A New Poor Clare Blog

Interesting...

Pope Concerned About Church in United States

According to Cardinal George, from the Chicago Tribune:

On his second day in Rome, as planned, George attended the canonization of Mother Theodore Guerin of Indiana, the first U.S. saint in six years. What wasn't planned, he said, was an invitation that day to concelebrate mass with the pope. In a concelebration, several priests say mass together.

"I hadn't expected that, and I was very pleased to do that," he said.

George said the pope was worried about the state of the church in the United States.

"He was very concerned about the seminary system and the morale of priests who have been ordained for some years, especially in the current crisis," he said.

Mission Sunday--Pope's Angelus

The secular news reports one or the other aspects of the italicized message...all with some spin attached as to what the Pope is doing (placating the Muslims etc.), but the bold print is what strikes me as the real meat of today's angelus....something to think about as you go out and hear a Mission Sunday homily.

From the Papa Ratzi Forumn (translated by Teresa Benedetta):

Today we celebrate the 80th World Missionary Day. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI who gave a strong push to the mssions ad gentes, and in the Jubilee Year of 1925, promoted a grand exposition which became what is now the ethnological-Missionary Collections of the Vatican Museums.

This year, in the message for the occasion, I proposed the theme "Charity, spirit of mission". Indeed, if mission is not inspired by love, it is reduced to a philanthropic and social activity.

But for Christians, the words of St. Paul are valid: "Love of Christ urges us on" (2 Cor 5,14). The love that moved the Father to send His Son to the world and the Son to offer Himself for us by His death on the Cross - that same love is instilled by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.

Every baptized person, like a shoot from the vine, can thus cooperate in the mission of Jesus which can be summarized thus: to bring to every person the good news that "God is love" and because of this, He wants to save the world.

Mission comes from the heart: When one stops to pray before the Crucifix, and looks at the pierced chest of Christ, one cannot but feel the joy of knowing we are loved, and a desire to love and become an instrument of mercy and reconciliation.

That is what happened 800 years ago to the young Francis of Assisi in the little church of St. Damian which was then in ruins. From atop the Cross, now kept in the Basilica of St. Clare, Francis heard Jesus tell him: "Go, repair my house which, as you see, is all in ruins."

That 'house" was, first of all, his own life, to be 'repaired' through a true conversion; it was the Church, not that one of bricks, but that of living persons who are always in need of purification; it was also all mankind, in whom God wants to live.

Mission always starts from a heart transformed by the love of God, as shown by countless stories about the saints and martyrs who in different ways gave their lives in the service of the Gospel.

Mission is therefore a worksite where there is a place for everyone: for those committed to realize in their own families the Kingdom of God; for those who carry out their profession in the Christian spirit; for those who consecrate themselves totally to the Lord; for those who follow Jesus the Good Shepherd in the ministry ordained for the people of God; for those who specifically go forth to announce Christ to those who do not yet know Him.

May the Most Holy Mary help us live with renewed missionary impulse - each in the situation Providence has placed us - the joy and the courage of mission.


After the Angelus, he said the following:

I am happy to send a cordial greeting to the Muslims of the whoe world who these days are celebrating the end of the fasting monmth of RAmadan. I wish everyone serenity and peace!

In dramatic contrast to this joyous atmosphere is the news coming from Iraq on the most serious problems of security and the brutal violence to which so many innocents are exposed just because they are Shiite, Sunni or Christian.

I feel the great concern throughout the Christian community there and I wish to assure them that I am near to them, as I am to all victims of violence, and for all, I pray for strength and consolation.

I invite you to join me in asking the Omnipotent to grant the faith and courage needed by religious authorities and political leaders, local as well as international, to support the Iraqi people in reconstructing their homeland, in seeking a shared equilibrium, and in reciprocal respect, knowing that the multiplicity of their national components is an integral part of the nation's wealth.

Cat Stevens Sends Pope His Book

Uhm, I mean Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens...there was a guy who could sing "Morning has Broken" exactly like him at morning prayer back in my college seminary days at St. Meinrad.

From the Monterey Herald:

Islam was also deported from Israel for giving thousands of dollars to Hamas. More recently, the composer of "Wild World" and "Moonshadow" has tried to build understanding among Christians, Jews and Muslims. He called the 9/11 terrorist attacks "an offense against the true spirit of Islam" and recently sent Pope Benedict his book "The Life of the Last Prophet" after the pontiff made remarks perceived to be divisive.

Islam's new lyrics don't mention Allah or the prophet Mohammed by name but in the song "Heaven," he sings, "If a storm should come and if you face a wave/That may be the chance for you to be saved/And if you make it through the trouble and the pain/That may be the time for you to know his name."

Cardinal: Time for Muslims to Apologize

The Pope did it, now why don't you guys do it?

Is this the liberal O'Brien that everyone feared?

From the Scotland:

THE leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has called for Muslims to apologise for the 9/11 and 7/7 bomb attacks, declaring that the public should not have to live "in fear of attack" from believers of the Islamic faith.

