Catholic News Agency / Vatican

Rome, Italy, Feb 17, 2012 / 04:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Over 1,000 Americans are arriving in Rome for the elevation of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York to the College of Cardinals. But few know him better or love him more than his sister, Debbie Williams.

Williams described Feb. 17 how “wonderful” it has been to travel to Rome for her brother’s elevation on Saturday.
 
“It’s a little hard to comprehend when it’s your brother, and that’s who he is to us first and foremost, our brother, but we certainly realize the importance of all of this. For us it is just a great family reunion and a chance to share in his honor and his joy.”

“We’re ecstatic. It’s exciting,” Williams told CNA.

She is in Rome this weekend with her husband Fred and another 20 or so immediate Dolan family members. That includes the archbishop’s other sister, his two brothers and their 83-year-old mother Shirley.

“My mom is great. She’s kind of laying low today so she’s ready for the big day tomorrow. She just had a little jet lag yesterday, so she stayed behind today and rested,” Williams said.
 
This morning Cardinal-designate Dolan was addressing his fellow cardinals-in-waiting as part of a day of a day of reflection and prayer at the Vatican, which was presided over by Pope Benedict. Meanwhile, the rest of the Dolan family took to the sunny streets of Rome for a day of sightseeing.

Williams said her brother has always been a “family man first and foremost.” She summed him up as “happy, joyful, just (a) great personality.” She is confident her brother’s elevation to the College of Cardinals means that “there will be someone as a spokesman for the Church who is down to earth and can relate to people and hopefully let everyone see a better face of the Church.”

The Dolan family grew up in Ballwin, Mo. – a western suburb of St. Louis – where they attended Holy Infant parish. Their late father, Robert, was an aircraft engineer with the St. Louis firm McDonnell Douglas.

When she was asked if she ever imagined her big brother would be a Prince of the Church, Williams said, “in some ways, no, because it’s just so big, you know.

“But it doesn’t surprise me either because he is definitely cut out for what he does. So we are not shocked – but it is hard to imagine.”

After being ordained a priest in 1976, Fr. Timothy Dolan spent several years at churches in the St. Louis area. Many of his former parishioners have also made the pilgrimage to Rome for this weekend’s consistory.

“Archbishop Dolan is a friend of the family from his days at Little Flower Church in St. Louis,” 39-year-old attorney Mark Mueller explained to CNA.

“He’s just a big teddy bear, stands by his principles, and is everything good you’d want in a Catholic bishop or cardinal.”

Vatican City, Feb 17, 2012 / 12:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In remarks to the Pope and the College of Cardinals, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan outlined a seven-point “creative strategy of evangelization” to counter secularism and bring people to Jesus.

“In many of the countries represented in this college, the ambient public culture once transmitted the Gospel, but does so no more. In those circumstances, the proclamation of the Gospel -- the deliberate invitation to enter into friendship with the Lord Jesus -- must be at the very center of the Catholic life of all of our people,” he said on Feb. 17.

The Archbishop of New York’s comments came during the College of Cardinal’s day of prayer and reflection, held at the Vatican’s New Synod Hall one day before the Feb. 18 consistory that will create 22 new cardinals.

New York’s cardinal-to-be delivered his speech in Italian in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the college’s dean. He drew on the words of Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, and famous saints, urging the cardinals to remember the potential of all people for conversion.

“(W)e believe with the philosophers and poets of old, who never had the benefit of revelation, that even a person who brags about being secular and is dismissive of religion, has within an undeniable spark of interest in the beyond, and recognizes that humanity and creation is a dismal riddle without the concept of some kind of creator,” he said.

Cardinal-designate Dolan repeated the biblical exhortation “be not afraid,” stressing the need for confidence while also rejecting “triumphalism” in the Church. He said the recognition that the Church herself needs evangelization gives Catholics humility and awareness of the Church’s “deep need” for interior conversion.

“God does not satisfy the thirst of the human heart with a proposition, but with a Person, whose name is Jesus,” he stated. The New Evangelization invites people not to doctrine, but to know, love and serve him.

The cardinal-designate also said that the missionary and the evangelist must be “a person of joy.”

He recounted a story of a man dying of AIDS at the Gift of Peace Hospice in the Archdiocese of Washington who sought baptism because the Missionaries of Charity sisters who cared for him were so “very happy” because of Jesus.

“The New Evangelization is accomplished with a smile, not a frown,” Cardinal-designate Dolan summarized.

This evangelization is also about love incarnated in care for children, the sick, the elderly, the orphaned and the hungry.

“In New York, the heart of the most hardened secularist softens when visiting one of our inner-city Catholic schools,” he said.

“When one of our benefactors, who described himself as an agnostic, asked Sister Michelle why, at her age, with painful arthritic knees, she continued to serve at one of these struggling but excellent poor schools, she answered, ‘Because God loves me, and I love Him, and I want these children to discover this love.’”

The cardinal-designate’s most sobering words came with his seventh strategy for the new evangelization: the blood of the martyrs.

He cited the Pope’s speech for presenting the red biretta to new cardinals: “know that you must be willing to conduct yourselves with fortitude even to the shedding of your blood.”

Though Cardinal-designate Dolan jokingly asked the Pope to omit that passage from his presentation, he also said that cardinals must be aids for Christians called to be “ready to suffer and die for Jesus.”

The “supreme witness” is martyrdom, he noted.

“While we cry for today’s martyrs; while we love them, pray with and for them; while we vigorously advocate on their behalf; we are also very proud of them, brag about them, and trumpet their supreme witness to the world.”

Their stories still have an impact, he told his fellow bishops.

“A young man in New York tells me he returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood, which he had jettisoned as a teenager, because he read The Monks of Tibhirine, about Trappists martyred in Algeria fifteen years ago, and after viewing the drama about them, the French film, ‘Of Gods and Men.’”

“Tertullian would not be surprised,” concluded Cardinal-designate Dolan, citing the Church father who said the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

As he closed his wide-ranging address to the College of Cardinals, he emphasized the need to communicate simply, as to a catechism class for children.

“We need to speak again as a child the eternal truth, beauty, and simplicity of Jesus and His Church,” he said.

Vatican City, Feb 16, 2012 / 11:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI says that bishops must pay particular attention to the cultural formation of their young people.

“You know well how much the Church esteems and promotes every form of authentic culture that offers the richness of the Word of God and the grace that flows from the Paschal Mystery of Christ,” he told a group of European and African bishops at the Vatican on Feb. 16.

“So the culture nurtured by faith leads to genuine humanity, while false cultures eventually lead to dehumanization: in Europe and in Africa we have had sad examples.”

