Catholic News 2

(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis appealed on Wednesday for an end to “every form of hatred and violence”, especially those “perpetrated in places of worship, where the faithful gather to pray”.

He was referring to an attack on Catholics attending Sunday Mass in southern Nigeria and to recent violence against Christians in the Central African Republic.

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At his General Audience, Pope Francis said he “remains deeply saddened by the massacre, which took place last Sunday in Nigeria inside a church, where innocent people were killed.”

At least 13 people were killed and 26 others were wounded when gunmen opened fire on worshippers at St. Philip’s Catholic Church in Ozubulu near the city of Onitsha.

The Pope also decried an incident which occurred on Wednesday in the Central African Republic.

“And, unfortunately, news has arrived this morning of violent homicides in the Central African Republic against the Christian community.”

He expressed his desire that attacks on places of worship should cease.

“I hope that all forms of hatred and violence cease, and may such shameful crimes not be repeated, especially those perpetrated in places of worship, where the faithful gather to pray.”

After a brief pause, the Holy Father invited all present to think about “our brothers and sisters in Nigeria and in the Central African Republic” and to pray for them.

He then led the crowd in the recitation of the Hail Mary.

Pope Francis already on Monday sent a telegramme of condolences to Bishop Hilary Paul Odili Okeke of Nnewi following the attack on the church in his diocese.

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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis continued his catechesis on Christian hope with pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Hall for the Wednesday General Audience, saying that God’s mercy as embodied by Jesus both transforms us and renews our hope.

Listen to Devin Watkins’ report:

In his address to pilgrims at the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Francis spoke about God’s mercy and forgiveness as the driving force or the “motor” of Christian hope.

He reflected on the passage in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 7:44-50) in which Jesus forgives the sins of the woman who bathed his feet with her tears and a precious ointment.

Pope Francis said that Jesus’ merciful action causes scandal, because it overturns the dominant attitude of his time. Jesus, he said, embraced sinners and the “untouchables” of his day, rather than rejecting them as was commonplace.

“Jesus, faced with human pain, feels mercy; Jesus’ heart is merciful. Jesus feels compassion. Literally: Jesus feels a tremor within.”

The Pope said Jesus’ astonishing attitude to those in desperate situations, even those who have made many mistakes in life, marks our Christian identity with the stamp of mercy.

And this gives a sure foundation to our hope.

Pope Francis then invited all present to reflect on the cost of sin.

“Jesus does not go to the cross because He heals the sick, preaches charity, or proclaims the beatitudes. The Son of God goes to the cross above all because He forgives sins, and because He wants the total and definitive liberation of the human heart.”

Finally, Pope Francis said God’s mercy both transforms us and renews our hope.

“[W]e are all poor sinners, in need of the mercy of God Who has the strength to transform us and to restore our hope every day.”

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Rome, Italy, Aug 9, 2017 / 03:04 am (Church Pop).- As Iraq and surrounding areas face the destruction of many of the region’s archaeological treasures, one priest and his fellow Dominicans are preserving the area’s history and culture through an archive of Christian and other religious manuscripts.

“First, we save them (the manuscripts) physically, materially. We bring them to safety and bring them with us at the peril of our lives, of course. But, we also electronically copy them and number them and by doing this, the book or manuscript becomes immortal,” Fr. Najeeb Michaeel told CNA.

“In reality, I did not save this history just because I am a Christian. I saved this because I am human and everything that is human interests me, like the lives of human beings and of a human being become much more valuable when he has roots.”

Fr. Najeeb Michaeel is a Dominican friar and priest from Iraq. In 1990 he created the Center for the Digitization of Eastern Manuscripts to help digitize documents and archives of letters, paintings, and photos.

Since 2007 Fr. Najeeb and those who help him have moved and protected manuscripts from likely destruction at the hands of Islamist extremists. So far, the group has digitally preserved more than 8,000 previously unpublished manuscripts, dating from the 10th to the 19th centuries.

“Culture and civilization were born here and today it is a bath of blood and the destruction is almost complete and total, but even with all of this we keep the hope for a better future,” Fr. Najeeb said.

The question today is why we do not work to protect these villages, and to keep these things from destruction, he asked, and urged people to try to influence their governments to protect these historical places.

This collection of manuscripts “presents a small selection to say to the world, here are our roots, you need to help us, you need to help protect us. We do not have the right, as an international community, to sell arms to kill one another and not at the same time promote culture and the rights of man.”

