Pope Francis declined Wednesday to approve the ordination of married men to address a shortage of priests in the Amazon, sidestepping a fraught issue that has dominated debate in the Catholic Church and even involved retired Pope Benedict XVI. 

Francis, in an eagerly awaited document, did not refer to the recommendations by Amazonian bishops to consider the ordination of married men or women deacons. Rather, the pope urged bishops to pray for more priestly vocations and to send missionaries to a region where faithful Catholics in remote areas can go months or even years without Mass.

The papal dodge disappointed progressives, who had hoped he would at the very least put both questions to further study. It outraged liberal Catholic women’s groups. And it relieved conservatives who have used the debate over priestly celibacy to heighten opposition to the pope, whose strongest conservative critics have accused of heresy. 

Francis’ document, “Beloved Amazon,” is instead a love letter to the Amazonian rain forest and its indigenous peoples, penned by history’s first Latin American pope. Francis has long been concerned about the violent exploitation of the Amazon’s land, its crucial importance to the global ecosystem and the injustices committed against its peoples.

Pope Francis✔@Pontifex

I dream of Christian communities capable of generous commitment, incarnate in the Amazon region, and giving the Church new faces with Amazonian features.

Quoting poetry as frequently as past papal teachings, Francis addressed the document to all peoples of the world “to help awaken their affection and concern for that land which is also ours and to invite them to value it and acknowledge it as a sacred mystery.”

“Beloved Amazon” is in many ways a synthesized and focused version of Francis’ 2015 landmark environmental encyclical, “Praised Be,” in which he blasted wealthy countries and multinational corporations for destroying the world’s natural resources and impoverishing the poor for their own profit.

Francis said he has four dreams for the Amazon: that the rights of the poor are respected, that their cultural riches are celebrated, that the Amazon’s natural beauty and life are preserved, and that its Christian communities show Amazonian features.

Francis had convened bishops from the Amazon’s nine countries for a three-week meeting in October to debate the ways the church can help preserve the delicate ecosystem from global warming and better minister to the region’s people, many of whom live in isolated communities or in poverty in cities. 

The Argentine Jesuit has long been sensitive to the plight of the Amazon, where Protestant and Pentecostal churches are wooing away Catholic souls in the absence of vibrant Catholic communities where the Eucharist can be regularly celebrated.

In their final document at the end of the October synod, the majority of bishops called for the establishment of criteria so that “respected” married men in their communities who have already served as permanent deacons be ordained as priests. 

In addition, the bishops called for the Vatican to reopen a study commission on ordaining women as deacons, a type of ministry in the church that allows for preaching, celebrating weddings and baptisms, but not consecrating the Eucharist. Francis had created such a commission in 2016 at the insistence of religious sisters who want more say and roles in church governance and ministry, but the group ended its work without reaching consensus. 

Francis didn’t mention either proposal in “Beloved Amazon” and didn’t cite the synod’s final document in his text or in a single footnote. But he did say in his introduction that he wanted to “officially present” the synod’s work and urged the faithful to read it in full, suggesting that he at least valued the input.

Francis did echo many of the synod’s recommendations, calling for greater lay participation in the life of the church and saying the training of priests in the Amazon must be overhauled so they are more able to minister to indigenous peoples. He said “every effort should be made” to give the faithful access to the Eucharist. 

“This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region,” he wrote.

Francis dismissed suggestions that ordaining women to any ministry would serve them or the church. While agreeing that women should have greater decision-making and governance roles, Francis argued that they must find “other forms of service and charisms that are proper to women.”

Groups that advocate for women’s ordination and giving women greater roles in the Catholic Church blasted the document. Francis justified his refusal to consider ordained ministry for women as sparing them the risk of being “clericalized,” or placed on a pedestal. 

“This is a dereliction of his duty as a leader with the power to make positive change and challenge discrimination,” said Miriam Duignan of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, a British-based progressive Catholic think tank.

Kate McElwee, executive director of Women’s Ordination Conference, said the document betrayed women in the Amazon and elsewhere who perform the lion’s share of the church’s work, pass the faith from generation to generation, and yet enjoy no official recognition or authority.

“Recognizing women’s work with diaconal ordination would be the first, most basic step towards righting the wrong of institutional sexism that hobbles our church as it attempts to respond to the moral crises of our time,” McElwee said in a statement.