The Pope was addressing a delegation of bishops who have been taking part in the 2nd Symposium of African and European Bishops at Rome’s Regina Apostolurum University Feb. 13-17.

He used his address to outline some of the key cultural challenges facing the Church in both continents.

“I think, in the first place, is religious indifference,” he said, “which leads many people to live as if God does not exist, or to be content with a vague religiosity, incapable of measuring up against the question of truth or the requirement of being coherent.”

He observed that especially in Europe, “but also in parts of Africa,” there exists a secularized environment that is often hostile to the Christian faith.

The Pope also identified hedonism as “another challenge to the announcement of the Gospel.” He said it has created a “crisis of values in daily life, in family structures” and even the way people “interpret the meaning of existence.”

In practical terms, he said, its symptoms can be witnessed in “serious social unrest” and “the spread of phenomena such as pornography and prostitution.”

But he urged the bishops not be discouraged, as “the risen Christ is always with us,” and because their dioceses contain many parishes and people “distinguished by a commitment to personal holiness and apostolate.”

The family as “the domestic church” is key to promoting a revival of their local Churches, and is “the most solid guarantee of for the renewal of society,” the Pope said.

“Within the family that preserves habits, traditions, customs and rituals imbued with faith you will find the most suitable soil for the flowering of vocations.”

Observing that “today’s consumer mentality” can often have a “negative impact” on fostering vocations, he called for particular focus on raising up “generous young people” in Africa and Europe, who “know how to responsibly take charge of their future.”

Pope Benedict underscored the fact that developing an atmosphere friendly to vocations care requires bishops to attend to the cultural formation of their young people.

The best way bishops can lead by their young people, the Pope said, is by giving them a personal example of sanctity.

“The moral authority and credibility that support the exercise of your juridical power, can only come from the holiness of your life,” he said.

Vatican City, Feb 15, 2012 / 05:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The United Kingdom's Ambassador to the Holy See believes the two-day visit of government ministers to Rome Feb. 14-15 will set a new trend in how foreign countries should diplomatically engage the Vatican.

“Very few countries seize the opportunity that we have spotted, as far as the Holy See is concerned, of working with their network across all these issues that we are interesting and they are interested in,” Ambassador Nigel Baker told CNA Feb. 15.

Throughout the morning, a team of seven U.K. ministers took part in discussions with their respective Vatican equivalents. The result was a joint communiqué outlining areas of agreement between the U.K. and Holy See on issues such as culture, human rights, climate change and international development. 

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone “last night said at dinner that this is something we should have been doing in the past and maybe ought to be doing in the future,” said Ambassador Baker, “so I think we set a few hares running in the Holy See.”

The communiqué also noted areas of disagreement between the U.K. and the Vatican. It stated that in their talks, the Holy See “emphasized the need to ensure that institutions connected with the Catholic Church can act in accordance with their own principles and convictions,” and also “stressed the necessity of safeguarding the family based on marriage, religious freedom and freedom of conscience.”

The U.K.'s Conservative-Liberal coalition government, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, is currently committed to introducing same-sex “marriage” by 2015. They have also refused to give Catholic adoption agencies any opt-out from rules compelling them to place children with homosexual couples. In recent years 11 Catholic adoption agencies in England have been forced to close down or severe official ties with the Church.

After their bi-lateral discussions, the U.K. ministerial delegation had a 20-minute private audience with Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the delegation’s lead minister, presented the pontiff with a message from Queen Elizabeth and a copy of the King James Bible courtesy of Prime Minister Cameron. As the U.K.'s first female Muslim cabinet member, Baroness Warsi also gifted the Pope a copy of the Koran and a gold-plated cube that opens up to reveal 99 smaller cubes, each inscribed with a reference to Allah.

“The Pope had a chance to talk to individual ministers in turn and also to talk to Baroness Warsi, particularly about some of her messages contained within her speech yesterday when she spoke about the importance of faith in the United Kingdom,” said Ambassador Baker.

On Feb. 14 Baroness Warsi told an invited audience of trainee Vatican diplomats that British society is under threat from “militant secularization” reminiscent of previous “totalitarian regimes.”

The U.K. ministerial mission follows-on from Pope Benedict’s successful 2010 visit to the United Kingdom. Ambassador Baker explained that the U.K. government didn’t want the Papal visit to be merely a one-time occurrence.

“You can’t just have this extraordinary event and then sit back for ten years and say 'well that’s that relationship sorted' so there was always a sense that some sort of follow-up should happen,” he explained.

The Ambassador said the past two days have surpassed his expectations and that he is now looking to build on the achievements of the past 48-hours.

Rome, Italy, Feb 15, 2012 / 01:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A conference exploring how the continents of Africa and Europe can work together in the new evangelization is underway in Rome.

“Pope Benedict XVI refers to the Catholic Church in Africa as ‘the spiritual lungs of humanity’,” said Cardinal Polycarp Pengo, President of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, at the opening session.

“This is an enormous challenge to us, for which we shall do all that it takes to share what we have with the entire Church.”

The 2nd Symposium of African and European Bishops is meeting Feb. 13-17 at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum University. The gathering is entitled “Evangelization Today: Communion and Pastoral Collaboration between Africa and Europe.”

It comes only months after Pope Benedict’s November 2011 trip to the West African country of Benin, where he signed his Apostolic Exhortation “Africae Munus” (Pledge for Africa). In it the Pope outlined “a program for pastoral activity for the coming decades of evangelization in Africa, stressing the need for reconciliation, justice and peace.
 
Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg, South Africa explained to CNA on Feb. 13 that the conference “has already helped because it is starting to clarify why Africae Munus was issued, what is important about that document, and why Africa should treat it very, very seriously.”
 
He said one of the key challenges laid down by the Pope is that “theology shouldn’t just be some speculative science,” but that bishops should “try and translate some of our theology into some pastoral teaching, some pastoral care, etc.”

Over the week the participants are using much of the Pope’s document on Africa as a template for their seminars and debates. They are also gathering every day to celebrate Mass together.

On Feb. 16, they will meet with Pope Benedict at the Vatican to discuss their work.

“It is up to us while we are here to become more deeply aware of what the Holy Father has said and how, in practical terms, we might be able to develop his ideas for the benefit of the people in Africa, and also for those in Europe,” Bishop Tom Burns of Menevia in Wales told CNA.

“We can do this by understanding what Africa has to offer -- and we welcome that -- but also by Africa understanding what we may have to offer. And I’m sure they can benefit from that as well,” Bishop Burns said.

Vatican City, Feb 15, 2012 / 11:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The final words of Jesus Christ as he died on the cross should prompt Christians to pray for those who have hurt them, Pope Benedict XVI said on Feb. 15.
 
