In a homily in Plaza de la Revolucion, Havana, Pope Francis said: “Serving others chiefly means caring for their vulnerability. Serving means caring for the vulnerable of our families, our society, our people. Theirs are the suffering, fragile and downcast faces which Jesus tells us specifically to look at and which he asks us to love.
“There is a kind of ‘service’ which truly ‘serves’ others, yet we need to be careful not to be tempted by another kind of service, a ‘service’ which is ‘self-serving’. There is a way to go about serving which is interested in only helping ‘my people’, ‘our people’. This service always leaves ‘your people’ outside, and gives rise to a process of exclusion. All of us are called by virtue of our Christian vocation to that service which truly serves, and to help one another not to be tempted by a ‘service’ which is really ‘self-serving’.”
‘The Church does not accept gender theory’
The following is an extract from a statement by the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE) after its recent meeting in the Holy Land: “The Church strongly believes in the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman: it is the basic cell of society and of the Christian community itself. It is difficult to see why different situations of coexistence should be treated in the same way.
“Of particular concern is the attempt to apply ‘gender theory it is a plan of the ‘one thought’ which tends to colonise Europe, too, and about which Pope Francis has often spoken. The Church does not accept ‘gender theory’ because it is an expression of an anthropology contrary to the true and authentic appreciation of the human person.”
Africa to save marriage
Cardinal Robert Sarah, a native of Guinea and prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship, told the National Catholic Register: “It will be Africa who will save the family”.
The African cardinal said that although the family faces serious difficulties in today’s world, “I am convinced that men and women, especially young people, desire great things”. The Church, he said, should help the faithful to pursue holiness “and not to give up because the commitment is too great”.
Regarding calls for a change in Church teachings on marriage, Cardinal Sarah said that doctrine must be understood not as a set of rules but as God’s law. “If priests, bishops, and also the synod fathers consider doctrine as if looking through an antique store’s window and not as a living body,” he said, “I fear that they are betraying their vocation.”
Saying no to Mafiosi
People convicted of Mafia-related crimes are not allowed to serve as godparents at baptisms or witnesses at marriages, the bishops of the Italian region of Calabria said in a new set of pastoral guidelines.
People convicted of such crimes are not permitted to carry statues in religious processions unless they have publicly repented of their deeds, the bishops added.
Joy for Nepal church
The Church in Nepal is overjoyed that the country’s Constituent Assembly rejected by a two-thirds majority a motion to return the fledgling democracy into a Hindu State.
Fr Silas Bogati, vicar general of the Vicariate of Nepal, told thetablet.co.uk: “It is a joy for us to know that secularism has [been] passed in the Constitution. It is a step forward for the Church in Nepal.”
A strong Hindu lobby worked strongly for Nepal to be declared a Hindu State, which would have put all other religious at a disadvantage and in danger of persecution.
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)