The Catholic Church retains the priesthood for men, arguing that Christ and his apostles were male. While Eastern rite branches have married priests, and Anglican and Protestant priest converts can be married, the Roman rite church has had a tradition of priestly celibacy since the 11th century, imposed in part for financial reasons to ensure that priests’ assets pass to the church, not to heirs.

In the weeks leading up to the document’s release, the question of a celibate priesthood made headlines after the publication of a book penned by the retired pope, Benedict, and a conservative Vatican official, Cardinal Robert Sarah, reaffirmed the “necessity” of a celibate priesthood.

Benedict’s participation in the book sparked controversy, since it appeared the retired pope was trying to influence the thinking of the current one, despite his promises to remain “hidden from the world” when he resigned seven years ago. 

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni noted that Francis finished the document in December, before the book came out, making clear the pope wasn’t swayed by Benedict’s intervention.

Francis avoided the issue altogether, dedicating instead the entire first half of the document to the “injustice and crime” committed against the Amazonian peoples and their environment by local governments, foreign corporate interests, and illegal mining and extraction industries.

“We cannot allow globalization to become a new version of colonialism,” he wrote. 

He said the church in the Amazon must have social justice at the forefront of its spirituality, saying ministry that focuses excessively on discipline and rules will turn people away when in fact they need “understanding, comfort and acceptance.” 

The traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli, which has been highly critical of Francis, said that by closing the door to a married priesthood and female deacons, the document was “the best possible document we could have hoped for in the current pontificate and in the current age.”

Clare Dixon, Latin America chief for the British Catholic aid agency CAFOD, focused on the environmental good it might do in the global debate about how to fight climate change.

“But Francis is also imploring us to listen to the wisdom of the people of the Amazon, insisting that we learn from the way they live with the environment rather than in competition with it,” she said.

Francis called for the church to incorporate indigenous traditions and cultures into its ministry, including song and dance, myth and festivals, and urged patience when confronted with apparently pagan practices and symbols. 

It was a reference to the controversy that punctuated the synod over the appearance in the Vatican of wooden statues of a pregnant woman that critics said were pagan idols. At one point, a conservative activist stole the statues from a Vatican-area church and threw them in the Tiber River in a videotaped stunt that galvanized traditionalist opposition to Francis and the synod itself.

(AP)

Boko Haram insurgents beheaded a Christian leader in their captivity on Monday, according to Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist closely covering the crisis in Nigeria and across the Lake Chad region.

The journalist in a tweet said Reverend Lawan Andimi along with a soldier were were killed by the the terrorists at the same time. They released a video which the journalist described as “appalling executions.”

Local media reports said the reverend belong to the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN. He was a local leader of CAN in the Michika Local Government Area in northeastern Adamawa State.

It is now clear that Christians are not protected by the government. We don’t feel like we have a government.

The CAN leadership in the state confirmed the execution adding that negotiations for ransom payments were well underway. The reverend was abducted early this year when the insurgents stormed Michika, they were repelled by the military but made away with the reverend as they fled.

Adamawa State CAN chairman, Stephen Mamza, deplored the circumstances leading to the murder, he said the insurgents had asked for £2 million but they had been able to raise only 50 million naira which was flatly rejected.

The insurgents had told the deceased’s wife that they will execute him last Saturday but waited till Monday to undertake the act. Mamza spoke about how another clergyman was killed on Monday.

“It is now clear that Christians are not protected by the government. We don’t feel like we have a government,” he is quoted to have said. The State governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, also condemned the incident as has Amnesty International’s local branch.

On the subject of attacks on Christians, the CAN leader echoes a sentiment that is gaining currency but has routinely been rejected as untrue. Boko Haram violence does not discriminate be it age, sex, religion or social standing.

One case that stands out in their abductions is of Leah Sharibu, a sole Christian abductee, in the 2018 Dapchi Girls swoop. Whiles all her colleagues were released, Leah was held because she reportedly refused to disavow her Christian faith.

Source: Africa News

Pope Francis has appointed Francesca Di Giovanni to be the new undersecretary for multilateral affairs in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

It is a first at the Vatican for a woman.

Di Giovanni said she did not expect the appointment, but was looking forward to advance a “feminine point of view” in her new role.

