Notisia Katoliko Korsou

zaterdag 26 oktober 2013

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis is scheduled to join a rally this evening in St. Peter’s Square, with families gathered in Rome on pilgrimage. Ahead of the celebration, public security officials expect about 200,000 people.

The event will conclude on Sunday with Holy Mass in St. Peter's Basilica presided over by the Pope. Saturday's rally and Sunday's Mass are part of a weekend Family Pilgrimage to the Tomb of St. Peter, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Family. The theme is “Families, live the joy of the faith”. It comes on the heels of the Council’s three-day Plenary Assembly, which concluded yesterday.

Pilgrims began making their way to St. Peter’s early Saturday morning. By 2:30 p.m., tens of thousands of people from about 70 countries—mostly moms, dads, their children and grandparents—had gathered in the square for a rally ahead of the mass.

Several artists and presenters were slated to reflect on the reality of marriage and family life. Some couples were also to offer witness to both the beauty and the disappointments—from raising children as foster parents to marriage breakdown and separation, and then how they lived these struggles in faith.

The schedule for the family pilgrimage on Sunday morning includes recitation of the Rosary in St. Peter’s Square, followed by mass with the Pope and the Angelus.

Young people were invited to participate in a special way. Children sent Pope Francis drawings of their families, and teens submitted songs they wrote to the organizers. The best drawings and songs were featured at the rally.

Pope Francis has taken the family as one of the central themes of his pontificate. He announced earlier this month that next year’s synod of bishops will focus on this theme.
Report by Laura Ieraci

Pope Francis presents 2013 Ratzinger Prize

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday presented the 2013 Ratzinger Prize to joint recipients: a German lay theologian and an Anglican English Biblical scholar.
In his address, the Pope reflected on the works of Benedict XVI, after whom the award is named. Highlighting the Jesus of Nazareth series, written by Benedict during his pontificate, Pope Francis said his predecessor had given to the Church and to all people a precious gift: his understanding of Jesus, the fruit of years of study, prayer and theological engagement, in a way that is widely accessible.
The recipients of this year’s Ratzinger Prize are: Christian Schaller, professor of dogmatic theology and deputy director of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute of Regensburg, Germany, which is publishing the complete works of Joseph Ratzinger, and Rev Canon Professor Richard Burridge, dean of King's College London and a minister in the Anglican Communion.
Burridge also participated this week in a symposium of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, entitled “The Gospels: History and Christology”, which took place at the Pontifical Lateran University, 24-26 October. The symposium's starting point was the research of Joseph Ratzinger.
Burridge received the honour for his contribution to the historical and theological recognition of the Gospels' inseparable connection to Jesus of Nazareth.
In sharing his reaction to receiving the prize with Vatican Radio's Lydia O'Kane, Burridge explained he was already expecting to be in Rome for another conference when he received the news.
“We got a letter – actually on my birthday in June – from the Apostolic Nuncio, asking me if I would accept the honour. Everybody thought that this was a practical joke from the students, but it was such a joy to discover that, a real surprise, and a terrific honour,” he said.
As the first non-Catholic to receive the award, he said that his receiving the award “says something about the importance of what has been happening over the last two or three decades, not just in Anglican and Roman Catholic dialogue, but internationally in Biblical studies, as we have been working more and more closely together.”

vrijdag 25 oktober 2013

Pope Francis: confess sins with concreteness and sincerity

(Vatican Radio) To have the courage in the presence of the confessor to call sin by its name, without hiding it: Pope Francis homily this morning at the Casa Santa Marta was focused entirely on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To go to Confession, he said, is to encounter the love of Jesus with sincerity of heart and with the transparency of children, not refusing, but even welcoming the “grace of shame” that makes us perceive God’s forgiveness.

For many believing adults, confessing to a priest is an unbearable effort – that often leads one to avoid the Sacrament – or such a painful process that it transforms the moment of truth into an exercise of fiction. Pope Francis, commenting on the Letter to the Romans, says that Saint Paul does exactly the opposite: he admits publically to the community that “good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.” He acknowledges that he is a “slave” who does not do the good that he wants to do, but the evil that he does not want to do. This happens in the life of faith, the Pope said, that “when I want to do good, evil is close to me”:

“This is the struggle of Christians. It is our struggle every day. And we do not always have the courage to speak as Paul spoke about this struggle. We always seek a way of justification: ‘But yes, we are all sinners.’ But we say it like that, don’t we? This says it dramatically: it is our struggle. And if we don’t recognize this, we will never be able to have God’s forgiveness. Because if being a sinner is a word, a way of speaking, a manner of speaking, we have no need of God’s forgiveness. But if it is a reality that makes us slaves, we need this interior liberation of the Lord, of that force. But more important here is that, to find the way out, Paul confesses his sin to the community, his tendency to sin. He doesn’t hide it.”

Confession of sins, done with humility, is something the Church requires of all of us, Pope Francis noted, citing the invitation of Saint James: “Confess your sins to one another.” Not to get noticed by others, the Pope explained, “but to give glory to God,” to recognise that it is God Who saves me. That, the Pope continued, is why one goes to a brother, a “brother priest” to confess. And one must do as Paul did – above all, confessing with the same “concreteness”:

“Some say: ‘Ah, I confess to God.’ But it’s easy, it’s like confessing by email, no? God is far away, I say things and there’s no face-to-face, no eye-to-eye contact. Paul confesses his weakness to the brethren face-to-face. Others [say], ‘No, I go to confession,’ but they confess so many ethereal things, so many up-in-the-air things, that they don’t have anything concrete. And that’s the same as not doing it. Confessing our sins is not going to a psychiatrist, or to a torture chamber: it’s saying to the Lord, ‘Lord, I am a sinner,’ but saying it through the brother, because this says it concretely. ‘I am sinner because of this, that and the other thing.’”

Concreteness and honesty, Pope Francis added, and a sincere ability to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. There are no shadowy lanes that can serve as an alternative to the open road that leads to God’s forgiveness, to the awareness, in the depths of the heart, of His forgiveness and His love. And here the Pope explained we must imitate little children:

“Little children have that wisdom: when a child comes to confess, he never says something general. ‘But father, I did this and I did that to my aunt, another time I said this word’ and they say the word. But they are concrete, eh? They have that simplicity of the truth. And we always have the tendency to hide the reality of our failings. But there is something beautiful: when we confess our sins as they are in the presence of God, we always feel that grace of shame. Being ashamed in the sight of God is a grace. It is a grace: ‘I am ashamed of myself.’ We think of Peter when, after the miracle of Jesus on the lake, [he said] ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinner.’ He is ashamed of his sins in the presence of the sanctity of Jesus.”