Category: Diocese of Scranton News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has declared as saints 16 Carmelite martyrs executed by guillotine during the French Revolution and confirmed the martyrdom and heroic virtues of five others in a series of decrees published Dec. 18.

Using what the Vatican called an “equipollent” or equivalent canonization, Pope Francis approved adding to the canon of saints Blessed Teresa of St. Augustine and 15 other members of the Carmelites of Compiègne killed during the French Reign of Terror.

The French revolutionary government outlawed religious life in 1790 and the community of Carmelites in Compiègne was forced to leave their convent two years later. In 1794, after being discovered to have continued living in community as consecrated women, they were tried and publicly executed by guillotine.

The decree, supported by the cardinals and bishops who are members of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, was approved by Pope Francis and extends devotion to the Carmelite martyrs to the universal church.

The other decrees approved by Pope Francis Dec. 18 included recognition of the martyrdom of Archbishop Eduard Profitlich, who died in a Russian prison in 1942.

Archbishop Proffitlich was born in the German empire in 1890, joined the Jesuits and served as a nurse in the First World War before being ordained a priest. He was later made a titular archbishop and served as apostolic administrator of Estonia, where he remained following the Soviet occupation of the country in 1940.

The archbishop was arrested after Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 and was taken prisoner in Russia, where he was charged with anti-Soviet agitation and espionage. He died from exposure Feb. 22, 1942.

The pope also recognized the martyrdom of Salesian Father Elia Comini, who was born near Bologna, Italy, May 7, 1910, and was killed out of hatred of the faith Oct. 1, 1944, during World War II.

The priest had been serving the local population in his hometown, which had become a fierce battleground between the German occupiers and the Allies. He and Father Martino Capelli celebrated Mass, taught catechism, cared for refugees and the sick, buried the dead and sought to be peacemakers, even between the Allies and Germans.

Under enemy fire, Fathers Comini and Capelli went to help some 69 hostages being held by the German S.S., but the priests were accused of being spies and were incarcerated with other prisoners, whom they also ministered to. They were all condemned to death, and Father Comini was shot with the others.

The recognition of a sainthood candidate’s martyrdom clears the way to beatification.

Pope Francis also recognized the heroic virtues of Pierre Goursat, a layman and founder of the Emmanuel Community. Born Aug. 15, 1914, in Paris, he experienced a profound spiritual conversion when he was 19 years old.

He managed his family’s boarding house, opened a religious bookstore and established a publishing house in Paris. After joining a group of the Legion of Mary, he met Dominican Father Raymond Pichard, the first to broadcast Sunday Mass on television in France in 1949, and he realized the importance of mass media as a tool for evangelization.

Goursat organized debates, often with directors and actors, in large halls with the public after showing films, eventually establishing the French Cinema Circle in 1951. He became secretary-general of the French Catholic Office of Cinema in 1960 and built close relationships with producers, directors and actors. He also participated in the Cannes and Venice film festivals.

Goursat became active with the charismatic renewal movement and eventually founded the Emmanuel Community in 1972 in France as part of the movement. He retired from managing the community after a heart attack in 1985 and spent the rest of his life in silence and adoration, dying March 25, 1991.

The two other decrees Pope Francis signed Dec. 18 regarded:

— The heroic virtues of Bishop Áron Márton of Alba Iulia, Romania, who lived 1896-1980. An ethnic Hungarian, he ministered to what had become a Catholic minority in Transylvania. After World War II, communists tried to destroy the faith in Romania and to limit the rights of ethnic minorities. He was arrested in 1949 and imprisoned until 1955. Though allowed to return to his diocese as bishop, he was placed under house arrest from 1957 to 1968, after which he was free to govern his diocese. He died from cancer in 1980.

— The heroic virtues of Italian Redemptorist Father Giuseppe Maria Leone, who lived from 1829 to 1902. He was dedicated to confession, preaching, spiritual direction and the pastoral care of children, and he had a deep devotion to Mary.

The beatification of candidates who are not martyrs requires verification of a miracle attributed to their intercession.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis called on Catholics to focus their Holy Year 2025 pilgrimages on Jesus Christ, who is both the path and destination for Christian hope.

At his general audience Dec. 18, the pope began a new series of talks on “Jesus Christ our hope,” which he announced will the theme for his weekly catechesis throughout the Jubilee Year, which is set to begin with the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 24.