The Pope “surprised us, as he often does, with this decision”, Di Giovanni said.

Speaking to local media on Wednesday, she said she had not yet had the chance to speak with the Pope since her appointment, but that she intents to write to him.

AP

They met. They wrote to each other. Precisely while “the world rumbled with the uproar created by a strange synod of the media that took the place of the real synod,” that of the Amazon.

And they decided to break the silence: “It was our sacred duty to recall the truth of the Catholic priesthood. In these difficult times, everyone must be afraid that one day God will address to him this harsh reproof: ‘Cursed are you, who did not say anything’.” An invective, this latter, taken from Saint Catherine of Siena, a tremendous flogger of popes.

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI and Guinean cardinal Robert Sarah sent this book of theirs to the presses shortly before Christmas, and here it is coming out in France in mid-January, published by Fayard with the title: “From the depth of our hearts,” and thus even before Pope Francis has dictated the conclusions of that Amazonian synod which in reality, more than on rivers and forests, was a furious discussion on the future of the Catholic priesthood, if celibate or not, and if open in the future to women.

It will be a serious problem, in fact, for Francis to make an opening for the married priesthood and the female diaconate after his predecessor and a cardinal of profound doctrine and of radiant holiness of life like Sarah have taken such a clear and powerfully argued position in support of priestly celibacy, addressing themselves to the reigning pope almost in the words of an ultimatum, through the pen of the one but with the full agreement of the other:

“There is an ontological-sacramental bond between the priesthood and celibacy. Any curtailment of this bond would mean calling into question the magisterium of the council and of the popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. I humbly beg Pope Francis to protect us definitively from such an eventuality, setting his veto against any weakening of the law of priestly celibacy, even if limited to one region or another.”

The book, 180 pages long, after a preface by editor Nicolas Diat, is divided into four chapters.

The first, entitled “What are you afraid of?”, is an introduction signed jointly by the two authors, dated September 2019.

The second is by Joseph Ratzinger, is of a biblical and theological slant and has the title: “The Catholic priesthood.” It bears the date of September 17, before the synod began.

The third is by Cardinal Sarah and is entitled: “To love right up to the end. An ecclesiological and pastoral look at priestly celibacy.” It has the date of November 25, one month after the end of the synod, in which the author participated assiduously.

The fourth is the joint conclusion of the two authors, with the title: “In the shadow of the cross,” and with the date of December 3.

In the chapter that he signed, Ratzinger mainly intends to bring to light “the profound unity between the two Testaments, through the passage from the Temple of stone to the Temple that is the body of Christ.”

And he applies this hermeneutic to three biblical texts, from which he derives the Christian notion of celibate priesthood.

The first is a passage from Psalm 16: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup…”

The third is these words of Jesus in the gospel of John 17:17: “Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth.”

While the second is two passages from Deuteronomy (10:8 and 18:5-8) incorporated into Eucharistic prayer II: “We give you thanks admitting us into your presence to perform the priestly service.”

To illustrate the meaning of these words, Ratzinger cites almost in its entirety the homily he gave at Saint Peter’s on the morning of March 20 2008, Holy Thursday, during the Mass of the sacred chrism with which priests are ordained.

A homily reproduced below, as a sample of the whole book and of its pages directly dedicated to the question of celibacy.

*

“We do not invent the Church as we would like it to be”

by Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI

Holy Thursday is an occasion for us to ask ourselves over and over again: to what did we say our “yes”? What does this “being a priest of Jesus Christ” mean? The Second Canon of our Missal, which was probably compiled in Rome already at the end of the second century, describes the essence of the priestly ministry with the words with which, in the Book of Deuteronomy (18: 5, 7), the essence of the Old Testament priesthood is described: astare coram te et tibi ministrare [“to stand and minister in the name of the Lord”]. There are therefore two duties that define the essence of the priestly ministry: in the first place, “to stand in his [the Lord’s] presence”.

In the Book of Deuteronomy this is read in the context of the preceding disposition, according to which priests do not receive any portion of land in the Holy Land – they live of God and for God. They did not attend to the usual work necessary to sustain daily life. Their profession was to “stand in the Lord’s presence” – to look to him, to be there for him. Hence, ultimately, the word indicated a life in God’s presence, and with this also a ministry of representing others. As the others cultivated the land, from which the priest also lived, so he kept the world open to God, he had to live with his gaze on him.

