have served three popes — St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — in the Roman Curia for more than 20 years,” the cardinal continued.

“Some people insinuate without reason or even being able to provide concrete and credible proof that we were enemies, it’s not true! Pope Francis likes frankness. We have always worked together with simplicity, despite the fantasies of journalists,” he said.

Sarah criticized the idea that his former role leading the Congregation for Divine Worship was “an honorary position, but of little importance.”

“I believe that the responsibility for the liturgy puts us at the heart of the Church, of her raison d’être. The Church is neither an administration nor a human institution. The Church mysteriously prolongs Christ’s presence on earth,” he said.

Sarah quoted the Second Vatican Council document Sacrosanctum concilium, which says that the liturgy is “a sacred action surpassing all others” and “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”

“The Church exists to give men to God and to give God to men,” Sarah explained. “This is precisely the role of the liturgy: to worship God and to communicate divine grace to souls. When the liturgy is sick, the whole Church is in danger because her relationship with God is not only weakened but deeply damaged.”

He recalled Benedict XVI’s comment that the crisis of the Church is “essentially a crisis of the liturgy because it is a crisis of the relationship with God.”

“If God is not at the center of the Church’s life, then she is in danger of death,” the cardinal said.

Sarah also emphasized that the liturgy is about God, not the community or individual. This reality, he said, is expressed well when the liturgy is said ad orientem, meaning with the priest facing the altar, or liturgical East, rather than the people.

The cardinal also explained why he thought that silence was important in the liturgy.

“When man remains silent, he leaves a place for God,” he said. “On the contrary, when the liturgy becomes chatty, it forgets that the cross is its center, it organizes itself around the microphone.”

He said these questions are crucial, “because they determine the place we give to God,” and lamented that they had become “ideological.”

Factional struggles within the Church are a source of suffering for him, he said. “Too often we act as if everything is a question of politics, power, influence and the unjustified imposition of a hermeneutic of Vatican II that totally breaks and is irreversibly at odds with Tradition.”

He declared it “false” that he was opposed to the Second Vatican Council because he spoke of a sense of the sacred in the liturgy.

“I don’t believe that the struggle between progressives and conservatives has any meaning in the Church. These categories are political and ideological,” he said, adding that “the Church is not a field of political struggle.”

“The only thing that counts is to seek God ever more deeply, to meet him there and humbly kneel down to adore him.”

It was unfortunate, Cardinal Sarah said, that there are “ideologues” who set the pre-Council Church against the post-Council Church.

According to the cardinal, these people “are dividers; they are doing the work of the devil.”

“The Church is one, without rupture, without changing course, because her Founder ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,’” he said. “She goes towards God, she directs us towards him. From the profession of faith of St. Peter to Pope Francis through Vatican II, the Church turns us towards Christ.”

Now that he is retired, Sarah said that he intended to continue working and was happy to have more time to pray and read.

“I will continue to write, to speak, to travel. Here in Rome, I continue to receive priests and faithful from all over the world,” he said.

Sarah will continue to serve as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, where he said he saw “with immense joy how the Church is bursting with holiness.”

“More than ever the Church needs bishops who speak clearly, free and faithful to Jesus Christ and to the doctrinal and moral teachings of his Gospel,” he said. “I intend to continue this mission and even amplify it.”

Source: Catholic News Agency

A religious sister in northern Burma knelt before police on Monday, begging them not to use violent force against protestors.

In avideo, Sr. Ann Rose Nu Tawng, a member of the Sisters of St. Francis Xavier, can be seen speaking March 8 to two kneeling police officers in the city of Myitkyina, the capital of Burma’s northern Kachin State.

Speaking to Reuters, Tawng said: “I begged them not to hurt the protesters, but to treat them kindly, like family members.”

She said that senior officers had told her they were just clearing the street. In the video, the sister and one policeman can be seen touching their foreheads to the ground.

“I begged them not to shoot the children,” she said.

But soon after, “we heard loud gunshots and saw that a young kid’s head had exploded, and there was a river of blood on the street,” she recounted.

Tawng and other witnesses said that at least two protestors were killed and several injured in clashes with police.

The religious sister tried to bring some of the victims to a clinic she runs in the town but was blinded by tear gas.

“Our clinic floor became a sea of blood,” she said. “We need to value life. It made me feel so sad.”

Catholic nuns from a variety of communities in Burma have marched the streets, praying for the protestors and offering them food, according to UCA News. Amid protests in Myitkyina, the sisters hung signs saying “No to dictatorship” and “Listen to the voices of people” outside of their convent.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of 54 million people. Both the democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and president Win Myint were detained by members of the military in the early hours of Feb. 1, after the military disputed the results of the 2020 election. The army general Min Aung Hlaing now leads the country.

According to an advocacy group, more than 60 people have died and over 1,800 have been detained as police crack down on protests against the Feb. 1 military coup.

Sr. Ann Rose Nu Tawng was also photographed kneeling before a line of advancing police officers late last month.

L’Osservatore Romanosaidthat the she ran out into the street on Feb. 28 as police fired tear gas at protesters.

“On her knees, she raised her hands to God and begged: ‘Don’t shoot, don’t kill innocents. If you want, hit me,’” the newspaper reported, adding that the police halted their advance.

Source: Catholic News Agency

Pope Francis landed in Iraq Friday to begin his historic trip to the war-battered country, defying security fears and the pandemic to comfort one of the world’s oldest and most persecuted Christian communities.

