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THE DEEP ROOTS OF
PORTUGAL'S MARIAN DEVOTION
LISBON, PORTUGAL ---- The Catholic News Agency also reported that when the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima in 1917, Portugal had already acclaimed Mary as their reigning Queen for hundreds of years. After the coronation of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception as “Queen of Portugal” by King João IV in 1646, no Portuguese monarch ever wore a crown again. The history of exceptional Marian devotion near Fatima dates back even further.
Fourteen miles from the Fatima Shrine is the Batalha Monastery, where several dozen Dominican friars were commissioned in 1388 to pray a perpetual rosary in thanksgiving for the Virgin Mary’s protection of Portugal.
The gothic monastery in Batalha was built in dedication to Our Lady of Victory in gratitude for an answered prayer. In 1385 King Joao I made a vow to the Virgin Mary that he would build a great monastery if she would deliver him victory in a battle against the Spanish. The Dominican community remained in the monastery until 1834, when all religious orders were driven out of Portugal. Today it continues to function as both the local parish and a tourist attraction. In nearby Alcobaca, a Cistercian monastery has stood in honor of Mary for over 800 years. The king of Portugal endowed the monastery to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in 1153, shortly before the Cistercian founder’s death. The gothic church was completed in 1223.
Benedict XVI has described Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as “a Doctor of Mariology” because “he understood her essential role in the Church, presenting her as the perfect model of the monastic life and of every other form of the Christian life.”
An altarpiece in the Alcobaca Monastery, added in 1705, depicts the death of Saint Bernard under the protection of Mary. The walls in the monastery’s King’s Hall are decorated with16th-century blue and white rococo tile scenes depicting the history of the Cistercian order. An ornate oval baroque reliquary chapel containing 71 terracotta reliquary busts from floor to ceiling can be found in the sacristy. Napoleon's troops plundered the monastery in 1811, shortly before the Cistercians, like Batalha’s Dominicans, were forced to leave Portugal. Fewer than 10 miles from Alcobaca is the beachside town of Nazaré, named for a statue of the Virgin Mary brought from Nazareth by a monk in the 8th century, according to the local tradition. Before Nazaré became a world-famous surfing destination with 80-foot waves, it was a popular medieval pilgrimage site. In 1182, a Portuguese knight was hunting a deer near the coast. When his horse nearly ran over one of Nazaré’s steep cliffs, he called out “Our Lady, Help Me!” and his horse stopped just at the cliff’s precipice next to the small grotto with the Nazareth statue. In thanksgiving for his life, the knight had a small chapel built around the statue, which went on to receive so many visitors that a larger church dedicated to Our Lady of Nazaré was built near the cliffs by the King of Portugal in 1377 to house the statue and its pilgrims.
Despite the centuries-long tradition of Marian devotion in Portugal, when Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917, Catholics were not thriving in the country. When the monarchy was abolished in 1910, the revolutionaries attempted to root out Catholicism and its Marian queen along with it, seizing all of the Church’s property and assets. A popular illustration of the 1910 revolution includes an image of armed men marching out priests at gunpoint. Anticlericalism peaked in the years leading up to the Fatima apparitions, causing the pope to speak out about the persecution of the Church under the First Portuguese Republic. In 1911, Saint Pius X issued an encyclical, Iamdudum, decrying the secularization occurring in Portugal. “We have seen, arising out of an obstinate determination to secularize every civil organization and to leave no trace of religion in the acts of common life, the deletion of the feast days of the Church from the number of public festivals, the abolition of religious oaths, the hasty establishment of the law of divorce and religious instruction banished from the public schools,” wrote the pope.
St. Pius X’s successor, Benedict XV, would go on to write a letter to his secretary of state for all the world’s bishops on May 5, 1917 asking for prayers to the Virgin Mary for peace amid the ongoing devastation of World War I throughout Europe. In this letter, the pope made permanent an additional title for Mary in the Litany of Loreto: “Regina pacis,” or “Queen of peace.” When Mary appeared in Portugal as Our Lady of the Rosary nine days later, she instructed, “Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war."
The Portuguese tradition of the perpetual rosary, dating back more than 500 years, would continue.
A GOOD CATHOLIC PROCLAIMS THE GOSPEL
VATICAN CITY ---- The Catholic News Agency reported Pope Francis said that by virtue of their Baptism, every Catholic is called to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ – a mission which cannot be separated from the Catholic Church. “It is truly [our] Baptism that makes us missionaries,” the pope said in off-the-cuff comments. “A baptized person who does not feel the need to proclaim the Gospel, to announce Jesus, is not a good Christian.” The first necessary element of all authentic missionary discipleship is the “changeless center, which is Jesus,” he said. This is because proclaiming the Gospel cannot be separated from Christ or from the Church.