“Jesus by asking the Father to forgive those who are crucifying him, invites us to the difficult act of praying for those who do us wrong, who have damaged us, knowing always how to forgive,” the Pope told over 6,000 pilgrims attending today’s general audience in Paul VI Hall.

The Pope urged people to pray that “the light of God may illuminate their hearts, inviting us, that is, to live in our prayers, the same attitude of mercy and love that God has towards us.”

This attitude, he explained, is summed up in one line from the Our Father – “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Over the past several months, the Pope has used his weekly general audiences to explore the issue of prayer. This week he focused on the three last prayers of Jesus from the cross.

The first prayer was pronounced by Jesus immediately after he was nailed to the cross, “while the soldiers are dividing his garments as sad reward of their service.” The prayer Christ uttered was: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
 
In his prayer of intercession, Jesus “asks forgiveness for his executioners,” and in doing so, “carries out what he had taught in the Sermon on the Mount” when he urged his followers to “love your enemy,” “do good to those who hate you,” and promised to reward those who forgive.
 
Crucially, said the Pope, Jesus gives “ignorance, ‘not knowing,’ as the reason for the request for forgiveness from the Father.” This should give “consolation for all times and for all men” because Jesus sees ignorance “as a door that can open us up to repentance.”

The second prayer of Christ is directed towards the good thief who repents after sensing he is “before the Son of God, who reveals the face of God.” Once he recognized this, the thief prayed, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” In doing so, Christ is “aware of entering directly into communion with the Father” and of “reopening the path for the man to God’s paradise.”

This should give all people hope, said Pope Benedict,since it shows that “the goodness of God can touch us even at the last moment of life.” And that “sincere prayer, even after a life of wrong, meets the open arms of the good Father who awaits the return of his son.”

The Pope then turned to Christ’s final prayer on the cross – “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He noted how each of the Gospel writers describes different aspects of this moment in history, including the veil of the temple being torn down the middle, three hours of darkness over the land and earthquakes.

“The death of Jesus is explicitly characterized as a cosmic and liturgical event,” said the Pope, “it marks the beginning of a new worship in a temple not built by men.”

The prayer is also a “loud cry of extreme and total trust in God,” fully aware of “not being abandoned.” This is signified by the use of the word “Father,” which recalls Christ’s first declaration that he is the son of God when he was a 12-year-old boy and was found in the temple by his parents.
 
“Then he remained for three days in the temple of Jerusalem, the veil of which is now torn,” and so we see that “from beginning to end, what completely determines the feelings of Jesus, his words, his actions is his unique relationship with the Father.”

All in all, concluded the Pope, the three final prayers of Jesus are “tragic” for every man but are also “pervaded by the deep calm that comes from trust in the Father and the will to abandon himself totally to him.” They are a “supreme act of love” which went “to the limit and beyond the limit.”

As well as prompting us to pray for our enemies, the final prayers of Jesus should also teach Christians that “no matter how hard the trial, difficult the problem, heavy the suffering, we never fall from the hands of God,” Pope Benedict said.

Vatican City, Feb 14, 2012 / 08:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the face of leaks of various Vatican documents, Holy See officials must not become caught up in controversy and confusion but should stay committed to reform and “authentic transparency” in government, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said on Monday afternoon.

“Both sides bear responsibility: firstly the suppliers of documents of this kind, but also those who undertake to use them for purposes that certainly have nothing to do with pure love of truth,” he said in a Feb. 13 statement. “We must, therefore, stand firm, not allowing ourselves to be swallowed up by the vortex of confusion, which is what ill-intentioned people want, and remaining capable of using our reason.”

Fr. Lombardi said the documents in question differ in nature and importance and are from various times for varying situations. Some of the documents concern improved economic management of the Vatican, others concern current judicial and legislative questions. On these, the spokesman said, there is normally a contrast of opinion.

But other “delirious and incomprehensible reports” have surfaced “about plots against the Pope's life,” he said.

One leaked memo concerned a cardinal’s complaint about another cardinal who reputedly spoke of a possible assassination attempt against the Pope within 12 months and speculated upon his successor.

Last month, an Italian television show broadcast private letters to Pope Benedict XVI and Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former deputy governor of Vatican City, who is currently the apostolic nuncio to the U.S. The archbishop contended that other Vatican officials have conducted a smear campaign against him because of his changes to purchasing procedures.

Other leaks center on the Vatican’s financial institution, the Institute of Works of Religion, which is also trying to reform and comply with international norms.

“The American administration was affected by Wikileaks, now the Vatican too has its disclosures, its leaked documents, which tend to create confusion and bewilderment, and to throw a bad light on the Vatican, the governance of the Church and, more broadly, on the Church herself,” Fr. Lombardi said.

All together, he continued, the leaked documents are “disloyally” passed on to help to “create confusion.”

The spokesman suggested that the emergence of more powerful attacks is a sign that an important turning point is at stake. He suggested that the leaks tend to discredit attempts at the reform of Vatican institutions, but contended that this is a reason the reforms should continue “with determination, not allowing ourselves to be cowed.”

“If many people insist on attacking us, the issue is obviously important. Whoever thinks he is discouraging the Pope and his collaborators in their commitment is mistaken.”

While commentators have suggested the leaks are evidence of internal conflict about control of Vatican positions and possibly even attempts to set the stage for a successor to Pope Benedict, Fr. Lombardi said such interpretations depend on the “moral coarseness of those who provoke them.”

“I would invite everyone to note that all the pontiffs elected during the last hundred years have been people of exalted and unquestioned spiritual merit. Cardinals have naturally sought, and still seek, to elect someone who deserves the respect of the people of God, someone who can serve humankind in our time with great moral and spiritual authority.”

“Not for nothing do we also believe in, and speak of, the assistance of the Holy Spirit.”

Vatican City, Feb 13, 2012 / 12:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christian families should be a happy and loving environment in which young people can discern calls to the priesthood or religious life, Pope Benedict XVI says in his message for the World Day of Prayers for Vocations.

“Families are not only the privileged place for human and Christian formation; they can also be ‘the primary and most excellent seed-bed of vocations to a life of consecration to the Kingdom of God,’ by helping their members to see, precisely within the family, the beauty and the importance of the priesthood and the consecrated life,” the Pope said on Feb. 13.

The 49th World Day of Prayer for Vocations will be celebrated on April 29 with the theme, “Vocations, the Gift of the Love of God.” The Pope’s message, which was released Feb. 13, comes at a time when vocations to the priesthood in most Western countries are on the rise.
 
In order for that to continue, says the Pope, the Church must “create the conditions that will permit many young people to say ‘yes’ in generous response to God’s loving call.”
 
