Philippine Asian News Today Vol 20 No 17 | Page 25

September 1 - 15, 2018
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY
RELIGIOUS
Pope calls meeting on
sexual abuse
Pope Francis has summoned
senior bishops from around the
world to the Vatican in February to
discuss the protection of minors from
sexual abuse, the Vatican said on
Wednesday.
A Vatican spokeswoman said
the meeting of the heads of national
Catholic bishops conferences would
take place February 21-24.
The calling of the February
meeting comes in the wake of fresh
sexual abuse scandals in a number of
countries, including the United States,
Chile and Australia.
The Catholic Church in the
United states has been shaken by a
damning grand jury report in the state
of Pennsylvania that found that 301
25
priests in the state had sexually abused
minors over the past 70 years.
Francis is due to meet on
Thursday with US Catholic Church
leaders who want to discuss the fallout
from the report as well as a scandal
involving a former American cardinal
and demands from an archbishop
that the pontiff step down.
Cardinal
Daniel
DiNardo,
president of the US Conference of
Catholic Bishops (USCCB), asked for
the meeting after Archbishop Carlo
Maria Vigano last month accused
the Pope of knowing for years about
sexual misconduct by former Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick and of doing
nothing about it. (Malaya)
Pope Francis: Don’t make a
show of doing good
Pope Francis said Sunday that
Jesus teaches when doing good
deeds, they should be performed
discretely and without trying to draw
attention to one’s self.
“[Jesus] teaches us that good
should be done without clamor and
without ostentation, without ‘sounding
the trumpet.’ It must be done in
silence,” the pope said Sept. 9.
Before leading the Angelus,
Francis reflected on the day’s Gospel
about Jesus’ healing of the deaf man.
In the account, Jesus makes several
gestures Christians can learn from, he
said. The first is that Jesus takes the
man away from the crowd of people
before healing him.
This is because “Jesus always acts
with discretion,” he said. “He does
not want to impress people, he is not
looking for popularity or success…”
The second is the human actions
Jesus takes, putting his fingers in
the man’s ears and touching his
tongue with his saliva, referencing the
Incarnation. Because Jesus is a man
as well as God, “he can understand
the painful condition” of the deaf man
with the speech impediment.
Francis noted that at the
same time, when he uses the word,
“Ephphatha!” – meaning “Be opened!”
– Jesus also shows his union with the
Father.
The pope said this passage from
the Gospel shows the need for two
types of healing. First, a healing from
physical illness and suffering, even
though a perfectly healthy body will
never be completely attainable on
earth. The second type of healing, he
said, is healing from fear.
“Healing from fear that pushes us
to marginalize the sick, to marginalize
the suffering, the disabled,” he
stated. It is the heart, the “deep
core of the person,” he continued,
“that Jesus came to ‘open,’ to free”
so that Christians can “live fully
the relationship with God and with
others.”
He explained that Jesus came to
heal and to open hearts to the needs
and suffering of others. “[Jesus]
became man so that man, made
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