Jesus, “is the destination of our pilgrimage, and he himself is the way, the path to be traveled,” he said in the Vatican audience hall.

Walking across the stage to his seat rather than using a wheelchair as he had previously done, Pope Francis stopped to pray before a relic of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century French saint who was the subject of an apostolic exhortation published by the pope in 2023.

After aides read the genealogy of Jesus from St. Matthew’s Gospel in various languages, the pope explained that “the genealogy is a literary genre that is a suitable for conveying a very important message: No one gives life to him- or herself but receives it as a gift for others.”

Unlike the genealogies in the Old Testament, which mention only male figures, St. Matthew includes five women in Jesus’ lineage, Pope Francis noted. Four of the women are united “by being foreigners to the people of Israel,” the pope said, highlighting Jesus’ mission to embrace both Jews and Gentiles.

The mention of Mary in the genealogy “marks a new beginning,” Pope Francis said, “because in her story it is no longer the human creature who is the protagonist of generation, but God himself.”

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, the genealogy typically describes lineage by stating that a male figure “became the father of” a son. However, when it comes to Mary, the wording shifts: “of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.”

Through his lineage to David, Jesus is destined to be the Messiah of Israel, but because he is also descended from Abraham and foreign women, he will become the “light of the Gentiles” and “savior of the world,” Pope Francis said citing Scripture.

“Brothers and sisters, let us awaken in ourselves the grateful memory toward our ancestors,” he said, “and above all let us give thanks to God who, through mother church, has begotten us to eternal life, the life of Jesus, our hope.”

In his greeting to pilgrims after his main talk, Pope Francis briefly reflected on his Dec. 15 daytrip to the French island of Corsica to close a theology conference on popular religiosity.

“The recent trip in Corsica, where I was so warmly welcomed, particularly struck me for the fervor of the people” who do not treat faith as a “private matter,” he said, as well as “for the number of children present, a great joy and a great hope.”

PARIS (OSV News) – Firefighters and police officers formed a human chain to rescue the crown of thorns from the inferno at Notre Dame on April 15, 2019. On Dec. 13, 2024, this holiest relic of Paris’ cathedral was returned to its proper home on the Île de la Cité.

Though temperatures were cold, the facade of Notre Dame was sunny in the late afternoon, as the procession arrived on foot along the cathedral from Palais du Louvre, on the other side of the Seine River, where the treasure had been stored since the fire.

A knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, dressed in a large black cloak trimmed in red, held the crown of thorns, in its crystal circle frame, on a red velvet cushion. Over 400 members of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, including 200 knights dressed in white coats marked with the red Jerusalem cross, participated in the procession. They have been the crown’s honor guard since the archbishop of Paris entrusted it to their care in 1923.

The crown of thorns, placed on Jesus’ head by his captors to cause him pain and mock his claim of authority, was acquired by St. Louis, then-King Louis IX of France, in Constantinople in 1239 for 135,000 livres — nearly half France’s annual expenditure at the time, according to the BBC.

It was moved to Notre Dame’s treasury from the magnificent Sainte-Chapelle in 1806.

A crowd of faithful and curious onlookers gathered on the forecourt of the cathedral as the relic made its way to Notre Dame. Among them was Bénédicte de Villers, a 50-year-old woman who had come to do some Christmas shopping in central Paris. “I was not far away, and realizing what was happening, I took the Metro to come,” she told OSV News.

“I arrived in front of Notre Dame just as the procession was beginning to enter the cathedral through the central door. Hearing the organ and the singing, I begged the security guards to let me in, explaining that I am a practicing Catholic, and that praying in front of Christ’s crown of thorns meant a lot to me,” she said. “I had already come to venerate it at Notre Dame during Lent.”

The lucky onlooker said that the guards let her in, and she was able to witness the ceremony from up close.

Once the crown of thorns had been placed on the main new altar inside the cathedral, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris addressed the 2,000-strong audience of faithful.

“We are moving from the time of Advent to the time of the Passion, but that is the way it is all the time in life, and in the Christian life,” he said. “We come to adore the Lord in the gift he made of himself to all humanity, as the Son of God.”

During the Passion reading that followed, the cathedral’s rector-archpriest, Father Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, presented the crown to the faithful in a long, deep silence.

The procession of chaplains, canons and knights then made a complete tour of the cathedral through the side aisles, with the crown of thorns, while the choir sang the Litany of the Passion.

