On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said: “Today, by his entrance into Jerusalem, he shows us the way. For in that event, the evil one, the prince of this world, had a card up his sleeve: the card of triumphalism. Yet the Lord responded by holding fast to the way of humility.
“Triumphalism tries to make it to the goal by shortcuts and false compromises. It wants to jump on to the carriage of the winner. It lives off gestures and words that are not forged in the crucible of the cross; it grows by looking askance at others and constantly judging them inferior, wanting, failures...
“One subtle form of triumphalism is spiritual worldliness, which represents the most treacherous temptation threatening the Church. Jesus destroyed triumphalism by his Passion.”
On children with Down Syndrome
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, recently said:
“In many countries that diagnosis is sadly tantamount to a death sentence. Despite the assurances of the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to ‘promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities’, including ‘those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments’, and to ‘promote respect for their inherent dignity’, there are really no social protections for those diagnosed in the womb with a third 21st chromosome.
“For children born with Down Syndrome, in many places access to public services – to education, work, adequate healthcare – is inadequate or non-existent.”
Describing ‘poor’
During the celebration on April 13 marking the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said: “Today there is a correct sensitivity about using generic terms like ‘the poor’ as a sort of category. The poor are people, men and women and children young and old, in families or alone.
“There is today a preference to speak of ‘people living in poverty’, a recognition of poverty as something that touches people’s lives and wounds the dignity of people trapped in marginalisation. I prefer to use not just ‘people living in poverty’, but people who ‘long to break out from poverty,’” he said.
“Homelessness and poverty are truly an indignity and affront to the dignity of men and women and children who live in poverty. They are also an affront to the dignity of the society in which we live.”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)