This quest, he suggests, finds an “eloquent and particular realization in Christian families” whose love “is an expression of the love of Christ.” In families which are “a community of life and love,” the Pope says, young people are best able to experience the kind of “self-giving love” that Christ showed everyone.

Therefore, priests and parishes should work hard to foster such “homes and schools of communion,” modeled “on the Holy Family of Nazareth, the harmonious reflection on earth of the life of the Most Holy Trinity.”

Pope Benedict opens his letter by outlining how all vocations flow from the love of God for humanity.

We are all “loved by God even ‘before’ we come into existence” and are brought into existence “solely by his unconditional love,” to “bring us into full communion with Him,” he writes. The “discovery of this reality” is what “truly and profoundly changes our lives,” he says.

The Pope illustrates his point by quoting the 5th-century theologian St. Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity as an adult and turned towards the “supreme beauty and supreme love” of God.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!” he famously wrote. With these images, says the Pope, “the Saint of Hippo seeks to describe the ineffable mystery of his encounter with God, with God’s love that transforms all of life.”

God’s love, which is an “absolutely free gift,” goes ahead of everyone and “sustains” them along the path of life of life, the Pope said, explaining that this means “every specific vocation” is born of “the initiative of God.”

The Pope asserts in his message that the “appealing beauty of this divine love” must be proclaimed ever anew, “especially to younger generations.”
 
In this “soil of self-offering and openness to the love of God,” he says, “all vocations are born and grow.”

Pope Benedict also offers some advice to those considering religious vocations. He encourages them to love God and their neighbors – “two expressions of the one divine love” – with a “particular intensity and purity of heart.”

It is a love for others, especially the most disadvantaged, that should inspire them to be “a builder of communion between people and a sower of hope.” The Pope quotes the 19th-century French cleric St. John Vianney, patron of priests, who would say to his people that “priests are not priests for themselves, but for you.”

Pope Benedict concludes his message by imparting his blessing, especially on “those young men and women who strive to listen with a docile heart to God’s voice and are ready to respond generously and faithfully.”

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2012 / 12:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Jesus Christ’s healing of the leper in the Gospel of Mark encapsulates the whole history of salvation, said Pope Benedict XVI in his Sunday Angelus address for Feb. 12.

When Jesus met the leper, he came into contact with a form of illness “considered at that time the most serious, enough to render a person ‘impure’ and to exclude them from the society,” the Pope explained to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.

There was even special legislation that reserved to Jewish priests “the task of declaring the person leprous, that is impure,” he said. It was the job of the Jewish priests to decide if and when to re-admit the sufferer to society after they had been deemed cured.

It was in this context that a leper came to Jesus beseeching him and telling him “‘If you will, you can make me clean,'” according Mark’s account of the event.
 
Contrary to the legal bans, noted the Pope, “Jesus does not avoid contact with this man, indeed, he is driven to an intimate participation in his condition, stretches out his hand and touches it.” He responds to the man’s plea by telling him “I will it, be cleansed.”

“In that gesture and those words of Christ is the whole history of salvation,” stated the Pope, “there is embodied the will of God to heal us, to cleanse us from evil that disfigures and that disrupts our relationships.”

This contact between the hand of Jesus and the leper “knocks down every barrier between God and human impurities, between the Sacred and its opposite.” The actions of Jesus do not deny the reality of “evil and its negative force,” but shows that “the love of God is stronger than any evil, even of the most contagious and horrible.” In doing so, “Jesus took upon himself our infirmities, became the ‘leper’ because we were purified.”

The Pope recalled the words of the 13th-century saint, Francis of Assisi, who spoke about lepers and ministered to them.

“When I lived in sin, it was very painful to me to see lepers,” wrote St. Francis, “but God himself led me into their midst, and I remained there a little while.” By the time he left, “that which had seemed to me bitter had become sweet and easy.”

The Pope said that in learning to literally embrace lepers, St. Francis had been healed of his “leprosy,” namely his pride. That breakthrough “converted him to the love of God.”

“This is the victory of Christ, which is our deep healing and our resurrection to new life!” proclaimed Pope Benedict.

Before leading pilgrims in praying the Angelus, the Pope urged those present to direct their prayers towards the Virgin Mary. He noted that yesterday marked the 154th anniversary of her first appearance in the French town of Lourdes to the local miller’s daughter, Bernadette Soubirous.

“To St. Bernadette, Our Lady gave a timeless message: the call to prayer and penance,” said the Pope.

“Through his mother it is always Jesus who comes to us, to deliver us from all sickness of body and soul. Let us allow ourselves to be touched and purified by him, and show mercy towards our brothers!”

Vatican City, Feb 10, 2012 / 06:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict praised the launch of a three-day conference in Rome that seeks to explain to modern society why Jesus Christ is more than a historical figure.

“I am glad and grateful for your choice to dedicate to the person of Jesus, several days of interdisciplinary study and cultural offerings, destined to resonate within the Church community and throughout Italian society,” said Pope Benedict XVI in a message to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Feb. 9.

“Jesus Our Contemporary” runs from Feb. 9-11 and is organized by the Italian Episcopal Conference.

The Pope explained how Jesus entered “forever” into human history “and continues to live there” through “his beauty and power in that body which is fragile and always in need of purification but also infinitely full of divine love – the Church.”

“The contemporary nature of Jesus is revealed in a special way in the Eucharist,” he said, “in which he is present with his passion, death and resurrection.”

It is through the Church that Jesus is “a contemporary of every man, able to embrace all men and all ages because she is guided by the Holy Spirit with the aim of continuing the work of Jesus in history.” 

Over three days, numerous events such as lectures, seminars, discussions, film showings and photographic exhibitions are taking place at various locations in and around the Vatican. Several thousand visitors are expected to attend, mainly from the dioceses of Italy.

The topics they’ll be able to explore include Jesus in contemporary literature, Jesus and the poor, Jesus and the Jerusalem of Yesterday and Today as well as a study of Pope Benedict XVI’s biographical trilogy of Christ’s life, Jesus of Nazareth. The third in the series is expected to be published later this year.

“This is a major question that niggles at the heart of man today including Christians,” Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan told CNA Feb. 9.

“Jesus lived in the time and space of 2,000 years ago. How can he save me today if he is not my contemporary?” Answering this question, he said, is the “challenge” of the conference.

“Many elements are being proposed that explain to us how Jesus breaks through and transcends time and, for eternity from his resurrection, particularly through his Eucharist, he reaches out to my freedom and that of every man and the freedom of all the human family. This is the sense of the event.”

Among the other clerical guest speakers are Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, former Vicar General of Rome and Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong.

Also taking part are the German theologian Klaus Berger, the French philosopher and historian Jean-Luc Marion, Italian film director and screenwriter Liliana Cavani and the Italian magazine L’Espresso’s Vatican correspondent, Sandro Magister.   