“It was a very slow, very contemplative tour, so that everyone could see the crown (of thorns),” Villiers recounted. “Everyone was silent, very respectful … It was a solemn but joyful ceremony, with everyone in awe of the cathedral’s beauty,” she said.

Night had fallen by the time the procession reached the back chapel behind the choir, in the axis of the nave. Here, under a vault in which the blue color has been revived, the new reliquary of the crown of thorns has been placed.

It is the work of French designer Sylvain Dubuisson, and takes the form of an altarpiece in marble and cedar wood, with the altar wall 12 feet high and 10 feet wide. It evokes the iconostasis of Orthodox churches with its notched panels enclosing gilded bronze thorns. This serves as a reminder of the history of the crown of thorns. For several centuries, before St. Louis purchased it, it belonged to the Byzantine Empire.

The marble altar is lit by small candles, and the central part of the cedar wall is a gilded disk, adorned with 396 hand-crafted glass blocks that reflect the light. At its center, some 7 feet high, a blue niche, matching the chapel’s vaulting and stained-glass windows, shelters the crown of thorns.

Archbishop Ulrich blessed the new reliquary, and prayed for all those who will come to pray there.

Father Pascal Ide, one of the cathedral’s chaplains, told OSV News he was mesmerized with the new design. “This new reliquary is all radiance,” he said.

The relic of the crown of thorns will be displayed every Friday from Jan. 10, 2025, until Good Friday; on other days it will be stored in the safe inside the marble altar.

For Father Ide, Notre Dame is now entirely a “cathedral of light.”

“Reopening day was a historic moment,” he said. “I spent three hours discovering it (anew), and prayed in each of its 29 side chapels. The physical path around it is like a mystical itinerary, which allows you to inscribe your personal story in the great story of salvation.”

ROME (CNS) – Making his customary visit to the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major to pray before his trip to the French island of Corsica, Pope Francis also met and prayed with dozens of actors staging a living Nativity scene.

For the third year in a row, the basilica and an Italian association that promotes the tradition of Nativity scenes, including living representations, turned the neighborhood around the basilica into a small Bethlehem with the manger on the basilica’s steps.

After a noon Mass Dec. 14 celebrated by new Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, coadjutor archpriest of the basilica, parishes, prayer groups, confraternities and Italian folklore groups provided the actors and the tableau. Marching bands, musicians, singers and dancers performed for the crowd.

Later, after Pope Francis prayed before the Marian icon “Salus Populi Romani,” as he does before and after every foreign trip, he met inside the basilica with the living Nativity participants.

With the couple playing Mary and Joseph holding a baby and standing alongside him, Pope Francis told participants, “Christmas always brings us joy. Christmas brings us the tenderness of a baby.”

Gazing at a Nativity scene, he said, the newborn baby Jesus “gives us hope,” and the image of Mary is a reminder that people can count on “the care of a mother, Our Lady, who accompanies us throughout our lives” and on the example of St. Joseph, who worked to support his family.

Pope Francis also told the crowd that if there was anyone present “who does not have peace in your heart, remember that God forgives everything and God forgives always. Do not be afraid to ask the Lord’s pardon because he forgives everything, and he forgives always.”

“He came for us, with so much tenderness,” the pope said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a letter to his nuncio in Russia, Pope Francis called out those who would claim Russia’s war on Ukraine had any spiritual justification.

Saying he wanted to speak on behalf of the war’s victims, Pope Francis said that “their cry rises to God, invoking peace instead of war, dialogue instead of the din of weapons, solidarity instead of partisan interests, because one cannot kill in the name of God.”

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow have both claimed God is on Russia’s side as they promoted the war as, in part, a fight against the “evil” West.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill had had a 40-minute Zoom conversation a month after the war began in 2022. The pope later told a reporter, “I listened to him” read a list of reasons justifying the war, “and I told him, ‘I don’t know anything about this. Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use the language of politics, but of Jesus. We are shepherds of the same holy people of God. That is why we must seek the path of peace, to cease the blast of weapons.'”

“The patriarch cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy,” Pope Francis said in the May 2022 interview with the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

The pope had written in November to his nuncio in Ukraine, sending assurances of his sorrow and his prayers on the 1,000th day since Russia began its large-scale invasion in February 2022.

His letter to Archbishop Giovanni d’Aniello, the nuncio in Russia, was dated Dec. 12 and printed on the front page of the Vatican newspaper Dec. 14.