Announcing the Gospel “is not an initiative of individual believers, groups or even large groups, but it is the Church’s mission inseparably united with her Lord,” Pope Francis said. “No Christian proclaims the Gospel ‘on his own,’ but only sent by the Church who received the mandate from Christ himself.”
Speaking during his weekly Angelus address, the pope reflected on the Christian’s mission as seen when Jesus sends out his disciples “two by two” to preach repentance.
Jesus’ message to his disciples in this episode of the Gospel concerns not just priests, but every baptized person, who is “called to witness, in the various environments of life, the Gospel of Christ,” he said. Like the disciples were warned, the message may not be welcomed, but this aligns with what Jesus himself experienced, the pope said, noting that he was “was rejected and crucified.” “Only if we are united with him, dead and risen, can we find the courage of evangelization,” Francis said. Noting that the center of the mission must always be Christ, he pointed to examples of saints from Rome who are examples of being “humble workers of the Kingdom,” such as St. Philip Neri, St. Benedict Joseph Labre, St. Frances of Rome, and Bl. Ludovica Albertoni. They did not work to advance themselves or their own ideas or interests, but acted always as messengers sent by Jesus, he said. Pointing to the Blessed Virgin Mary as “the first disciple and missionary of the Word of God,” the Pope concluded by asking her help to bring “the message of the Gospel to the world in a humble and radiant exultation, beyond any rejection, misunderstanding or tribulation.”
PLEADS WITH WEST TO TAKE NOTICE
AGAINST CHRISTIANS,
NIGERIAN BISHOP FEARS GENOCIDENIGERIA --- Aid To The Church in Need (ACN) reported that Bishop William Amove Avenya of the Diocese of Gboko, in, Nigeria said, “PLEASE DON’T make the same mistake as was made with the genocide in Rwanda. It happened under our noses, but no one stopped it. And we know well how that ended.” Bishop Avenya is from the Diocese of Gboko, in Benue State, Nigeria, where Christians form the majority of the population. He is only the latest of the bishops of Nigeria’s Middle Belt to have raised his voice to denounce what is an increasingly worrying phenomenon—the attacks by Islamist Fulani herdsmen on Christians in the region. In recent days there have been new attacks in the area of Jos, the capital of Plateau State, killing more than 100 people.
The Fulani Herdsmen have herded their flocks in parts of Nigeria’s Middle Belt for centuries and there have always been occasional clashes with local peasant farmers, the majority of whom are Christians today, and whose crops were frequently trampled and even destroyed by the herdsmen’s flocks. But whereas in the past these conflicts were generally either tribal in nature or driven by economics, today they appear to be religiously motivated. According to official data, there have been 492 victims since the beginning of the year in Benue State alone. “They are criminals and terrorists, but they do not do the same things in the majority Muslim areas,” Bishop Avenya charges, adding: “We are convinced that what is happening is an ethnic cleansing of Christians.” Bishop Peter Iornzuul Adoboh of Katsina Ala Diocese (Benue State) and Bishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Lafia diocese (Nassarawa State) believe that there is a “clear agenda of Islamizing the Nigerian Middle Belt,” a plan that is making use of the Fulani Herdsmen. “Their aim is to strike at the Christians,” explains Bishop Audu, “and the government is doing nothing to stop them, because President Buhari himself is a member of the Fulani tribe.” Adding to the suspicions of complicity on the part of the government is not merely the inactivity of the federal police but also the fact that these Fulani Herdsmen are being armed with ever more sophisticated weaponry. “At one time these pastoralists were armed only with sticks,” Bishop Avenya explains. “But now they are armed with AK-47’s—expensive weapons that they could not possibly afford. So who is supplying them? And besides, in these areas there are checkpoints every mile-and-a-half. Is it possible that armed men and their flocks of cattle could have somehow become invisible?” On May 22, 2018, all the dioceses of Nigeria took part in a protest march, calling on the government to protect the Christians. Bishop Avenya insists: “Our faithful are being murdered or forced to live as refugees as a result of the violence. And the West continues to view the matter of the Fulani as merely an internal problem. Don’t do as you did in Rwanda; don’t wait for the genocide to happen before intervening!”