Since 1750 the many manuscripts had been kept in the library of the Dominican monastery in Mosul. They were moved from the monastery starting in 2007, amid the backdrop of increased violence against Christians and other minorities at the hands of extremist groups.

Because of the violence, which included the killing of priests, for safety the Dominican brothers began to quietly move from their church. They continued to say Mass and the sacraments, but were physically living more than 18 miles away in the village of Bakhdida.

To not draw attention to themselves they dressed in civilian clothes and came and went discretely to celebrate Mass in caves, “like the first Christians did in the catacombs at the beginning of the Christian era,” Fr. Najeeb said.

It was during those next few years that the brothers began to progressively bring the manuscripts out of the convent in Mosul.

Then, in 2014, the Islamic State arrived in Mosul. Under threat of death unless they converted to Islam, Christians fled the city. Stopped at checkpoints on the roads, Islamic State took everything, so they were forced to leave with only the clothes they were wearing.

Amazingly, Fr. Najeeb and his brothers made it safely past the checkpoints. Then, just ten days before Islamic State invaded Bakhdida, Fr. Najeeb rescued many of the manuscripts again, this time bringing them to Erbil, where they have remained.

The documents include more than 25 subjects, including theology, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, history, and geography, many of which date back “to the 10th, 11th, and 12th century in Aramaic, which is the language of Jesus Christ, which is our mother tongue all the way to today,” Fr. Najeeb said.

They also have documents in Syriac, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Hebrew, Persian, and more: “All of this makes up our collection and heritage, not only Christian but also in the international communion for the whole of humanity,” he explained.

Rome hosted an exhibit and conference on just a small sample of the many photos and manuscripts June 10-17.

This exhibition was “just a small fragment of what we have in Iraq with respect to manuscripts and archives and materials and photos, because we have as well the largest deposit of photos in Iraq,” Fr. Najeeb explained.

The more than 10,000 photos “tell the story of the past: the face, the work and much more,” he continued. “Even the archaeology. And we have many archaeological documents in cuneiform as well, very ancient.”

Since 2009 the Dominicans in Iraq have also partnered with Benedictine monks, who also help with the supply of equipment and organizing internships.

Their internship program has about 10 young university students, Fr. Najeeb said, which provides “practical information for true professionals in the field of the restoration of manuscripts, for their protection and digitization, and also the process of storing them and protecting them with sophisticated technology to be able to officially protect them in a scientific way.”

Fr. Najeeb noted that preserving the manuscripts is far more important than merely having a record of history and an archive of historical objects, but something vital for the education of future generations as well.

“In fact, the manuscripts and the archives of these ancient document make up our history and are our roots. We cannot save a tree without saving its roots. The two can bear fruit,” he said.

“So, it is important all of these archives. This history is a part of our collective archives, our past, our history. And these we absolutely had to save, as our children.”

 


Charles-Henri Huyghues Despointes and Alexey Gotovskiy contributed to this story.

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Vatican City, Aug 9, 2017 / 03:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said the Church doesn't exist for people without faults, but for sinners in need of God's mercy – a point he often returns to – and lamented the fact that there are many Catholics who believe the opposite.

“We who are accustomed to experiencing the forgiveness of sins, perhaps too much like 'a cheap market,' we should at times remind ourselves of how much we cost the love of God,” the Pope said Aug. 9.

“Jesus didn't go to the Cross because he heals the sick, because he preaches charity or because he proclaims the beatitudes,” he said. Rather, “the Son of God goes to the Cross above all because he forgives sins, because he wants the total, definitive freedom of man's heart.”

“He does not accept that the human being consumes their entire existence with this irremovable 'tattoo,' with the thought of not being able to be welcomed by the merciful heart of God.”

And this, Francis said, is how sinners are forgiven. Not only are they reassured at a psychological level, feeling free from a sense of guilt, but Jesus does more: “he offers the people who have erred the hope of a new life, a life marked by love.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall for his weekly general audience, continuing his catechesis on hope.

He began by pointing to the Gospel reading from Luke in which, after Jesus forgives the sins of a woman who anoints his feet with oil, the Simon the Pharisee asks “who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus' act of forgiving the woman's sins was “a scandalous gesture,” Francis said, noting that to have a known sinner come into the house of Simon to anoint Jesus was startling, because at the time the mentality was “between the holy and the sinner, the pure and the impure, the separation had to be clear.”

“But the attitude of Jesus is different,” the Pope said, noting that from the beginning of his ministry Jesus embraced lepers, the sick and the marginalized.