As people prepare for Christmas, “the day on which the son of God, prince of peace, appeared on the earth,” Pope Francis said he wanted to share with his nuncio in Russia “my prayer and my heartfelt appeal that peace would reign among people and would be reborn in the hearts of all men and women, who are loved by the Lord.”

The continued fighting, the pope said, “urgently challenges us, reminding us of the duty to reflect together on how to alleviate the suffering of those affected and rebuild peace.”

Pope Francis also said that he hoped people’s prayers and the humanitarian efforts to alleviate people’s suffering would “pave the way for renewed diplomatic efforts, which are necessary to halt the progression of the conflict and to achieve the long-awaited peace.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – State laws of interest to Catholics spanned policy areas from abortion to IVF to immigration in 2024. An expected ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025 could have an impact on state laws across the country banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender.

– State ballot initiatives on abortion reshape map of restrictions –

Voters in seven of 10 states with ballot referendums on abortion voted to codify abortion as a right in their state constitution, but three states — Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — defied that trend, marking the first victories on such measures for pro-life activists since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022.

In the same election that saw former President Donald Trump elected to another term in the White House, voters approved most of the referendums to expand legal protections for abortion in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Missouri, and related measures in Maryland and New York, continuing a trend also seen in elections in 2022 and 2023.

According to a tally by KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of Dec. 3 most abortions are currently banned in 13 states, although Missouri voters opted to overturn that restriction.

Another type of legislation that emerged in 2024 was what proponents call a medical education bill. South Dakota passed the first such effort that would direct the state’s Department of Health to create a video explaining the state’s abortion regulations for health care professionals and the general public.

– Alabama sparks IVF controversy –

In March, Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a law granting legal protection to in vitro fertilization clinics after a ruling by that state’s Supreme Court found that frozen embryos qualify as children under the state law’s wrongful death law. The ensuing controversy over that ruling prompted the law.

Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to implement universal coverage for IVF in his second term.

IVF is a form of fertility treatment opposed by the Catholic Church on the grounds that it separates procreation from sex and often involves the destruction of human embryos, among other concerns.

The ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court found that embryos were considered children under the terms of the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, a statute that allows parents of a deceased child to recover punitive damages for their child’s death, in response to appeals brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020 after being improperly removed from storage equipment. While the ruling itself was limited in scope, it was met with backlash, as it created complex legal questions about whether IVF treatments were permitted in the state. Multiple IVF providers in the state paused treatments after it was issued.

Trump distanced himself from the controversy, arguing Republicans should support IVF. He later made a campaign pledge that his administration would protect access to IVF but would have either the government or insurance companies cover the costly treatment. A Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet estimated that a single cycle of IVF can cost $15,000 to $20,000 and can exceed $30,000.

The 1987 document from the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith known as “Donum Vitae,” or “The Gift of Life,” states the church opposes IVF and related practices, including gestational surrogacy, in part because “the connection between in vitro fertilization and the voluntary destruction of human embryos occurs too often.”

– Texas law making crossing border without authorization a state crime blocked –

Federal courts in 2024 blocked Texas from enforcing its controversial law making it a state crime for unauthorized migrants to cross into Texas from Mexico.

The legislation, known as Senate Bill 4, is currently facing legal challenges, as federal law already makes it illegal to enter the U.S. without authorization. Most portions of a similar 2010 Arizona law were later struck down by the Supreme Court.

Supporters of the legislation argue it would deter unauthorized entry into the state by empowering its own law enforcement, while opponents argue the law is unconstitutional and inhumane, wading into a power reserved for federal authorities. Catholic organizations have opposed the law, arguing it was an inhumane response to issues at the border.

– Expected SCOTUS ’25 ruling could impact over two dozen state laws on gender transitions for minors –

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Dec. 4 in a case concerning a challenge to a Tennessee state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender. Taking up the case marked the high court’s first major step toward weighing in on the controversial issue.

Although it is not yet clear how the court will rule, or what the scope of that ruling will be, a ruling is expected before the end of the court’s term, typically in June. Its ruling could impact whether similar laws passed by at least 25 Republican-led states are ultimately enforced or overturned across the country.

Supporters of prohibitions on gender transition surgeries or hormonal treatments for minors who identify as transgender say such restrictions will prevent them from making irreversible decisions as children that they may later come to regret as adults. Critics of such bans argue that preventing those interventions could cause other harm to minors, such as mental health issues or physical self-harm.