“The title certainly attracted me to the conference,” said a local Catholic teacher as she went into the opening session. She described the issue as “the challenge of our times,” as “Jesus is always seen as a man of the past, especially by children.”

“I think this is the most beautiful message that Jesus left us, the love of God the father and this love of God is a universal love that has no time, no boundaries, so Jesus is a contemporary man.”

Vatican City, Feb 9, 2012 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bishop’s love for Jesus Christ and the Church can overcome all his fears, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said at St. Peter's tomb on Feb. 9.

Cardinal George is visiting the Vatican along with the bishops of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, who began their “ad limina” visit today.
 
“In the responsorial psalm we asked the Lord to protect us, to take away our fears, which means that the psalmist and the apostles were afraid at times – as are we. There is reason to be afraid. But, nonetheless, stronger than fear is faith, and stronger than both is love,” he said.

Cardinal George was the main celebrant and homilist at the early morning Mass in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica. He told his brother bishops to take heart from today’s psalm, which proclaims, “I sought the Lord and he heard me and he delivered me from all my fears.”

He also reflected upon the martyrdom of St. James the Greater and the imprisonment of St. Peter.

“We bring our local churches to this most sacred spot, we bring our knowledge of a faith that is born of love and that is perfected by our love for our people and for Christ himself and his apostles,” said Cardinal George.

“And so we take from the tomb of Peter the mission that was given to him, and his successors, even as we prepare this morning to meet his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.”

Over the next nine days, the bishops will meet with the Pope and various Vatican departments to discuss the health of the Church in their respective dioceses and across the United States. The "ad limina" visit takes place every five years and also involves the bishops making a pilgrimage to the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul.

The issue of religious freedom is likely to be near the top of the agenda throughout, due to the Jan. 20 announcement by the Obama administration that it will force nearly all religious and secular institutions to pay for sterilization, contraception and abortifacients as part of their health insurance coverage.

Prior to the rule being finalized, Pope Benedict described it in January as a “grave threat” to religious liberty in the United States.

In their prayers of intercession this morning, the bishops prayed for “all Americans during the election year,” that God may “inspire voters to choose leaders who respect the freedom of their people to worship the one true God.”

Cardinal George also recalled a comment by Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York who, at the last gathering of U.S. bishops, highlighted how “the conversion of St. Paul taught the early Christians that Jesus and his Church are one.”

“We cannot separate Jesus from the Church,” said Cardinal George. “When that is done and the Church is lost, inevitably Jesus is lost. And when Jesus is lost, God is forgotten.”

After a post-Mass breakfast at the Pontifical North American College, the bishops of Indiana and Illinois had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. Meanwhile, the bishops of Wisconsin met with officials at the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization.

Vatican City, Feb 8, 2012 / 02:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The cry of Christ on the cross should remind everyone that God always hears their prayers, even when he seems distant, Pope Benedict XVI said Feb. 8.

“Let us bring to God our daily crosses, in the certainty that he is present and listens to us,” he said at the Wednesday general audience, held with several thousand people in Paul VI Hall.

Pope Benedict made his remarks as part of his ongoing series of weekly reflections on prayer. Today he focused on the prayerful cry of Jesus Christ during his final agony on the cross on Good Friday – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“This cry comes after a three-hour period when there was darkness over the whole land,” noted the Pope, dwelling upon the accounts given in the Gospels of Sts. Mark and Matthew.

“Darkness is an ambivalent symbol in the Bible – while it is frequently a sign of the power of evil, it can also serve to express a mysterious divine presence,” he said.

“Just as Moses was covered in the dark cloud when God appeared to him on the mountain, so Jesus on Calvary is wrapped in darkness.”

So “what is the meaning of Jesus’ prayer?” asked the Pope.

He replied, “the words Jesus addresses to the Father are the beginning of Psalm 22, in which the psalmist expresses the tension between, on the one hand, being left alone and, on the other, the certain knowledge of God’s presence amongst his people.”

The psalmist, he explained, “speaks of a ‘cry’ to express all the suffering of his prayer before the apparently absent God. At moments of anguish prayer becomes a cry.”

Pope Benedict said that the same thing should also happen “in our own relationship with the Lord.” When people are faced with “difficult and painful situations, when it seems that God does not hear, we must not be afraid to entrust him with the burden we are carrying in our hearts, we must not be afraid to cry out to him in our suffering.”

The Pope pointed to Christ on the cross, who “at the moment of ultimate rejection by man, at the moment of abandonment,” is still “aware that God the Father is present even at the instant in which he is experiencing the human drama of death.”

But even if people are convinced of God’s presence, a question still remains in many hearts, the Pope said. “How is it possible that such a powerful God does not intervene to save his Son from this terrible trial?”

He replied that it is important to understand that “the prayer of Jesus is not the cry of a person who meets death with desperation, nor that of a person who knows he has been abandoned.”

Instead, by appropriating Psalm 22 to himself – the psalm of the suffering people of Israel – Jesus “takes upon himself not only the suffering of his people, but also that of all men and women oppressed by evil.”

He subsequently takes that “to the heart of God in the certainty that his cry will be heard in the resurrection,” so that “his is a suffering in communion with us and for us, it derives from love and carries within itself redemption and the victory of love.”

Therefore, just as “the people at the foot of Jesus’ cross were unable to understand” his cry, so “we likewise find ourselves, ever and anew, facing the ‘today’ of suffering, the silence of God,” the Pope said. But we also “find ourselves facing the ‘today’ of the resurrection, of the response of God who took our sufferings upon himself, to carry them with us and give us the certain hope that they will be overcome.”

Pope Benedict explained that the “prayer of the dying Jesus teaches us to pray with confidence for all our brothers and sisters who are suffering, that they too may know the love of God who never abandons them.”

Vatican City, Feb 7, 2012 / 06:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church must demonstrate the power of love and show the limitations of an individualistic worldview, Pope Benedict XVI taught in a Lenten message released two weeks before Ash Wednesday.

In the letter released Feb. 7, the Pope contrasted an ethic of “custody' of others,” with “a mentality that, by reducing life exclusively to its earthly dimension … accepts any moral choice in the name of personal freedom.”

A society with this mindset, he warned, “can become blind to physical sufferings and to the spiritual and moral demands of life. This must not be the case in the Christian community!”

The Pope's message for Lent of 2012, which begins Feb. 22, drew from the New Testament's Letter to the Hebrews – particularly the verse that proclaims, “Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works.”

“All too often, however, our attitude is just the opposite,” Pope Benedict observed, describing “an indifference and disinterest born of selfishness and masked as a respect for 'privacy.'”