In a move that has provoked a storm of outrage, the cardinal claims that, as the Pope apologised for the offence caused last month by his comments on the Islamic faith, so Muslims should now step up and say sorry for the attacks carried out in the name of their faith.

O'Brien said: "There have been no apologies for the shooting of the nun [in Somalia after the Pope made his remarks], let alone for 9/11 or the London bombings. I would like to see some reciprocal moves from the Islamic side. We shouldn't have to live in fear of attack from Muslims."

Atheist Leaves Books to Pope

Who she greatly admired--Pope Benedict!

Saw him as an ally against the Muslim crusade against the Christian West.

From the Toronto Sun:

A prominent Italian journalist and self-described atheist who died last month has left most of her books and notes to a pontifical university in Rome because she admired Pope Benedict, a school official said yesterday.

Oriana Fallaci had described the Pontiff as an ally in her campaign to rally Christians in Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West. As she battled breast cancer last year, she had a private audience with Benedict, who had been elected only a few months earlier, at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal: "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a Pope think the same things, there must be something true."

Benedict was surprised by the gift of the books, some of which date to the 17th century and included volumes about the formation of modern-day Italy, philosophy and theology, said Msgr. Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateranense University in Rome.

St. Gaspar del Bufalo

From The Church's Most Powerful Novenas:

Antonio and Annunziata Del Bufalo named their child after one of the three magi when he was born on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1786 in Rome, Italy. Yet when at the age of two young Gaspar was threatened with blindness due to a serious eye ailment it was to St. Francis Xavier (whose partial relics were contained in the nearby Gesu (Jesus) Church) that they turned—and were heard as Gaspar was healed.
Early in Gaspar's life he showed himself to be a great friend of the poor and the sick. He would teach the catechism to orphans and bring meals to the hospitalized as well as setting up a shelter for those who had no place to sleep at night. At the same time he was pursuing the priesthood in Rome to which he was ordained in1808.
A year after Gaspar's ordination the French Emperor Napoleon took over the Papal States and imprisoned the Pope. The clergy were ordered to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor and when Gaspar came before the magistrate and was given the oath he replied, "I would rather die, or suffer evil than to take such an oath. I cannot, I ought not. I will not." He was sent to Piacenza, in exile and during this time he became gravely ill and received the Last Rites from his friend Monsignor Albertini.
Monsignor Albertini encouraged his friend that he was sure this could not be the end for Gaspar for some years earlier a saintly nun Maria Agnese had told him that he would meet a young priest with whom he would form a close friendship during a time of oppression by the Church's enemies. She had said, "He will distinguish himself by a special devotion to St. Francis Xavier. He will become an apostlic missionary and will found a new congregation of missionary priests under the invocation of the Divine Blood who purpose shall be to reform customs, to save souls, to foster decorum among the secular clergy, to arouse the people back from their apathy and lack of faith, bringing them back to love of the Crucifix." Monsignor Albertini told Gaspar that God had much for him to do and so he would.
In 1811 after refusing the loyalty oath a second time he was imprisoned for the next four years until Rome was liberated from Napoleon's rule. In 1814 Pope Pius VII granted Gaspar a church and convent that had been abandoned by another religious order as a place where he could house a new congregation that would bear the name of Most Precious Blood of Christ. On August 15, 1815 the first house of this new congregation opened with four members.
The congregation founded by Gaspar was to be a charitable fraternity of priests who would take no vows but dedicate themselves to preaching missions and spreading devotion the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. He wrote to a priest friend at the time, "Those who do evangelical work, do so by ensuring that the Blood of Jesus is used to save souls, and they must do this continuously, asking that sinners be forgiven."
Gaspar went about preaching missions to the most obstinate groups. One time when a dying man, a sinner refused to convert—Gaspar began to scourge himself until the dying man came to his senses and died with his faith intact. Sent by the pope to preach to the most difficult souls, essentially gansters some of who intended to kill the priest, miracles were worked where the knife of a would be attacker fell out of the hand, a bullet intended for Gaspar fell harmlessly at his feet—while those who set out to persecute ended being captured by the Lord. Such was the power of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus and his apostle.
Gaspar suffered throughout his life. Some of this suffering came from the Church he loved and obeyed. He died in 1837. He was canonized a saint by Pope Pius XII in 1954.
Blessed Pope John XXIII, himself a great modern apostle of devotion to the precious blood added the phrase "Blessed be his most precious blood" to the Divine Praises commonly recited at the conclusion of Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. In an Apostolic Letter on promoting the devotion of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus entitled Inde a Primis he shared that he had been a devotee of this devotion begun by St. Gaspar since his infancy and encouraged others to promote this devotion by using a litany developed by the Congregation of Rites at the time. He wrote in his Apostolic Letter that devotion to the Most Precious Blood owed its modern diffusion to St. Gaspar del Bufalo.