In guidance on health care policy and practices released in March 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine outlined the church’s opposition to interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof.”

A 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found that there are approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, with nearly half of that population between the ages of 13 and 24.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Reducing the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to anything other than an expression of Mary’s universal motherhood diminishes the true essence of the iconic Marian devotion, Pope Francis said.

“The mystery of Guadalupe is to venerate her and to hear in our ears: ‘Am I not here, I who am your mother?'” the pope said, referencing the words Mary is said to have spoken to St. Juan Diego.

“This is the whole message of Guadalupe. All others are ideologies,” he said in his homily at Mass for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Francis presided over the Mass while seated, delivering a brief homily without reading from a prepared text. Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, was the main celebrant at the altar.

“On this mystery of Guadalupe, unfortunately many ideologies have sought to derive ideological benefit,” the pope said in Spanish, recalling that the true message of Guadalupe lies in its simplicity.

Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is deeply rooted in Latin America and connected to 16th-century Marian apparitions in Mexico. According to tradition, Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego, an Indigenous Mexican, and left her image imprinted on his cloak. The image depicts Mary as pregnant, and it is said that roses – foreign to the region – miraculously spilled from his cloak when he presented it to the bishop.

“Mary’s motherhood is recorded on that cloak, that simple cloak,” Pope Francis said. “Mary’s motherhood is shown in the beauty of the roses that the Indian finds and takes with him, and Mary’s motherhood performs the miracle of bringing faith to the somewhat incredulous hearts of prelates.”

The mystery of the Marian apparitions in Mexico, the pope said, is to hear Mary’s message to St. Juan Diego — “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” — in “the different moments of life, the various difficult moments of life, the joyful moments of life, the ordinary moments of life.”

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which displays the cloak on which Mary’s image appeared, draws some 20 million pilgrims each year. Inscribed above its entrance are the words Mary is said to have spoken to St. Juan Diego.

“Anything else that is said about the mystery of Guadalupe beyond this is false and seeks to exploit it for ideologies,” Pope Francis said.

The Mass, celebrated in Spanish, included a reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians read in Portuguese. U.S.-born Cardinal Prevost, who previously served as a bishop in Peru, venerated an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with incense upon arriving at the altar.

Among those presenting the gifts during Mass were people wearing traditional Andean headwear, an alpaca wool poncho and a woman with a cloak bearing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe draped around her back.

After Mass, the pope spent ample time greeting the faithful as he left the basilica in a wheelchair, blessing and receiving images of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a fixed percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change, and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in a new era of hope.

“Sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about,” the pope said in his message for World Peace Day 2025.

The message, “Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace,” was released Dec. 12 at a Vatican news conference ahead of the Jan. 1 commemoration.

Offering his “cordial good wishes for the New Year to the heads of state and government, to the leaders of international organizations, to the leaders of the various religions and to every person of goodwill,” the pope made three proposals for bringing about “much-needed changes” during the Jubilee Year, which focuses on “Pilgrims of Hope.”

The proposals, he wrote, are “capable of restoring dignity to the lives of entire peoples and enabling them to set out anew on the journey of hope.”

The first proposal, he wrote, is renewing the appeal launched by St. John Paul II for the Holy Year 2000 to consider “reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations.”

Foreign debt, Pope Francis wrote, “has become a means of control whereby certain governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets.”

Pope Francis also said wealthier nations must recognize their own “ecological debt” to the global south due to the exploitation of resources, the destruction of ecosystems and the effects of climate change. “The more prosperous countries ought to feel called to do everything possible to forgive the debts of those countries that are in no condition to repay the amount they owe.”

“A new financial framework must be devised, leading to the creation of a global financial charter based on solidarity and harmony between peoples,” he wrote, so that debt forgiveness is not just “an isolated act of charity that simply reboots the vicious cycle of financing and indebtedness.”

The pope’s second proposal is for “a firm commitment” to respecting “the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person can cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to a future of prosperity and happiness for themselves and for their children.”

“Without hope for the future, it becomes hard for the young to look forward to bringing new lives into the world,” he wrote. And a “concrete gesture that can help foster the culture of life” is the elimination of the death penalty in all nations.

The death penalty “not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation,” he wrote.