“Today too, the Lord’s voice summons all of us to be concerned for one another. Even today God asks us to be 'guardians' of our brothers and sisters, to establish relationships based on mutual consideration and attentiveness to the well-being, the integral well-being of others.”

He encouraged believers “to recognize in others a true 'alter ego,' infinitely loved by the Lord.”

“If we cultivate this way of seeing others as our brothers and sisters, solidarity, justice, mercy and compassion will naturally well up in our hearts.”

But when this love and care for others diminishes, social and global problems correspondingly increase.

The Pope cited the words of his predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, who declared that the world was “sorely ill” – with a sickness caused not by material factors, but by selfishness and “the weakening of brotherly ties between individuals and nations.”

“Contemporary culture seems to have lost the sense of good and evil,” Pope Benedict said, as he warned about the danger of “a sort of 'spiritual anesthesia' which numbs us to the suffering of others.”

“What hinders this humane and loving gaze towards our brothers and sisters?” he asked.

“Often it is the possession of material riches and a sense of sufficiency, but it can also be the tendency to put our own interests and problems above all else.”

“We should never be incapable of showing mercy towards those who suffer. Our hearts should never be so wrapped up in our affairs and problems that they fail to hear the cry of the poor.”

Yet even when the world's love grows cold, goodness “does exist and will prevail – because God is 'generous and acts generously',” through those who work on behalf of “life, brotherhood, and communion.”

“In a world which demands of Christians a renewed witness of love and fidelity to the Lord, may all of us feel the urgent need to anticipate one another in charity, service and good works,” the Pope stated, as he called all believers to practice the traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

“This is a favorable time to renew our journey of faith, both as individuals and as a community, with the help of the word of God and the sacraments. This journey is one marked by prayer and sharing, silence and fasting, in anticipation of the joy of Easter.”

All of these ancient practices are meant to help the faithful grow in charity – which Pope Benedict described as “the very heart of Christian life.”

Rome, Italy, Feb 7, 2012 / 03:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An Irish woman who was abused by a priest in her youth told an international symposium on clerical abuse that Pope Benedict is a model of how to listen to victims.

“Listening to victims is one of the most important things, and it was something that was maybe not done enough, and the Pope is giving an example as to how it should be done,” Marie Collins said Feb. 7.

Collins, 65, was abused while a patient in a Dublin children’s hospital. She told journalists at the “Towards Healing and Renewal” symposium at the Pontifical Gregorian University that she was particularly impressed by the Pope’s numerous meetings with victims during his apostolic visits abroad.

“The bishops should take their example from him and from his lead and listen more to victims and what they have to say,” she said.

Since being elected in 2005, Pope Benedict has met with victims of abuse during his pastoral visits to the United States, England, Germany, Australia and Malta. In the latter case, he wept while listening to what he heard from victims.

The four-day symposium has gathered representatives from 110 bishops’ conferences and more than 30 religious orders at the Jesuit-run Roman university. Its aim is to share best practices from around the world amongst the bishops and religious superiors present.

This morning the delegates heard Collins give a joint presentation with Baroness Sheila Hollins on “Healing a wound at the Heart of the Church and Society.” The baroness, who is a professor of psychiatry at St. George’s medical school at the University of London, also described Pope Benedict’s meetings with victims as “incredibly important.”

“I felt he was modeling to bishops in all of those places, ‘this is how you sit and listen to victims,’ and I think that was very, very important. That he had the ability to be able to sit and listen to what people were saying. I have huge respect for him for doing that,” she said.

The Vatican has given those bishops’ conferences and religious orders that do not have abuse guidelines in place until May 2012 to do so. They must then submit them to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Rome for approval, revision or rejection.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that this symposium will contribute very, very positively to the various writings of those guidelines, because it’s a very valuable resource for those taking part,” said Collins.

In recent decades, Marie Collins has become a well-known campaigner in Ireland for the protection of children and justice for survivors of clerical sexual abuse. She said she found it “difficult” to tell her story today, but she persevered because it’s important for bishops and religious superiors “hear a victim’s experience” as part of the symposium.

“I felt for that reason that I should do it, and I’m very glad I did. And the response was very good,” she said.

She explained how one African bishop told them that he had “not really given the issue a great deal of importance” but that “after hearing us both speak he had changed his mind and felt that this was something he had to give a lot more attention to. So I think it was important that what we both said was heard.”

Baroness Hollins had explained to delegates how mental health problems are “very common” among victims of abuse, including “depression, anxiety, eating disorders or suicidal thoughts.” She also said she believes that listening to victims is key to helping them to heal their psychological wounds.

“Listening isn’t just something that happens once,” she remarked, “it is quite hard to listen in a way which helps a victim, a survivor feel like they’ve been heard. And so that listening has to keep on, particularly for somebody where the abuse happened a long time ago” and who has not be able to tell their story for many years.

Rome, Italy, Feb 7, 2012 / 09:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI called upon bishops to respond in a “Christ-like” manner to clerical abuse as part of a “profound renewal” of the Church.

His Feb. 6 comments marked the opening of an international symposium in Rome to discuss the issue. The Pope’s wishes were expressed in a communiqué from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State.

“He (the Pope) asks the Lord that, through your deliberations, many bishops and religious superiors throughout the world may be helped to respond in a truly Christ-like manner to the tragedy of child abuse,” the statement said.

“As His Holiness has often observed, healing for victims must be of paramount concern in the Christian community, and it must go hand in hand with a profound renewal of the Church at every level.”

The “Towards Healing and Renewal” symposium is being organized by Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and runs from Feb. 6 - 9. Delegates have arrived come from about 110 bishops’ conferences, along with the superiors of more than 30 religious orders.

The message from Cardinal Bertone said that the Pope “supports and encourages every effort to respond with evangelical charity to the challenge of providing children and vulnerable adults with an ecclesial environment conducive to their human and spiritual growth.”

Pope Benedict urged symposium participants to “continue drawing on a wide range of expertise” to promote “a vigorous culture of effective safeguarding and victim support” throughout the Church.

All bishops’ conferences around the world have until May 2012 to draw up guidelines for dealing with cases of abuse. Those guidelines will then have to be approved by the Vatican. Many countries already have approved guidelines in place.

The symposium was opened on the evening of Feb. 6 with an address from Cardinal William J. Levada, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His department has handled all alleged cases of abuse since 2001 when his predecessor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was in charge of the congregation.

“The Pope has had to suffer attacks by the media over these past years in various parts of the world, when he should receive the gratitude of us all, in the Church and outside it,” Cardinal Levada told delegates.