Now if this word is found in the Canon of the Mass immediately after the consecration of the gifts, after the entrance of the Lord in the assembly of prayer, then for us this points to being before the Lord present, that is, it indicates the Eucharist as the centre of priestly life. But here too, the meaning is deeper. During Lent the hymn that introduces the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours – the Office that monks once recited during the night vigil before God and for humanity – one of the duties of Lent is described with the imperative: arctius perstemus in custodia – we must be even more intensely alert. In the tradition of Syrian monasticism, monks were qualified as “those who remained standing”. This standing was an expression of vigilance.

What was considered here as a duty of the monks, we can rightly see also as an expression of the priestly mission and as a correct interpretation of the word of Deuteronomy: the priest must be on the watch. He must be on his guard in the face of the imminent powers of evil. He must keep the world awake for God. He must be the one who remains standing: upright before the trends of time. Upright in truth. Upright in the commitment for good. Being before the Lord must always also include, at its depths, responsibility for humanity to the Lord, who in his turn takes on the burden of all of us to the Father. And it must be a taking on of him, of Christ, of his word, his truth, his love. The priest must be upright, fearless and prepared to sustain even offences for the Lord, as referred to in the Acts of the Apostles: they were “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name” (5: 41) of Jesus.

Now let us move on to the second word that the Second Canon repeats from the Old Testament text – “to stand in your presence and serve you”. The priest must be an upright person, vigilant, a person who remains standing. Service is then added to all this.

In the Old Testament text this word has an essentially ritualistic meaning: all acts of worship foreseen by the Law are the priests’ duty. But this action, according to the rite, was classified as service, as a duty of service, and thus it explains in what spirit this activity must take place.

With the assumption of the word “serve” in the Canon, the liturgical meaning of this term was adopted in a certain way – to conform with the novelty of the Christian cult. What the priest does at that moment, in the Eucharistic celebration, is to serve, to fulfil a service to God and a service to humanity. The cult that Christ rendered to the Father was the giving of himself to the end for humanity. Into this cult, this service, the priest must insert himself.

Thus, the word “serve” contains many dimensions. In the first place, part of it is certainly the correct celebration of the liturgy and of the sacraments in general, accomplished through interior participation. We must learn to increasingly understand the sacred liturgy in all its essence, to develop a living familiarity with it, so that it becomes the soul of our daily life. It is then that we celebrate in the correct way; it is then that the ars celebrandi, the art of celebrating, emerges by itself. In this art there must be nothing artificial.

If the liturgy is the central duty of the priest, this also means that prayer must be a primary reality, to be learned ever anew and ever more deeply at the school of Christ and of the Saints of all the ages. Since the Christian liturgy by its nature is also always a proclamation, we must be people who are familiar with the Word of God, love it and live by it: only then can we explain it in an adequate way. “To serve the Lord” – priestly service precisely also means to learn to know the Lord in his Word and to make it known to all those he entrusts to us.

Lastly, two other aspects are part of service. No one is closer to his master than the servant who has access to the most private dimensions of his life. In this sense “to serve” means closeness, it requires familiarity. This familiarity also bears a danger: when we continually encounter the sacred it risks becoming habitual for us.

In this way, reverential fear is extinguished. Conditioned by all our habits we no longer perceive the great, new and surprising fact that he himself is present, speaks to us, gives himself to us. We must ceaselessly struggle against this becoming accustomed to the extraordinary reality, against the indifference of the heart, always recognizing our insufficiency anew and the grace that there is in the fact that he consigned himself into our hands. To serve means to draw near, but above all it also means obedience.

The servant is under the word: “not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk 22: 42). With this word Jesus, in the Garden of Olives, has resolved the decisive battle against sin, against the rebellion of the sinful heart. Adam’s sin consisted precisely in the fact that he wanted to accomplish his own will and not God’s. Humanity’s temptation is always to want to be totally autonomous, to follow its own will alone and to maintain that only in this way will we be free; that only thanks to a similarly unlimited freedom would man be completely man. But this is precisely how we pit ourselves against the truth. Because the truth is that we must share our freedom with others and we can be free only in communion with them.