The pope’s third appeal follows “in the footsteps of St. Paul VI and Benedict XVI,” he wrote. “In this time marked by wars, let us use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global fund.”

The fund should finance initiatives “to eradicate hunger” and facilitate educational activities in poor countries to promote sustainable development and combat climate change, he wrote. “We need to work at eliminating every pretext that encourages young people to regard their future as hopeless or dominated by the thirst to avenge the blood of their dear ones.”

Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told reporters at the Vatican Dec. 12 that Caritas Internationalis was launching a global campaign called “‘Turn debt into hope’ with a global petition aimed at raising awareness about the systemic change needed.”

The Jubilee Year and the Christian call for conversion are invitations, not “to a moralistic effort at self-improvement, but to a radical change in how we look at reality,” he said.

“Conversion is a path traced by that love for Christ that inspires, transforms, orients, energizes us,” the cardinal said. Faith in the merciful and providential hands of God “frees our hearts from anguish, to respond and to serve.”

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, which promotes restorative justice and the end to capital punishment, said “the death penalty’s very existence epitomizes a throwaway culture.”

“Capital punishment is a ‘structural sin’ existing in at least 55 nations across the globe, where nearly 28,000 people find themselves on death row,” she told reporters, adding that this number “does not include cases in countries where there are no official statistics reported.”

In the United States, in addition to the federal death penalty, “27 of the 50 states have the death penalty,” she said.

Also speaking at the news conference was Vito Alfieri Fontana, an engineer who worked at Italian companies producing grenades and anti-tank and anti-personnel mines.

He said he experienced a personal conversion and began working for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines after his children kept asking about what he did and why, and amid growing public opposition to the use of anti-personnel mines and the promptings of the late Father Tonino Bello to reflect on his life.

“What for me had been normal, became a burden,” he said. He was able to emerge from “a privileged bubble — home to 1% of the population who produce, control and distribute arms” — and enter into the world of the 99% — those who do not want war and want to live in peace.

Pope Francis said in his message that the jubilee tradition is meant to remind all people, “rich and poor alike, that no one comes into this world doomed to oppression: all of us are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Father, born to live in freedom, in accordance with the Lord’s will.”

Christians “feel bound to cry out and denounce the many situations in which the earth is exploited and our neighbors oppressed,” he wrote.

Calling for and implementing concrete solutions to systemic injustice is part of the Christian desire to “break the bonds of injustice and to proclaim God’s justice,” he added.

The full text of the Papal message in English can be found by clicking here.

The full text of the Papal message in Spanish can be found by clicking here.

(OSV News) – Catholic and Jewish leaders have created a new tool to tackle record-high levels of antisemitism through education and awareness.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee have teamed up to release “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition,” a resource that confronts antisemitism by cataloging anti-Jewish slurs, while providing Catholic teaching that counters such hatred.

The document was unveiled Dec. 11 by Bishop Joseph C. Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, and Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC’s director of interreligious affairs.

The 61-page glossary of antisemitic terms and commentary, available in pdf format on the AJC’s website, builds on the AJC’s “Translate Hate” initiative, which was first released in 2019, said Rabbi Marans in a Dec. 10 interview with OSV News.

“It began with a few dozen (terms) as part of stopping antisemitism, (which) starts with understanding it,” he said. “Now it’s up to about 65-70 terms.”

The document uses the working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. That summation states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Among the contemporary examples of antisemitism listed by the IHRA are calling for the killing or harm of Jews; dehumanizing or demonizing them; accusing them of killing Jesus (known as the “deicide” charge); claims that Jews kill non-Jews for the ritual use of victims’ blood (the “blood libel” trope); denying or minimizing the Shoah (the preferred Hebrew term for the Holocaust); collectivizing them for real or imagined harm; implicating them in conspiratorial theories regarding economic, governmental or other sociocultural control; and accusing them of overriding or blind loyalty to the state of Israel.

The Catholic edition of “Translate Hate” begins with forewords by both Bishop Bambera and Rabbi Marans, and includes numerous images of antisemitic tropes culled from recent periodicals and social media posts.

Rounding out the detailed explications of each term is an extensive bibliography of Catholic resources on Catholic-Jewish relations, drawn from the Second Vatican Council, papal documents, pontifical commissions and councils, and the USCCB.

Rabbi Marans admitted that the process of compiling the glossary was a painful one.

“It’s not pleasant to flip through the industry of hating my people,” he said.