He outlined how then-Cardinal Ratzinger centralized and streamlined the Vatican’s procedures for dealing with allegations of abuse, while also significantly increasing penalties for those found guilty.

Cardinal Levada also explained how since his election to the papacy in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI has made a priority of implementing best practices for handling abuse allegations around the globe.

The Pope was also praised by Cardinal Levada for meeting with abuse victims during his pastoral visits to England, Malta, Germany, Australia and the United States.

“I think is it hardly possible to overestimate the importance of this example for us bishops, and for us priests, in being available to victims for this important moment in their healing and reconciliation.”

Jackson, Miss., Feb 6, 2012 / 06:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal court’s dismissal “with prejudice” of a 2002 lawsuit by five U.S. state commissioners against the Holy See shows the Vatican had “nothing to do” with a multi-million dollar criminal scheme against insurance companies, the Holy See’s U.S. attorney Jeffrey Lena said.

The suit charged that the Holy See had engaged in criminal fraud and racketeering in violation of federal law.

The allegations against the Holy See “make good fodder for conspiracy theorists,” said Lena, who added that journalists who “enthusiastically” publicized the allegations should “write with equal vigor upon the cases’ demise.”

State insurance regulators sued the Holy See for $600 million in 2002 in connection with the actions of financier Martin Frankel.

Frankel and his co-conspirators allegedly acquired several insurance companies from 1991 to 1999 in Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas and illegally used the companies’ money for his own gain.

The Vatican was first approached by Frankel’s associates under the false pretense that Frankel, who used the pseudonym “David Rosse,” was a wealthy U.S. financier who wanted to donate millions of dollars to the Church to help the poor, Lena said in a Feb. 2 statement.

Frankel proposed the creation and funding of a charitable foundation in the Vatican, allegedly intending to use the foundation in an ongoing scheme to buy insurance companies and illegally exploit them.

“The Holy See categorically rejected the notion that ‘Rosse’ could ever create a Vatican foundation,” Lena said, citing a 1998 letter from then-Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano which said no such foundation could ever be created.

Frankel then created a false foundation in the British Virgin Islands named the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation to Serve and Help the Poor and Alleviate Suffering. He claimed the organization was affiliated with the Holy See and that John Paul II had personally authorized the funding.

According to Lena, the Vatican never received any money from Frankel.

“Through these machinations, the Holy See became the unwitting victim of Frankel’s fraud, which sought to trade on the Holy See’s name and reputation to continue to purchase and loot insurance companies,” the attorney commented.

Lena said the lawsuit was filed despite the fact that the Holy See never received money from Frankel.

The lawsuit was not dismissed because of a settlement agreement, he added. Rather, the insurance commissioners filed for dismissal of their own accord.

“As today’s dismissal with prejudice shows, the state insurance regulators’ decision to sue the Holy See for Frankel’s crimes was unsupported by the evidence,” said Lena, who reported that before the lawsuit was filed two government investigations concluded that state insurance regulators had allowed Frankel’s scheme to continue uninterrupted.

Lena suggested that state regulators sued the Holy See despite the findings of the U.S. Government Accounting Office and the Tennessee Comptroller that they bore “much of the blame” for allowing the scheme to continue.

Vatican City, Feb 6, 2012 / 01:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The body responsible for the governance of the Vatican City State is denying claims of corruption leveled by its former deputy governor, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

The allegations were made in private correspondence with Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, in spring 2011, but were only recently leaked to an Italian television station.
 
“The allegations contained in them cannot but lead to the impression that the Governorate of Vatican City State, instead of being an instrument of responsible government, is an unreliable entity, at the mercy of dark forces,” said an official statement issued Feb. 4.

“After careful examination of the contents of the two letters, the President of the Governorate sees it as its duty to publicly declare that those assertions are the result of erroneous assessments, or fears based on unsubstantiated evidence and are even openly contradicted by the main characters invoked as witnesses.”

The statement is signed by four leading figures involved in the running of the governorate, including the current president, Cardinal-designate Joseph Bertello, and his predecessor, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo.

The Governorate of Vatican City State is the department responsible for such things as the buildings, maintenance, gardens and museums within the world’s smallest sovereign state. Archbishop Viganò was second-in-command between July 2009 and September 2011.

Since October 2011 he has been the papal nuncio to the United States.

In the leaked letters, which the Vatican has confirmed are authentic, Archbishop Viganò claimed nepotism and mismanagement were rife within the city-state.

In an April 4 letter to Pope Benedict, he alleged that a small number of Italian businesses were gaining the majority of contracts and then billing the Vatican at inflated prices.
 
“Work was always given to the same companies at costs at least double compared to those charged outside the Vatican,” he told the Pope.

The archbishop gave the example of the annual nativity scene that is built in St. Peter’s Square. His due diligence, he claimed, reduced the cost from $ 718,000 in 2009 to $392,000 in 2010.

He also criticized an unofficial group of Italian bankers, known as the Finance and Management Committee, who advise the Vatican City State on financial matters. In his April 4 letter, he claimed their involvement “resulted more in their own interests than ours,” and said that one recommended transaction “made us lose two and a half million dollars.”

During the two-year tenure of Archbishop Viganò, the governorate’s balance sheet went from running a deficit of $9.8 million in 2009 to a surplus of $28 million in 2010.
 
In his letters to Pope Benedict, the archbishop argued that it was his commitment to financial transparency that made him internal enemies who were seeking to push him out of the Vatican.
 
But the Feb. 4 statement from the Governorate of Vatican City State offered a detailed rebuttal of the claims made by Archbishop Viganò.

The statement explained that the budget of the governorate is regularly submitted to the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and to its “college of international auditors” for scrutiny.

It also attributes the turnaround in the governorate’s financial situation during Archbishop Viganò’s tenure principally to two factors – improved returns from financial investments and “to an even greater extent, to the excellent results of the Vatican Museums.”

The governorate also insisted that it uses “standard bidding procedures” for major work carried out within the Vatican City State, such as the present restoration of the Colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. The bidding process is overseen by the Cardinal President of the Governorate and an “ad hoc” commission. Smaller projects are overseen by the staff of the Vatican’s Directorate of Technical Services or by “well known and well qualified external firms, on the basis of the prices in use in Italy,” the statement said.

The governorate also expressed “complete trust in, and respect for” the members of the Finance and Management Committee, and the governorate’s administrative offices and collaborators.

“All suspicions and accusations have, following careful examination, been shown to be unfounded, as have (almost to the point of seeming laughable) news reports – fruit of a certain kind of highly superficial journalism ….”
 
It does, however, say that the “implementation of the improvements” suggested by McKinsey management consultancy firm in a report commissioned by Cardinal Lajolo in 2009 will continue to be implemented.

