Commenting on 25th anniversary of the encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope Francis said:

“An economic vision geared to profit and material well-being alone is – as experience is daily showing us – incapable of contributing in a positive way to a globalisation that favours the integral development of the world’s peoples, a just distribution of the Earth’s resources, the guarantee of dignified labour and the encouragement of private initiative and local enterprise.

“An economy of exclusion and inequality has led to greater numbers of the disenfranchised and those discarded as unproductive and useless. The effects are felt even in our more developed societies, in which the growth of relative poverty and social decay represent a serious threat to families, the shrinking middle class, and in a particular way, our young people.

“The rates of unemployment for the young are not only a scandal needing to be addressed first and foremost in economic terms, but also, and no less urgently, as a social ill, for our youth are being robbed of hope and their great resources of energy, creativity and vision are being squandered.”

Head of Syriac Catholic Church issues appeal

Speaking to Aleteia, Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan, head of the Syriac Catholic Church, said: “If your dear readers in the West consider that the countries where they live are democratic countries, then they have to raise their voices and tell their governments: ‘You are participating in a genocide of minorities, especially the Christian minority. Because genocide doesn’t only mean killing all the members of a community, but also forcing them to flee their country to all parts of the world, uprooting them from the homeland of their ancestors, and destroying a culture and society and religious tradition…’.

“The Pope needs to say clearly that the policies adopted by western politicians are absolutely unjust and go against charity and justice. They could have gradually reformed the systems of government. You can’t export so-called western democracy to countries where there is still an amalgam of religion and State.”

Women in the Church

Maltese Sister Carmen Sammut, superior of the Sisters of Our Lady of Africa and president of the International Union of Superiors General, was very positive about a meeting the sisters had with the Pope. The media reduced that meeting to the Pope’s acceptance of their proposal to set up a commission to study the possibility of female deacons.

Sr Sammut said the Pope “was very strong about the fact that women should be in the decision-making processes and the decision-making positions of the Church,” she said.

Meanwhile the Vatican’s chief spokesman sought to downplay expectations: “The Pope did not say he intends to introduce the ordination of female deacons and even less did he talk about the ordination of women as priests,” said Fr Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office.

Regenerative salvation

In his homily on Pentecost Sunday, the Pope said: “The central purpose of Jesus’ mission, which culminated in the gift of the Holy Spirit, was to renew our relationship with the Father, a relationship severed by sin.

“In doing so, Jesus “take[s] us from our state of being orphaned children. The entire work of salvation is one of ‘regeneration’, in which the Fatherhood of God, through the gift of the Son and the Holy Spirit, frees us from the condition of being orphans into which we had fallen.”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)

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