NICARAGUAN FORCES STORM BARRIO, DESTROY CHURCHES;
‘IT IS A GENOCIDE’NICARAGUA --- The Catholic World News reported that Nicaraguan police and pro-regime paramilitary forces stormed the indigenous community of Monimbó, a center of opposition to the President Daniel Ortega’s repressive regime. “This is a barrio of humble people, an indigenous barrio of working people,” Father Augusto Gutiérrez, who ministers in Monimbó, told a Spanish radio station. “The paramilitaries entered the barrio,” he continued. “There have been four hours of attack with heavy military weapons, destroying the churches … It is a genocide. It has no other name.” Noting that the people were using homemade weapons to defend themselves, Father Gutiérrez appealed to the Spanish government and the international community for help. He pleaded, “Do not let us die!” Pope Francis’ representative in Nicaragua, Archbishop Waldemar Stanisław Sommertag, has made a strong appeal for an end to the violence which has racked the country since April 18th. More than 360 people have died in conflict between forces of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and opposition protesters, who are calling for his resignation. President Ortega has been in power since 2007 and is on his third mandate, along with his wife Rosario Murillo, the Vice President. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Apostolic Nuncio called it a “tragic moment” for the country. “I wish to express, on behalf of the Holy Father and the Holy See, my deep concern for the grave situation the country is facing. Obviously, it is unacceptable to think that the dead and victims of violence can solve the political crisis and guarantee a future of peace and prosperity in Nicaragua,” he said. The Organization of American States condemned Ortega for repression.
MOSCOW ORTHODOX PATRIARCHATE
BREAKS TIES WITH CONSTANTINOPLE
MOSCOW --- Catholic World News reported that the Russian Orthodox Church has announced a suspension of ties with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in response to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s decision to recognize an autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In a lengthy statement tracing its history, the Moscow Patriarchate insisted that the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox communities have “constituted a whole for centuries.” Therefore, the statement continues, the action by the Constantinople patriarchate is a “flagrant violation of the ecclesiastical law and an intervention of one local Church in the territory of the other.” The statement from Moscow, issued by the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, rejects the claim of the Patriarchate of Constantinople to authority over other Orthodox churches. The statement charges that Constantinople has frequently interfered with the Orthodox communities of Eastern Europe, to the detriment of the Moscow patriarchate. As a result of the latest decision by Constantinople, the statement from the Russian Orthodox Church says, “the Moscow patriarchate has been forced to suspend the liturgical prayerful commemoration of the Patriarch of Constantinople and with profound regret to suspend the concelebration with hierarchs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.” The statement also indicates that the Russian Orthodox Church will withdraw from theological commissions and other pan-Orthodox bodies that are chaired by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
MINISTER ORDERS INQUIRY INTO
4,000 PER CENT
RISE IN CHILDREN
WANTING TO CHANGE SEXLONDON, ENGLAND --- The Daily Telegraph of London reported that an explosion in the number of children wanting to change sex has prompted an inquiry by ministers. Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equalities, wants to understand the reasons behind a 4,400 per cent increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment in the past decade. Officials will look into the role of social media and the teaching of transgender issues in schools as part of their inquiries. There are concerns among some MPs that drug treatment is being offered too readily to children – some of them as young as 10 – without fully understanding what lies behind their desire to change sex. Official figures show the number of children referred for gender treatment – including hormone injections – has risen from 97 in 2009/10 to 2,519 in 2017/18. A total of 45 of the children were aged six or under, with the youngest ones being just four. But by far the steepest rise has come among girls: up from 40 to 1,806. Psychologists and behavioral experts will explore why – in the words of one source – some girls think that modern life is 'easier to bear' if they become boys.CONGRESSMEN OBJECT TO FDA'S
'BARBARIC' RESEARCH METHOD
USING HUMAN FETAL TISSUE
WASHINGTON D.C. --- The Catholic News Agency reported that the purchasing of aborted fetal tissue for use in research is ‘abhorrent’ and must stop, said 85 members of the United States House of Representatives in a letter to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA in July gave a $15,900 contract to Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for “fresh human fetal tissue,” which would be transplanted into mice in order to create human-like immune systems for research purposes. It is the eighth contract between the FDA and the company since 2012, and seven of the contracts appear to relate to the same or similar programs. Federal law prohibits the sale of human fetal tissue for “valuable consideration.” Furthermore, the letter states, Congress investigated ABR in 2016 as a part of their investigation into the fetal tissue procurement and late term abortion industries, and found ABR’s practices to be unethical and possibly illegal. The 2016 investigation was spurred after David Daleiden, a pro-life advocate and a journalist with the Center for Medical Progress, released a series of videos which called into question the fetal tissue procurement and sales practices of Planned Parenthood. “ABR plainly admitted to Congress that it obtained tissue by collecting human fetal remains from abortion clinics, paying $60 per ‘singe aborted fetus’ - and then upselling the child’s body parts separately to researchers at fees of $325 per ‘specimen’ - brain, eyes, liver, thymus and lungs,” the letter states. Congress referred ABR to the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the District Attorney of Riverside County, California for further investigation. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said Sept. 17 that the FDA is using taxpayer dollars “to fund a barbaric research method that treats babies like research guinea pigs.”
