Category: Editorial

In the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East, Christians are enduring great hardships and the “little flock” they comprise is shrinking steadily. Squeezed between two extremisms – Jewish (Israel) and Islamic (Muslim countries) – and subject to religious and social discrimination, many Christians prefer to flee from their harsh reality of conflict and instability. Their woeful plight calls for our sympathy, spiritual support and solidarity. They belong to the countries of the Bible. The Holy land, in particular, is the cradle of Christianity. Jesus was born, lived and died there. His disciples were first called Christians at Antioch (Acts 11:26) in Syria. Persecution scattered them. On the way, they announced the Gospel to the non-Jews, hence starting the Church’s universal mission. Now, they are fleeing again to find peace and tranquility. While pilgrims from all over the world flock there to find their faith’s roots, native Christians move out because they feel they are foreigners in their homeland.  Their mass exodus will be one of the main issues of the special assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops that will gather in Rome from 10 to 24 October. Related issues to be discussed, according to the Instrumentem Laboris (the working document), are: widespread Islamization, lack of political and religious freedom, political instability, the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the need of peace founded on justice.  Invited to the synodal assembly are the Latin Church in the Middle East and the various Churches in communion with Rome, born from the divisions of the 5th century and the Great Schism at the beginning of the 11th century. They are different according to rite, geographic location or national allegiance. The Synod is an opportunity to foster their renewal and witness, overcome suspicions and misunderstandings, deepen their bonds of communion and affirm their specificities when compared to other faiths and societies among which they live.  The Middle East, being “a predominantly Muslim society, be it Arab, Turkish, Iranian or a Jewish society in the State of Israel,” interreligious dialogue is an unavoidable issue. It requires great friendship but, at the same time, great clarity. In Muslim countries, Christians are considered second-class citizens. There’s a growing demand for the application of the principle of reciprocity and to emphasize the urgency of implementing the freedom of religion and conscience, with the right to proclaim the gospel in Muslim countries in the same way that Muslims have the right to preach Islam. The Synod has relevance also for Christian immigrants, especially from the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Sudan. They often have to endure gross human rights violations. Across the region, there are more than one million domestic workers, many of them Catholics, who are treated like slaves. In South Arabia alone, there are more than one million migrant Christians who are denied the right to their religion. It is simply unacceptable that a state known for exporting fundamentalist Islam and for paying for the construction of mosques everywhere behaves in

In the month of October, the Church focuses on mission – especially mission beyond the borders of one’s people and culture, called in Latin, Ad Gentes. The missionary impulse is a sign of the Church’s vitality. The Church exists as a result of God’s mission and for mission. The Church  learns and grows in mission, reaching out to others. A community closed to the perspective of mission is closed to God, to life and to the future.  What is the purpose of mission? Simply put, it is to make Jesus present – everywhere, among all peoples and cultures of the world. In his message for World Mission Sunday to be celebrated on the penultimate Sunday of the month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that what people ask believers is “not only to ‘speak’ of Jesus, but to ‘make Jesus seen,’ to make the face of the Redeemer shine out in every corner of the earth before the generations of the new millennium…” The Gospel of Jesus we were entrusted with is Good News. The world needs it and expects it from us. People have the right to listen to it and to see it incarnated in our lives – in the love we live and irradiate. Our mission, like the mission of Jesus, is to do good and to liberate those afflicted by evil (cf. Acts 10:38). The Gospel is a leaven of freedom and progress. Hence, mission cannot but be a force of personal, social and cultural transformation for a better world – of peace and communion, solidarity and justice. The whole Church is the protagonist of mission. But not all the members of a community are called to leave their places and be sent wherever they are needed. Missionaries – priests, religious or lay people – are the ones the community sends out to “the ends of the world.” Fulfilling their vocation, they become bridges between Churches and peoples, religious traditions and cultural views. In their diversity, they are gifts to the communities and peoples they serve. They, themselves, as well as their peoples and communities of origin, are enriched in the encounter. Their presence is a sign of the Church’s concern and communion, of its unity and diversity. Theirs is not a personal enterprise because they do not come on personal behalf. They shouldn’t feel like strangers, even though, sometimes, they perceive that the local Churches would feel more comfortable without their presence challenging them to a further commitment to the proclamation of Jesus Christ. The missionaries’ presence is a reminder that we must acknowledge and go beyond our prejudices, fears and indifference, care for the world and become universal people. Pope Benedict XVI says it acutely in his message: “In a multiethnic society that is experiencing increasingly disturbing forms of loneliness and indifference, Christians must learn to offer signs of hope and to become universal brethren, cultivating the great ideals that transform history and, without false illusions or useless fears, must strive to make the planet a

