18
IN THE CHURCH
October 23, 2018 | The Valley Catholic
Saints Risk All For Love of Jesus, Pope Says At Canonization Mass
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – Carrying Pope
Paul VI’s pastoral staff and wearing the
blood-stained belt of Archbishop Oscar
Romero of San Salvador, Pope Francis
formally recognized them, and five
others, as saints of the Catholic Church.
Thousands of pilgrims from the new
saints’ home countries -- Italy, El Salva-
dor, Spain and Germany -- were joined
by tens of thousands of others October
14 in St. Peter’s Square to celebrate the
universal recognition of the holiness
of men and women they already knew
were saints.
Carolina Escamilla, who traveled
from San Salvador for canonization,
said she was “super happy” to be in
Rome. “I don’t think there are words
to describe all that we feel after such a
long-awaited and long-desired moment
like the ‘official’ canonization, because
Archbishop Romero was already a saint
when he was alive.”
Each of the new saints lived lives
marked by pain and criticism -- in-
cluding from within the church -- but
all of them dedicated themselves with
passionate love to following Jesus and
caring for the weak and the poor, Pope
Francis said in his homily.
The new saints are: Paul VI, who led
the last sessions of the Second Vatican
Council and its initial implementa-
tion; Romero, who defended the poor,
called for justice and was assassinated
in 1980; Vincenzo Romano, an Ital-
ian priest who died in 1831; Nazaria
Ignacia March Mesa, a Spanish nun
who ministered in Mexico and Bolivia
and died in 1943; Catherine Kasper,
the 19th-century German founder of
a religious order; Francesco Spinelli,
a 19th-century priest and founder of a
religious order; and Nunzio Sulprizio,
a layman who died in Naples in 1836
at the age of 19.
“All these saints, in different con-
texts,” put the Gospel “into practice
in their lives, without lukewarmness,
without calculation, with the passion
to risk everything and to leave it all be-
hind,” Pope Francis said in his homily.
The pope, who has spoken often
about being personally inspired by
In his homily, Pope Francis said that
“Jesus is radical.”
“He gives all and he asks all; he
gives a love that is total and asks for an
undivided heart,” the pope said. “Even
today he gives himself to us as the liv-
ing bread; can we give him crumbs in
exchange?”
Jesus, he said, “is not content with
a ‘percentage of love.’ We cannot love
him 20 or 50 or 60 percent. It is either all
or nothing” because “our heart is like
a magnet -- it lets itself be attracted by
love, but it can cling to one master only
and it must choose: either it will love
God or it will love the world’s treasure;
either it will live for love or it will live
for itself.”
“A leap forward in love,” he said, is
what would enable individual Chris-
tians and the whole church to escape
“complacency and self-indulgence.”
Without passionate love, he said,
“we find joy in some fleeting pleasure,
we close ourselves off in useless gossip,
we settle into the monotony of a Chris-
tian life without momentum where a
little narcissism covers over the sadness
of remaining unfulfilled.”
The banners of new saints Oscar Romero
and Paul VI hang from the facade of St.
Peter’s Basilica as Pope Francis celebrates
the canonization Mass for seven new saints
in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Oct. 14.
\(CNS photo/Paul Haring)
both St. Paul VI and St. Oscar Romero,
prayed that every Christian would fol-
low the new saints’ examples by shun-
ning an attachment to money, wealth
and power, and instead following Jesus
and sharing his love with others.
And he prayed the new saints would
inspire the whole church to set aside
“structures that are no longer adequate
for proclaiming the Gospel, those
weights that slow down our mission,
the strings that tie us to the world.”
Washington Archdiocese Releases Names of Priests Accused of Abuse
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Arch-
diocese of Washington has voluntarily
released the names of abusive priests
and stated that there have been no
credible claims of abuse made against
archdiocesan priests in almost 20
years. On October 15, church officials
posted on the archdiocesan website,
https://bit.ly/2OqpWqF, the names of
28 former clergy of the archdiocese
who were credibly accused of sexual
abuse of minors from 1948 onward. The
list also includes three religious order
priests who served in temporary roles
in archdiocesan parishes or schools.
The list was assembled as part of a com-
prehensive review of the archdiocese’s
archives ordered in 2017 by Cardinal
Donald W. Wuerl as Washington’s
archbishop. “This list is a painful re-
minder of the grave sins committed by
clergy, the pain inflicted on innocent
young people, and the harm done to
the church’s faithful, for which we
continue to seek forgiveness,” Cardinal
Wuerl said in a statement. “Our strong
commitment to accompany survivors
of abuse on their path toward healing
is unwavering, but it is also important
to note that to our knowledge there has
not been an incident of abuse of a minor
by a priest of the archdiocese in almost
two decades,” he said. “There is also no
archdiocesan priest in active ministry
who has ever been the subject of a
credible allegation of abuse of a minor.”
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