More ethical methods of research exist, Smith said, such as developing human-like immune systems from human bone marrow or umbilical cord blood instead of obtaining tissue “through the destruction of unborn children.” Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., who was part of the House investigation into ABR in 2016, said that she was “alarmed” that the FDA would partner with a ABR , which has a “checkered history of purchasing the remains of aborted children and reselling the babies.” “While our letter calls on the FDA to cancel its contract with ABR, I would go the next step and call on all federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH) to cease and desist in furthering the abhorrent and highly unethical practice of using aborted babies as research specimens. This is a grisly, disturbing, and unnecessary business,” she added. Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., said that companies such as ABR “have suffered no consequences” despite the findings of Congress’ 2016 investigation.
“Considering President Trump’s pro-life promises, the FDA should immediately cease all government business with ABR and no longer use any aborted fetal cells for future research,” he added. On Sept. 10, Daleiden said of the contract that it is “unconscionable that the United States government is still paying top-dollar in taxpayer money for the freshest, most high-quality dismembered baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains.”
U.S. WILL REMAIN COMMITTED TO PROTECTING THE UNBORN AT THE U.N.
NEW YORK CITY--- The Catholic News Agency reported that, as negotiations begin on the annual United Nations humanitarian assistance omnibus resolution, the United States will remain committed to protecting the fundamental right to life for the unborn, a spokesperson for U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said. Each year, the United Nations drafts a resolution that outlines various priorities they would like to see member states promote or protect regarding humanitarian aid and human rights. Since 2015, this resolution has encouraged member states to ensure that women and girls had access to “sexual and reproductive health-care services.” Included among the United Nations’ definition of “reproductive health-care services” are the promotion of safe abortions and access to contraceptives, which sit alongside treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, access to pre- and post-natal care, and the prevention of female genital mutilation. These resolutions are not binding in international law, but do reflect internal United Nations priorities and policies. The repeated inclusion of “sexual and reproductive health” in resolutions could result, over a period of time, in the United Nations adopting abortion as a human right. Some have speculated that Haley could move to strike the phrase from the resolution, which currently appears twice in draft copies. When reached for comment, Haley’s press officer Andrea Stanford declined to comment on specific actions that the ambassador may take regarding the language of the resolution, citing the recent start of negotiations. However, she told CNA that “in general the United States is a world leader in advancing the cause of human rights, the first and most fundamental of which is life.”
Stanford said that the United States would be “committed to advancing policies that protect the lives of the unborn,” in “all multilateral forums, including the United Nations” in which it is a member.
POPE FRANCIS: ‘ABORTION
IS NEVER THE ANSWER,
’AND IT’S NOT JUST A ‘CATHOLIC ISSUE’
VATICAN CITY ---Pope Francis said Saturday that the medical profession should be committed to defending the sacred value of human life and reject abortion as incompatible with medical practice. In an address to a Vatican-sponsored conference titled “Yes to Life!” Francis warned against anti-life attitudes that lead to violence against the most vulnerable members of society: the unborn. Unfortunately, in today’s reigning culture, “fear and hostility towards disability often lead to the choice of abortion, treating it as a means of ‘prevention,’” the pope said, and yet human life is always “sacred and inviolable.” Francis went on to condemn “the use of prenatal diagnosis for selective purposes,” saying it stems from “an inhuman eugenic mentality, which keeps families from accepting, embracing, and loving their weakest children.” The pontiff also rejected arguments that being pro-life is a “Catholic” position that should not be imposed on a secular society. “Sometimes we hear: ‘You Catholics do not accept abortion, it is a matter of your faith,’” Francis said. “No: it is a pre-religious problem. Faith is not the issue. It is not unrelated, but it is not the issue: this is a human problem. It is a pre-religious problem.” “Let’s not blame faith for something that lies outside its domain. It is a human problem,” he said. The pope went on to suggest that it is enough to answer two questions to get to the bottom of why abortion is always morally evil. “First question: is it okay to eliminate a human life to solve a problem? Second question: is it okay to hire a hit man to solve a problem?” he said. “This is the point. Do not blame religion for something that concerns the human. It is not lawful. Never, ever eliminate a human life or hire a hit man to solve a problem.” “Every child announced in a woman’s womb is a gift, which changes the history of a family, of a father and a mother, of grandparents, and brothers and sisters. And this child needs to be welcomed, loved, and cared for. Always!” he said “When a woman discovers that she is expecting a child, a sense of profound mystery immediately fills her,” the pope said. “Women who are mothers know this. The awareness of a presence growing inside her pervades her whole being, making her no longer just a woman, but a mother.” Moreover, he said, “between her and the child an intense cross-dialogue is immediately established, which science calls cross-talk. A real and intense relationship develops between two human beings, who communicate with each other from the first moments of conception to foster mutual adaptation as the child grows and develops.”