Peoples and religions have different ways of venerating their dead and dealing with death’s imposing mystery. Candles, flowers and prayers are preferred by western cultures. A tombstone helps to preserve the memory of the deceased in the cemetery. Eastern and native American peoples prefer to honor their departed with food – the best foodstuffs the deceased enjoyed while alive are prepared for them on All Souls’ Day or on other occasions (like the Chinese Lunar Year in Korea). In Africa, prayers and sacrifices are usually offered to the ancestors during some important celebrations or when the family is experiencing troubles. In the West, funerals are done as quickly as possible and rather silently, without fanfare. In other cultures, the deceased are kept and venerated for longer periods of time. Wakes, in general, take several days, especially to give eventual scattered family members time to gather. Food is provided for all the mourners and funerals are quite festive. In many African cultures, a meal concludes the burial rites. An animal – if possible a cow – has to be killed so that its blood could convey the death message to ancestors. In some of these cultures, people have a more prolonged contact with the dead, also because, due to the lack of conditions, more people die and death seems almost omnipresent. In spite of that, are they less afraid of the last stage of life? American indigenous are said to accept it naturally as the end of the earthly journey. In Africa, fatalism causes people resignation, but they seem to be still afraid of it. Some of the ancestors worship is intended precisely to please or to placate them. Veneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, generally relatives, have a continued existence and possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living. But, while in some cultures and religions, ancestors can get upset with their descendants and their influence can be negative, in Catholicism the saints can only be helpful to the living as intercessors to God. Besides, they are not limited to one’s kin and they are innumerable – “a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Revelation 7:9).  Therefore, the Christian message – cleansed from its eventual western cultural wrappings – is really good news of liberation and hope for all, even for those people who believe in some form of afterlife. First, it can eradicate the fear stemming from the belief that the spirits of those who have passed away recently still linger around and even harass their living relatives. Then, it speaks of life in plenitude with God the Father. Through His paschal mystery, Jesus Christ has opened to us the way to the house of the Father, the Kingdom of life and peace. He who follows Jesus in this life is received where He has preceded us. And, now, we can already experience the so-called “communion of saints,” the fellowship

The consumerist culture has been expanding inexorably across the world even to the remotest places. The result is that most of our purchases are aimed at satisfying induced wants, not real needs. It is puzzling, for instance, to see people, who seem to be striving for survival and struggling to make ends meet, holding a sophisticated cellular phone – and sometimes having more than one – only to come to know later that they had to pawn them to get some cash for basic needs.  In less than half a century, there has been a sixfold rise in consumption under the influence of cultural conventions that affect people’s behavior. Government officials and economists proclaim that consumption is necessary to stimulate economic growth. The thriving advertising industry lures citizens non-stop through the media and street billboards to make them believe that they will be happier if they have access to more services and goods of civilization.  Do we need to purchase so many “commodities of modernity”? Tom Hodgkinson wrote in the Guardian recently: “We did actually manage quite well for many millennia without computers or mobile phones. Shakespeare had no Blackberry; Aristotle managed without an i-Phone. Christianity spread around the globe without blogs. Christ preached His sermon on the mount without the need of a PA system and Powerpoint presentation. All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.” This thought-provoking approach may help us to focus on what is essential in life and how we want our world to be. Compulsion to acquire and flaunt the most modern “status symbols” – luxury automobiles, the latest cellphone models, designer clothing, expensive jewelry – might be a sign of low self-esteem. They mean that we wish others to admire us for the brands we wear, the things we possess and the lifestyle we display, not by who we really are. The Earth we pollute pays a heavy toll for our materialism and superficiality. Spiraling consumerism is a major cause of environmental degradation (besides inducing people to put moral values at the back seat for the sake of acquiring what they desire and live up-scale lifestyles; since greed is insatiable, “the ends justify the means”). Many Earth’s ecosystems are on the verge of breaking down or even get extinct. We live in a finite world, with limited resources; we cannot continue to overexploit them, lest we gravely endanger ourselves and the survival of future generations.  Science doesn’t have a formula to save the planet from our destructive ways. The only efficacious solution is to live in a more sustainable way, that is, a simple and modest life. And stop cooperating with a wasteful culture that requires things to be consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. The Earth is limited in its capacity to assimilate and synthesize the waste we produce.  The challenge is to moderate our wants, reduce our carbon footprint, fight superficiality and mediocrity and welcome a spirituality that upholds the most genuine human