This shared freedom can be true freedom only if we enter into what constitutes the very measure of freedom, if we enter into God’s will. This fundamental obedience that is part of the human being – a person cannot be merely for and by himself – becomes still more concrete in the priest: we do not preach ourselves, but him and his Word, which we could not have invented ourselves. We proclaim the Word of Christ in the correct way only in communion with his Body.

Our obedience is a believing with the Church, a thinking and speaking with the Church, serving through her. What Jesus predicted to Peter also always applies: “You will be taken where you do not want to go”. This letting oneself be guided where one does not want to be led is an essential dimension of our service, and it is exactly what makes us free. In this being guided, which can be contrary to our ideas and plans, we experience something new – the wealth of God’s love.

“To stand in his presence and serve him”: Jesus Christ as the true High Priest of the world has conferred to these words a previously unimaginable depth. He, who as Son was and is the Lord, has willed to become that Servant of God which the vision of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah had foreseen. He has willed to be the Servant of all. He has portrayed the whole of his high priesthood in the gesture of the washing of the feet.

With the gesture of love to the end he washes our dirty feet, with the humility of his service he purifies us from the illness of our pride. Thus, he makes us able to become partakers of God’s banquet. He has descended, and the true ascent of man is now accomplished in our descending with him and toward him. His elevation is the Cross. It is the deepest descent and, as love pushed to the end, it is at the same time the culmination of the ascent, the true “elevation” of humanity.

“To stand in his presence and serve him”: this now means to enter into his call to serve God. The Eucharist as the presence of the descent and ascent of Christ thus always recalls, beyond itself, the many ways of service through love of neighbour. Let us ask the Lord on this day for the gift to be able to say again in this sense our “yes” to his call: “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6: 8). Amen.

Culled from L’Espresso

Pope Francis’s attempt to wrest himself from the grasp of an ardent follower this week have left some asking — where was the pontiff’s security detail?

Often dubbed the “People’s Pope,” Francis’s ability to engage with crowds — and his apparent relish in doing so — puts him in close proximity with the throngs who gather to greet him.

Whether taking selfies with the faithful, shaking hands, or blessing children, the head of 1.3 billion Catholics around the world is protected by bodyguards from a special corps charged with the pope’s security.

But on New Year’s Eve in Saint Peter’s Square, televised images showed a woman behind a barricade grabbing Francis’s hand, while three men in black can be seen in the background.

The Pope swats at the woman’s hand to free himself, before one of the men is seen restraining her hands. Francis later apologised for setting a “bad example.”

By Thursday, after the images circulated online, some people took to Twitter to question how the incident could have happened.

“The guy has a literal army to protect him and has to do his own slapping?” asked one Twitter user.

Another commented: “The Pope has a very lax security detail.”

The Vatican’s security department declined to comment.

One security expert however said bodyguards should have intervened earlier.

“It’s the Pope’s security team who should be apologising,” said the founder of Italy’s elite special police interventions unit, whose identity is protected but who goes by the name Commandant Alfa.

“The lady wouldn’t let go of the Pope’s hand, and he was forced to slap her hand a little bit in order to get out of the way,” Alfa told the AGI news agency. “But it shouldn’t have gotten to that point.”

The pope’s chief bodyguard and head of Vatican security, Domenico Giani, resigned in October after an internal security memo related to a Vatican financial probe was leaked to the press.

– Personal style –

Papal security became a top priority at the Vatican after the 1981 assassination attempt of pope Jean Paul II by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk, in Saint Peter’s Square. Heightened security measures that followed included making the Popemobile bulletproof and the addition of metal detectors on entering the square.

But even overly enthusiastic fans have posed security risks. In 2009, before a Christmas Eve Mass given by then pope Benedict XVI, a woman who later said she wanted to give the pontiff a hug jumped over a barricade and grabbed his robes, pulling the 82-year-old to the ground. Benedict was not injured but a French cardinal broke his leg in the melee.

When Francis became pope in 2013, his low-key style and desire to bring the Roman Catholic Church closer to the people posed new headaches for the Vatican’s elaborate security team, whose colourful Swiss Guards are the most visible members.

“You have to respect the personal style of each pope,” said Francis’s spokesman at the time, Federico Lombardi.

“It’s not for the heads of security to decide these things.”

Source: AFP