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August 27, 2013
WORLD YOUTH DAY
T he Valley Catholic
A choir sings as pilgrims prepare for the World Youth Day closing Mass with Pope Francis on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro July 28. During the service, the pope commissioned an estimated 3 million people in attendance to become missionaries without orders. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Pope discusses women in the Church, divorce, mercy
By Cindy Wooden ABOARD PAPAL FLIGHT FROM BRAZIL (CNS) — Pope Francis responded to several questions about Church teaching and ministry, the role of women in the Church and the pastoral care of the divorced when he met with reporters on his flight from Rio de Janeiro back to Rome. On the possibility of the Catholic Church ordaining women priests, Pope Francis said, “the Church has spoken and said, ‘no,’” and the form in which Blessed John Paul II declared that was “a definitive formula.” Blessed John Paul said that because Jesus chose only men as his disciples, the Church was not able to ordain women. However, Pope Francis said, the Cat holic Churc h still has far to go in developing a real theology that explains the import a nce of women in the Church and how it would be impossible for the Church to live up to its role as mother and bride without the contribution of women. “It is not enough to have altar girls, women readers or women as the president of Caritas,” he said. “Women in the Church are more important than bishops and priests,” just like “Mary is more important than the apostles.” Asked about any possibility that the Catholic Church would begin to allow Catholics who have been divorced and remarried civilly to receive the sacraments, Pope Francis said he wanted to make it clear that divorced Catholics can receive the sacraments. The problems begin when they marry a second time without having their first union annulled. He said the annulment process needs to be reformed and streamlined, but even more importantly the Catholic Church needs to get serious about developing a comprehensive pastoral program for the family, and that was one topic he planned to discuss Oct. 1-3 with the commission of eight cardinals he named to advise him on the reform of the Roman Curia and other important matters. The late Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, his predecessor as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, used to say that he t hought half t he Catholic marriages in the world could b e a n nu l led b e cause people marry “without maturity, w it hout u nderstanding it was for one’s entire life or because it seemed socially necessary,” the pope said. Asked about why he speaks so frequently about God’s mercy, he said, “I think this is a time for mercy,” particularly a time when the Church must go out of its way to be merciful given the “not-so-beautiful witness of some priests” and “the problem of clericalism. The Church, which is mother, must go and heal those wounds.” Pope Francis said he was looking forward to canonizing Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II, but choosing a date has become tricky. The best guess, he said, is Divine Mercy Sunday, April 27, the Sunday after Easter in 2014.
Pope tells bishops, other min isters fidelity is key to evangelization
By Cindy Wooden RIO DE JANEIRO (CNS) — With the young pilgrims of World Youth Day, Pope Francis was encouraging and challenging; with the bishops, priests and Religious who minister to them he was firm and blunt. “It is not pastoral creativity or meetings or planning that ensure our fruitfulness, but our being faithful to Jesus,” the pope told an estimated 1,000 bishops along with thousands of priests, seminarians and Religious. Pope Francis celebrated Mass with the ministers July 27 in Rio’s St. Sebastian Cathedral, repeating one of the key ideas of his papacy: “We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel. We must go out to seek and meet the people.” The ability to share the Good News relies on first recognizing how truly good it is, the pope said. Ministers of the Gospel “must have a memory,” treasuring the knowledge that they were called by God and spending time with him in prayer and adoration. It also means spending time with Jesus present in others, especially the poor, he said. The hundreds of thousands of young people who gathered in Rio for World Youth Day also have heard Jesus’ call to go and make disciples of all nations, the pope said. But that can be a frightening prospect and the Church’s ministers have an obligation to give the young the education, formation and support they need in order to respond. “Let us help our young people to discover the courage and joy of faith, the joy of being loved personally by God, who gave his son Jesus for our salvation,” Pope Francis said. “When the young understand they are personally loved by God, they can keep going,” he said. Jesus obviously loved his disciples, the pope said, but “he did not keep them under his wing like a hen with her chicks. He sent them out.” A key part of the Church’s mission activity, he said, is promoting “the culture of encounter” to fight a growing “culture of exclusion, of rejection.”
‘Women in the Church are more important than bishops and priests.’
The Valley Catholic invites readers, of any age, to please comment on the recent World Youth Day which marked a historic moment as the new pope traveled to his home continent for the week of events. Pope Francis met with youth, young adults, the elderly, and an array of Church and civic leaders, speaking of mercy and compassion, environmental concerns, the plight of the poor, and justice. Write comments to The Valley Catholic, 1150 North 1st St., Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95112; [email protected] or [email protected]. www.valleycatholiconline.com
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