What makes people leave their comfort zones and set out in mission? Is it the spirit of adventure and the pleasure of traveling? In today’s world, one doesn’t need to become a missionary to travel and know the world. Then, why do people commit themselves to mission for life, especially in precarious and unstable areas, living out of love and putting others’ interests above their own? The answer is: because of a call – the call of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is mission’s driving force, as we see in the New Testament. Mary, after the Annunciation, is impelled to visit and help her relative Elizabeth. During the Easter apparitions, the Risen Jesus breathes His spirit upon His disciples and sends them out to proclaim the Good News. At the great event of Pentecost, the Spirit dispels the disciples’ paralyzing fears and makes them courageous witnesses of Jesus. No tribulation manages to stop them from announcing Jesus.  From Jerusalem, the Gospel reaches the ends of the earth. As the Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows, the Holy Spirit is the source and main agent of such a venture. It is He who guides the disciples in their endeavors, gives them courage, recalls and makes the Words of Jesus come alive, closes and opens doors for them, releases them from prison, precedes them, inspires and defends them in the midst of persecutions. The first Christian community is missionary. It exists for mission. Without mission, it would have become a sect or it would have disappeared. The Spirit is also the “goal of evangelization: He alone stirs up the new creation, the new humanity of which evangelization is to be the result” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 75). Evangelization aims at conferring such a wonderful gift that is the beginning of all God’s surprises. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” asked St. Paul to some disciples in Ephesus (Acts 19: 2). Because nobody can follow Jesus and experience life to the full without the Spirit. The Spirit leads people to accept God’s mystery and to experience His sweetness. He enables individuals and cultures to open up to Jesus and His message and become a new humanity.  “There is no Church without Pentecost,” said Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter’s Square on the Feast of Pentecost. Without the Spirit, he commented, the Church is “like a ship with sails but no wind.” Therefore, the Pontiff added, the Church needs the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a continuous cycle of “new pentecosts” – to infuse joy and enthusiasm in individuals, root them in love, vivify the communities and kindle in all the fire of mission. Only if empowered by the Spirit that the Church is able to continue Jesus’ saving work. Mission is the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. And we should be constantly reminded that mission is also ad extra or ad gentes, that is beyond the boundaries of our nation, culture and people. Local communities tend to