“Such behavior was by no means normal, so much so that Jesus' sympathy for the excluded, for the untouchables, will be one of the most disturbing things for his contemporaries,” he said, adding that “wherever there is a person suffering, Jesus cares for them, and that suffering becomes his own.”

Rather than following the stoic philosophers, who linked physical suffering to sin and believed such “punishment” had to be endured with heroism, Jesus shared in human pain, “and when he encounters it, from the depths of his being bursts that attitude which characterizes Christianity: mercy.”

Jesus shows compassion, but “literally: Jesus feels his insides quiver.” This is often referenced in the Gospels, where Christ incarnate “reveals the heart of God” and offers healing to those who suffer.

“It is for this reason that Jesus extends his hands to sinners,” Francis said, noting that there are many people today living a life of error “because they can't find anyone willing to look at them in a different way, with their eyes, or better, with the heart of God, which is hope.”

At times we forget that Jesus did not act with an easy love that comes “for a cheap price,” he said, adding that Jesus understands not only the physical pain of those who suffer, but also the internal pain of those who feel that they are “bad” people or that there is something essentially “wrong” with them because of their faults.

Francis closed his address telling pilgrims that it would do them well to think about how “God did not choose people who have never done wrong as the first dough to form his Church.”

Rather, “the Church is a people of sinners who experience the mercy and forgiveness of God,” he said, adding that St. Peter understood the truth about himself when the cock crowed, instead of his generous works, “which swelled his chest, making him feel superior to others.”

The Church is not for the perfect, but for sinners, he said, adding in off-the-cuff remarks that he can think of “a lot of Catholics who think they are perfect and they despise others, (and) this is sad.”

“We are all poor sinners in need of God's mercy, which has the strength to transform us and radiate hope to us every day,” Pope Francis said.

And to the people who understand this, “God gives the most beautiful mission in the world, which is to tell of his love for their brothers and sisters, and the announcement of a mercy that he does not deny to anyone.”

After greeting pilgrims from various countries around the world, Pope Francis closed his audience with an appeal for an end to violence in the world following an attack this week in Nigeria, in which a gunman entered a Church and opened fire, killing 11 and wounding several others.

He also pointed to an uptick in “homicidal violence” in the Central African Republic this week, directed against the Christian population.

“I wish that all forms of hatred and violence would cease, and that no more such shameful crimes be committed in places of worship, where faithful are gathered to pray,” he said, and led pilgrims in praying a Hail Mary for the people of Nigeria and CAR.

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Vatican City, Aug 9, 2017 / 04:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has named Bishop Emanuel Hana Shaleta as head the eparchy of Saint Peter Apostle of San Diego of the Chaldeans, pulling him from his prior post in Canada.

Shaleta has until now served as Bishop of  Mar Addai Eparchy of Toronto. Announced in an Aug. 9 communique from the Vatican, his appointment to San Diego came alongside the nomination of Bishop Frank Kalabat, who oversees the Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, as apostolic administrator for the Toronto eparchy.

Born in Fishkabour-Zakho, Iraq Nov. 12, 1956, the bishop completed his studies in his village before entering the Dominican-run Minor Seminary of Saint John in Mosul in 1971.

Like most clergy from Iraq, he was eventually invited to Rome for his studies, beginning courses at the Pontifical Urbanianum University in 1977, after having completed his studies in philosophy and theology.

He was ordained a priest by St. John Paul II May 31, 1984. He then continued his studies at the Urbanianum's Faculty of Theology, obtaining a doctorate in Biblical Theology in 1987.

Bishop Shaleta was then transferred to the United States through the Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, where from 1987-2000 he served as pastor of St. Paul Parish in North Hollywood, Calif.

In 2000 he was named vice-pastor of St. Joseph parish in Troy, Mich. He was subsequently named pastor in 2006, and was later named pastor of St Gregory parish in Township, Mich., a position he held until 2015.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his priestly ordination in 2009, Shaleta was givene the title “chorbishop,” which refers to a prelate or archpriest of honor in Eastern Christian Churches.

In January of 2015 Pope Francis named him bishop of the Mar Addai eparchy in Toronto, and he received his episcopal ordination a month later, on Feb. 6, 2015.

As far as languages, the bishop speaks Chaldean, Arabic, Italian and English, and is familiar with Assyrian, Kurdish, French and German, as well as Latin, Hebrew and Greek.

The Eparchy of San Diego's website, it was established by St. John Paul II in 2002, who at that time accepted the Chaldean Synod's election of  Fr. Sarhad Jammo as the first bishop for the St. Peter the Apostle diocese.

In total, the eparchy covers 17 States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

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