The pope, who wore a mask during the flight, kept it on as he descended the stairs to the tarmac and was greeted by two masked children in traditional dress.

A red carpet was rolled out on the tarmac at Baghdad’s international airport with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on hand to greet him.

The 84-year-old, who said he is making his first-ever papal visit to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace,” will also reach out to Shiite Muslims when he meets Iraq’s top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. 

The four-day journey is the pope’s first abroad since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which left the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics saying he felt “caged” inside the Vatican.

While Francis has been vaccinated, Iraq has been gripped by a second wave with a record of over 5,000 new cases a day, prompting authorities to impose full lockdowns during the pontiff’s visit.

Security was tight in Iraq, a country that is still hunting for Islamic State (IS) group sleeper cells after years of war and insurgency. Only days ago, a barrage of rockets ploughed into a military base hosting US troops.

Hundreds of people had gathered along the airport road with hopes of catching a glimpse of the pope’s plane touching down.

Iraqis were keen to welcome him and the global attention his visit will bring, with banners and posters hanging high in central Baghdad, and billboards depicting Francis with the slogan “We are all Brothers” decorating the main thoroughfare.

Services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums

Francis will preside over a half-dozen services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums and remote desert locations, where attendance will be limited to allow for social distancing.

Inside the country, he will travel more than 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) by plane and helicopter, flying over areas where security forces are still battling IS remnants.

For shorter trips, Francis will take an armoured car on freshly paved roads that will be lined with flowers and posters welcoming the leader known here as “Baba Al-Vatican”.

The pope’s visit has deeply touched Iraq’s Christians, whose numbers have collapsed over years of persecution and sectarian violence, from 1.5 million in 2003 to fewer than 400,000 today.

“We’re hoping the pope will explain to the government that it needs to help its people,” a Christian from Iraq’s north, Saad al-Rassam, told AFP. “We have suffered so much, we need the support.”  

‘Too many martyrs’

The first day of the pope’s ambitious itinerary will see him meet government officials and clerics in the capital Baghdad, including at the Our Lady of Salvation church, where a jihadist attack left dozens dead in 2010.

He will also visit the northern province of Nineveh, where in 2014 IS jihadists forced minorities to either flee, convert to Islam or be put to death.

“People had only a few minutes to decide if they wanted to leave or be decapitated,” recalled Karam Qacha, a Chaldean Catholic priest in Nineveh.

“We left everything — except our faith.”

Some 100,000 Christians — around half of those who lived in the province — fled, of whom just 36,000 have returned, according to Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need”.

Among the returnees, a third have said they want to leave again in coming years, dismayed by Iraq’s rampant corruption, persecution and poverty, which now affects 40 percent of the population.

The exodus is a loss for all of Iraq, said Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches and will accompany the pope to Iraq.

“A Middle East without Christians is like trying to make bread with flour, but no yeast or salt,” he said.

The visit aims not only to encourage Christians to stay in their homeland, but even prompt some emigres to return from nearby Lebanon and Jordan, or further afield like Canada and Australia.

In a video address ahead of the trip, Francis evoked “the wounds of loved ones left behind and homes abandoned,” saying there had been “too many martyrs” in Iraq.

“I come as a pilgrim, a penitent pilgrim to implore forgiveness and reconciliation from the Lord after years of war and terrorism.”               

‘Minarets and church bells’

The pope has insisted on the visit despite resurging violence.

Rocket attacks across the country have left three people dead in recent weeks, including a US contractor who died Wednesday.

Francis’ determination to travel to areas long shunned by foreign dignitaries has impressed many in Iraq — as has his planned meeting with Sistani, 90, the top authority for Iraq’s Shiites.

A highly reclusive figure who rarely accepts visitors, Sistani will make an exception to host Francis at his humble home in the shrine city of Najaf on Saturday.

Banners all over Najaf have celebrated “the historic encounter, between the minarets and the church bells”.

Francis, a major supporter of inter-religious dialogue, will afterwards head to the desert site of Ur, where Abraham is thought to have been born.

There, he will host an interfaith service that will bring together not only the Abrahamic religions but also include followers of other beliefs, including Yazidis and Sabeans.

The Pope’s programme in Iraq includes visits to the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Ur, Mosul, Qaraqosh and Erbil. He will traverse some 1,445 km in a country where Iraqi-American tensions still linger and where more recently the scourge of Covid-19 has led to record numbers of infections.

Pope Francis will travel in an armoured car to avoid the customary crowds that flock to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Catholic Church. At times he will be required to travel either by helicopter or plane over areas where jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group are still present.

Proceedings kick off Friday with a speech to Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, addressing the security and economic difficulties confronting Iraq’s 40 million people. The pope is also expected to mention the persecution of the country’s Christian minority.

On Saturday he will visit the holy city of Najaf, where he will be hosted by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest authority for many Shiites in Iraq and the world.

The pope will make a trip to the ancient city of Ur, the birthplace, according to the Bible, of the prophet Abraham, a figure common to the three monotheistic religions. There he will pray with Muslims, Yazidis and Sanaeans (pre-Christian monotheisms).

Francis will continue his journey on Sunday in the province of Nineveh (northern Iraq), the cradle of Iraqi Christians. He will then head to Mosul and Qaraqoch, two cities marked by the destruction of the Islamic extremists.

The pontiff will conclude his tour by presiding over an open-air Mass on Sunday in the presence of thousands of Christians in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This Kurdish Muslim stronghold has offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis and Muslims who fled the atrocities of the Islamic State group.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)