Missionary women – religious and lay – have been privileged witnesses and often victims of ravaging wars and armed conflicts. All around the world, they put their lives at risk to stay by the people they serve and be a sign of hope amidst madness and savagery.  For instance, in Sri Lanka last year, as the government troops were aiming to end a 25-year-old war by dealing a death blow to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels, Sister Mary Colostica, a 74-year-old Catholic nun, and her five colleague nuns – some already injured – shepherded more than 2,000 civilians from village to village as they tried to escape fighting and shelling and searched for food. Their braveness and strength in sharing people’s sufferings led to seeking refuge and finding safety for them.  Women and girls are the main victims of conflicts. They are prey to physical, sexual and psychological violence, including rape as a weapon of war in various parts of the world. The case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is appalling: an estimated 160 women are being raped each week in the unstable North and South Kivu provinces, mainly by “armed men” – including the national army – according to the United Nations. Over 8,000 cases of rape were reported in 2009.  The world has been rather adverse to women. More than their male counterparts, missionary women are able to understand their plight and contribute to their empowerment. Despite the great progress made in the last years to protect women, they still suffer violence in the form of feticide, infanticide and abandonment; discrimination in health and nutrition, thus impairing physical and mental growth. Girls continue to account for the majority of children out of school and girls 15 years of age and over account for two-thirds of the world’s illiterate population; three quarters of those infected by HIV/AIDS are girls and women between the ages of 15 and 24. Women and girls are the majority of transnational victims being trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, not to mention economic abuse. Missionary women have been at the forefront of the battle for life and dignity, especially of their fellow women. Their work for and with the poor is awe-inspiring. Writing in The New York Times, on April 17, Nicholas D. Kristof affirmed that, after a number of encounters with nuns in the mission field, he has come to believe “that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.” Two weeks later, on May 1, reporting from Juba, Southern Sudan, he returned to the theme (as he was recalling the scandal of the clergy’s sexual abuses and the cover up by some prelates): “Once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests – notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.” Indeed, a well-deserved tribute to thousands of indomitable and selfless missionary women who, all over

The Church cannot abstain from politics lest it betrays its mission. Politics – different from partisan politics that clerics are asked to avoid, that, being the field of lay people – pervades and defines our lives. To fulfill its prophetic mission, the Church of Jesus has the duty to exercise vigilance so that the common good is correctly interpreted and pursued, social injustices are addressed and God’s privileged poor are not neglected. Keeping away from political affairs, especially in dictatorial regimes and weak democracies, is in itself a political stance; and when grave injustices are committed, it is equivalent to cowardice and connivance with the perpetrators.  A socially-minded hierarchy in developing countries is not liked by unscrupulous politicians who accuse them of “meddling in politics.” Knowing that the Church lacks resources to maintain its structures and care for the neglected, the politicians may coddle it with cash doles (actually tacit bribes) in exchange for silence about their misgivings. Being a beneficiary of dirty political patrons, the Church loses its freedom to stand for what is right. To be true to its vocation, the Church must uphold the values of independence, truth, accountability, transparency, justice, peace and the common good.  In countries where corruption levels are very high and some politicians are Catholics, the Church may become reluctant to make pronouncements on political issues that affect the community at large. It may concentrate on its religious tasks and on charity. This is a temptation, because it is difficult to see how the Church can effectively help the poor when it closes its eyes to injustice, violence and pillage – when the money supposed to be providing education, health care and public services is siphoned to private pockets. Thus, the poor are robbed and deprived of a future while the Church, hostage of fear and subservience, fails them.  The relationship between the Church and politics is a very sensitive and divisive issue, even among the Church’s hierarchy. It is not a secret that even the Holy See is not sympathetic with outspoken clerics, priests and bishops who put forward fiery criticisms of gross human rights’ violations perpetrated by the rich and powerful. Such matters cannot be left only to non-ordained Catholics, because they do not have enough visibility and sometimes they need support and directions for their political involvement. Can a pastor be the voice of his flock? What solidarity can the victims of injustice expect from their religious leaders? Obviously, in any political intervention, the virtue of prudence has to be tempered with that of courage; the art of diplomacy has to be matched with the duty of truthfulness; charity must be completed with justice; the pursuit of communion cannot compromise one’s freedom. In the face of gross abuse, the Church cannot but side with the poor, vulnerable and destitute people; and cannot be silent, neutral, letting the aggressors evade justice with impunity.  Interesting is the position taken by the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, gathered