Vatican City, Feb 5, 2012 / 12:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Faith in the love of Jesus Christ can overcome the suffering of long-term illness, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Sunday Angelus address on Feb. 5.

Just as Jesus faced the devil “with the power of love that was from the Father,” the Pope explained, so also a sick person can “overcome and defeat the test of disease with a heart immersed in the love of God.”

Indeed, he noted, “we all know people who have endured terrible suffering because God gave them a deep serenity.”

Pope Benedict addressed his remarks to thousands of pilgrims braving the cold and snow in St. Peter’s Square. From the window of the papal apartments, he reflected on the day's Gospel, in which Jesus “healed many who were sick with various diseases” and “cast out many demons.”

He observed how the four evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – all describe “freedom from disease and illness of any kind, together with preaching, as the main activities of Jesus in his public life.”

While disease is “a sign of the evil in the world and in man,” Christ’s healings show that “the Kingdom of God is near,” and they serve as “a foretaste of his victory obtained by his death and resurrection.”

The Pope recognized that if healing does not arrive swiftly and suffering is prolonged, those who are sick “can remain crushed, isolated,” and even “depressed and dehumanized.”

Appropriate medical treatment is in order and, as the Pope pointed out, “medicine in recent decades has made great strides.”

But he also noted that the “Word of God” teaches “a decisive attitude” toward illness, an attitude which is “that of the faith.”

Even in the face of death, “faith can make possible what is humanly impossible.”

“But faith in what?” the Pope asked, answering that faith in God's love “is the true answer, which radically defeats evil.”

As an example of how to bear illness through the love of God, Pope Benedict highlighted the life and death of Blessed Chiara Badano, an Italian teenager who died in 1990 from an aggressive and painful bone cancer.

Although she was struck “in the bloom of youth,” those who visited her during her illness saw that she manifested “light and trust” through her love for Christ.

The Pope concluded by noting that next Saturday, Feb. 11, is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and also the World Day of the Sick.

On that day, he suggested, believers should imitate people of Jesus' time and “spiritually present to him all the sick people, confident that he wants to and can heal,” while also invoking the intercession of the Virgin Mary “especially in situations of immense suffering and abandonment.”

“Mary, Health of the Sick,” he declared, “pray for us!”

Rome, Italy, Feb 4, 2012 / 06:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Currently on an “ad limina” visit to the Vatican, Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Arturo Cepeda is taking the Michigan faithful along with him by means of his blog.

“My blog is for all of my people in the Archdiocese of Detroit who can actually follow every single movement that I do,” Bishop Arturo Cepeda told CNA Feb. 3. “I call it a ‘virtual pilgrimage.’”

“So I’m blogging every single day, every meeting I go to. I take pictures and send them to my blog. I’m able to text and tell them what my feelings are and what’s going on.”

Ordained in May 2011 as an auxiliary bishop for Detroit, 42-year-old Bishop Cepeda is making the pilgrimage required of all dioceses every five years to meet with the Pope. 

The current visit allows the bishops of Detroit and Cincinnati to update the Pope and the Vatican on the health of the Church in their regions of the U.S.

For Bishop Cepeda, the “updating” goes two ways.

“For example, when I go to meetings with the different Vatican congregations, I give those reading the blog some idea of the issues we’ve just discussed,” he explained.

The auxiliary bishop's relative youth places him in a generation more at ease with the world of new media like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

“I’m a product of the 70s, and that was when that particular technological revolution began,” he said, “so I’ve always been on top of all the technological gadgets that are out there and I feel very comfortable with it all – and I believe that our future generations of Catholics feel very comfortable with it too.”

As the Church approaches Pope Benedict XVI’s “Yearof Faith” which begins in October 2012, Bishop Cepeda also believes that such technologies can aid in the “New Evangelization” of the traditionally Christian West.

“I do believe in the new media and I do believe in communication. It’s a gift not only for society but it’s also a gift for our Church.”

“We want to communicate our feelings, we want to communicate our thoughts. We want to communicate faith, and truth, and how the truth can change our culture.”

Recent blog entries by the bishop have covered his Feb. 3 audience with Pope Benedict, as well as the unusually heavy snow covering Rome.

“Let me tell you, I lived here in Rome for five years and never saw snow fall once. So this is the first time I’ve seen snow in my life here in Rome and it is coming down pretty heavy.”

Detroit Catholics, of course, got an update about it at http://aodonline.wordpress.com/.

“I have already taken pictures and sent them to my blog,” Bishop Cepeda said, clutching his smartphone. “I told them: ‘Guess what! Right after our meeting with the Holy Father it began to snow – so it seems that Detroit is following me all the way to Rome!’”

Vatican City, Feb 4, 2012 / 06:09 pm (CNA).- The director of the Vatican Observatory said that the Church is open to the scientific theory that the world began from a cosmic explosion billions of years ago.

“The Big Bang is not in contradiction with the faith, ” Father Jose Gabriel Funes said during a Feb. 2 announcement of a Vatican exhibit that will feature photos, research tools and minerals from the Moon and Mars.

The exhibit titled “Stories from another world: The Universe within us and outside us,” will be on display March 10 - July 1 in Pisa, the birthplace of Galileo, the father of modern astronomy. 

Fr. Funes told CNA at the event that the Big Bang explanation “is the best theory we have right now about the creation of the universe.”

The theory holds that creation began some 14 billion years ago with a colossal explosion in which space, time, energy and matter were created, and galaxies, stars and planets – which are in continual expansion – came to be.

“We know that God is the creator,” he added, “that He is a good Father who has a providential plan for us, that we are his children, and that we everything we can learn by reason about the origin of the universe is not in contradiction with the religious message of the Bible.”

Fr. Funes said that as an astronomer and a Catholic, he is open to this explanation of the creation of the universe, despite “some yet unanswered questions.”

He noted, for example, that while there is no proof of other intelligent life in the universe, “we cannot rule it out,” since studies show that there are nearly 700 planets orbiting other stars.

“If in the future it was established that life, and intelligent life, exists, which I think would be very difficult, I don’t think this contradicts the religious message of creation because they would also be creatures of God,” he said.

Ultimately, Catholics “should see the cosmos as a gift of God” and should “admire the beauty that exists in the universe.”

“This beauty we see in some way leads us to the beauty of the creator,” he said.

 “And also, because God has granted us intelligence and reason, we can find the logos, that rational explanation that exists in the universe that allows us to engage in science as well.”

The Church’s official interest in astronomy dates back to the 16th century. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII decided to officially create the Vatican Observatory to show that the Church is not against scientific development, but rather promotes it.

Since then, the Vatican Observatory has operated out of Castel Gandolfo and uses a telescope located in Tuscon, Arizona, for research.