“This communicative capacity is not only the woman’s, but above all the child’s, who in his individuality sends messages to reveal his presence and his needs to the mother,” Francis continued. “This is how this new human being immediately becomes a son or daughter, moving the woman with all her being to reach out to him.” In his address, the pope also addressed modern developments in perinatal care, which can do wonders to minimize disabilities already from the womb. “Children in the mother’s womb, if they have pathological conditions, are small patients,” Francis said, “who can often be treated with pharmacological, surgical, and extraordinary assistance, capable of reducing that terrible gap between diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities, which for years has been one of the causes of abortion and the abandonment of care at the birth of so many children with serious pathologies.” “It is essential that doctors perceive not only the goal of healing, but the sacred value of human life, whose protection is still the ultimate goal of medical practice,” he said. “The medical profession is a mission, a vocation to life, and it is important that doctors be aware that they themselves are a gift for the families entrusted to them.”
“Abortion is never the answer that women and families seek,” he said. In the case of a sick child, “the practical, human and spiritual difficulties are undeniable, but precisely for this reason more incisive pastoral actions are urgent and necessary to support those who receive sick children.” “That is why it is necessary to create spaces, places, and ‘networks of love’ to which couples can turn, as well as to devote time to accompanying these families,” he said.
SEVEN PRIESTS IN SEVEN YEARS!
HUDSON, OHIO ---The Catholic News Agency reported that, starting in 2013, and every year since for the past seven years, one young man from the parish of St. Mary’s in Hudson, Ohio, has been ordained a priest of Jesus Christ for the Catholic Church. It’s a rarity in the Catholic Church in the United States to have that many priests coming from one place in such a short time span. The timing of it all was something that could have only been orchestrated by God, said Fr. Ryan Mann, one of the “seven in seven” priests, who was ordained in 2014. Between staggered entrances to seminary after high school, college, or the start of a career, and some of the men dropping out of seminary for a year or two only to come back, “the seven in seven could not have been orchestrated ahead of time,” Mann told CNA. (We are proud of our two priests in three years, Fr. Sean Connolly ordained in 2015 and Fr. Michael Connolly ordained in 2018! May God Bless their Priesthoods and may more answer God’s call!)
POPE FRANCIS LIKENS ABORTION
IN ANY SCENARIO TO ‘HIRING A HITMAN’
VATICAN CITY --- The Independent reported that Pope Francis has compared having an abortion to hiring a hitman and said the procedure can never be condoned, even when the fetus is gravely sick. Speaking at a Vatican-sponsored anti-abortion conference, he urged doctors and priests to support families to carry all pregnancies to full term. “Is it licit to throw away a life to resolve a problem?” he asked his audience. “Is it licit to hire a hitman to resolve a problem?” The pontiff said that the matter was not a religious issue but a human one. And he denounced decisions to abort pregnancies based on prenatal testing, saying a human being is “never incompatible with life”.
It is not the first time the Pope has spoken out strongly against abortion but his new comments come little more than a week after the issue was pushed into the global spotlight when the US state of Alabama passed highly restrictive laws banning abortion in almost all cases, including where pregnancies have been caused by rape. The bill’s architects expect that it will be defeated in the lower courts, but hope that it will therefore come before the country’s newly conservative Supreme Court.
If judges there uphold the bill, it will give the green light for other states across the US to impose similarly draconian measures. Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio are among others which have also passed new abortion restrictions in recent months with the same goal in mind.