The magnificent social work of Columban Father Shay Cullen and his PREDA Foundation constitutes this month’s Special. For 36 years, the intrepid Irish Columban missionary and his team have been rescuing children from drug addiction, petty crime and sex slavery and helping them to secure a better future  with dignity and respect. In their mission, they have to fight a vicious social underground of child abusers, abetted by politicians and policemen, and challenge a pervasive indifference towards an ominous crime against childhood. In an opposite latitude, concretely in the outskirts of the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, Comboni Father Rino Bonvini runs a mental health project to address the needs of people whose life vicissitudes and internalized poverty have burdened them with mental disturbances and depression, the world’s fourth most debilitating illness, according to the World Health Organization. A psychiatrist by profession, he tries to combine spirituality and psychiatric sciences for the welfare and liberation of the poor who are mentally sick.  Both missionaries have heeded the call of reality. Fr. Shay cannot ignore what is happening to thousands of children that abject poverty is casting into the streets where they are exploited or led to crime and, eventually, end up in squalid prisons or youth centers. Fr. Rino started his experience when he woke to the awareness that victims of mental illnesses develop a warped approach to life and God. Both missionaries feel called by a liberating God and cultivate a spirituality of freedom that inspires them to work for the release of captives from evil, poverty, oppression and all kinds of human suffering.  Teamwork is one of their strengths. The image of the Church conveyed by their projects, is that of a dynamic and active Church, attentive to the signs of the times and socially committed to those on the margins of history; a Church with a faith in action, that is at the service of the biblical God who incarnated in history to rescue humanity and bring it to the freedom of His Kingdom; a missionary and outreaching Church which does not resign itself to circumstances no matter how bad they may be but, with faith and courage, aims at building a more humane world. Thus, it is in the antipodes of a devotional and pietistic Church for which faith is a private responsibility, and salvation, a personal gift. Fr. Shay, recalling the insults and hardships he faced along the way – arrest, deportation and even assassination threats – notes: “We had to be prophetic. That is what mission is all about – just do what Jesus did. We felt that we could not cover up any abuse. We had to speak out.” In his faith deeply rooted in the Gospel, he quotes St. James when the Apostle says that “faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26) and Matthew 25 in the well-known scene of the final judgment where it is affirmed that Jesus identifies Himself with the poor and the oppressed and that what is done for

A friars’ order in Switzerland, whose number has dropped by half in the last ten years, has launched an unconventional recruitment drive by advertising in a classifieds section of a Sunday newspaper normally reserved for high-flying executive positions. The advertisement, according to press agencies, specifies that they are looking for unmarried Catholic men aged between 22 and 35, independent, capable of communal living, curious and with initiative. “We offer you no pay, but spirituality and prayer, contemplation, an egalitarian lifestyle, free of personal material riches and the common model of a couple relationship,” the ad promises the applicants. The ad superbly illustrates how many Church dioceses, religious orders and congregations are desperately exhausting their imagination to attract new members to their dwindling ranks and ensure their survival. In this case, it appears that the call to consecration in religious life doesn’t differ much from the choice of a career. The ad emphasizes the life-long commitment, but all the other requirements are of the professional order. There’s no mention of God’s call to discipleship and to the order’s charism – its specific way of following Jesus. The assumption, perhaps, is that even if the candidates upon entry do not have the right motivations, they will eventually acquire them and will be able to keep the conventual structures and commitments.  It seems a subversion of what a genuine religious vocation is when compared, for instance, to the call of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the integrity of her answer to God, following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Her life, as shown in this issue, is a series of unconditional “yes” to God. At the Annunciation, being a simple adolescent, she was far from imagining what her mission entailed of obscurity and suffering – especially the distressing condemnation and execution of her Son. Throughout life, she had to walk in faith, because of the most probable experience of God’s prolonged silence; she had to overcome doubts, fears, insecurities and trials, praying and reflecting, trying to find meaning in apparent senseless events confident in the angel’s assurance that “nothing will be impossible for God” (Lk 1:37). Mary and the other biblical figures – from the prophets to the disciples of Jesus – show that vocation is a leap in the darkness of faith, embracing God’s unforeseeable ways. They showed their availability and readiness knowing very little of what their lives would be, what surprises God had reserved for them. They had to let go of their plans and leave their comfort zones to embrace God’s mission and collaborate in His saving work.  We, like Mary, are called to be Christ-bearers and bring forth a Savior to a weary, hurting world. The Lord waits for our decisive and definitive “yes” to a life of faith and commitment to the poorest, following in His footsteps. As Pope Benedict XVI said, “God asks each one of us to welcome Him, to make available to Him our hearts, our bodies, our entire existence, so that He