According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitism — which has been on the rise in recent years — spiked to historic levels following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when militants from the Gaza Strip gunned down more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took over 240 civilians and soldiers hostage. The ensuing Israel-Hamas war, which has threatened to become a wider regional conflict, saw numerous campus protests at U.S. colleges and universities during which antisemitic incidents were reported.

“We’re dealing with a three-headed monster with antisemitism,” Rabbi Marans said.

He listed “the skyrocketing toxicity of hate in the U.S. and in the world,” the historical “distance from the reality and the lessons of the Shoah,” and “social media.”

That last is “an enormous challenge,” said Rabbi Marans, since “it feeds on hate.

“It’s designed to do so because of its algorithms: keeping customers and sucking people in to escalate,” he said. “And secondly, it allows near or complete anonymity.”

He said the AJC is working “very closely with social media companies” to ensure “control of the excesses of certain types of hate speech, while assuring freedom of expression.”

Rabbi Marans noted the timing of the AJC-USCCB’s collaboration was “particularly poignant,” given the latter’s 2022 launch of an initiative titled “The Fruits of Dialogue: Catholics Confronting Antisemitism.”

Speaking to OSV News Dec. 10, Bishop Bambera said that “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition” is “one result of that” effort.

Rabbi Marans also said the new document’s release presages the upcoming 60th anniversary of “Nostra Aetate,” the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which featured the Catholic Church’s first formal denunciation of anti-Jewish hatred.

“Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”), promulgated in 1965 by St. Paul VI as part of Vatican II, deplored “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” while affirming the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews.”

Specifically, “Nostra Aetate” refuted the historic deicide charge against the Jewish people, stating that while “Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ … what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”

In addition, said the text, “although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

“All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ,” the document states.

That language marked a seismic shift from centuries of what French historian Jules Isaac had called a “teaching of contempt” toward the Jewish community by Catholic and other Christian theologians.

In 1948, Isaac, a renowned Jewish academic whose wife and daughter were murdered at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, published “Jésus et Israel,” the first full analysis of Christian anti-Judaism. The year before, Isaac also helped to develop the International Council of Christians and Jews’ “Ten Points of Seelisburg,” which stressed Christianity’s need to recover a historically and theologically accurate understanding of Judaism.

Scholars have documented a brief but pivotal June 13, 1960, meeting between Isaac and St. John XXIII as the major catalyst behind “Nostra Aetate.” Soon after, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity — led by Cardinal Augustin Bea, a Jesuit — was specifically tasked with addressing Catholic-Jewish relations, a project that ultimately led to the secretariat drafting Vatican II’s “Nostra Aetate.”

Bishop Bambera told OSV News the full reception of “Nostra Aetate” at every level of the Catholic Church remains far from complete.

“I think the substance of ‘Nostra Aetate’ … has resonated with church leaders for the most part, and with a fair number of the Christian faithful,” he said. “I think where we have fallen short is we simply have not communicated and taught well the substance of this document.”

Bishop Bambera said that “the only way in which we will ever combat antisemitism is to understand it.”

“Part of the problem we face is that people don’t even realize at times that the comments that are made, and the attitudes (held), and just common references to the Jewish people in particular, have been passed down from one generation to the next in families and neighborhoods, in various communities,” he said. “I think people don’t even realize how hurtful those things are.”

Some anti-Jewish tropes, said Bishop Bambera, “have the potential to unleash tremendous hatred and destruction to a community of people.”

He said that reading through “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition” highlights the historical sweep of antisemitism.

“It reflects centuries and centuries of hatred, of discrimination and of persecution,” said Bishop Bambera.

Combating antisemitism is also part of the church’s responsibility to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, which is not “an add-on,” but “at the core of who we are called to be,” said Bishop Bambera.

“We never feign any sense of unity for the sake of the term,” he said. “But we (are) true to who we are, and in the process, work with who we are and our partners in dialogue.”

Learning and listening are crucial to that task, said the bishop.

“We have to know who we are as Catholic Christians, and what the church teaches about our relationships with other Christian communities, particularly in light of this conversation that we’re having with our Jewish brothers and sisters,” he said. “They are our partners. We share a patrimony. Our roots as Christians are in the Jewish tradition, and we need to know that. We need to be able to embrace that.”

Healing the centuries-old wounds between the Jewish and Catholic communities will take time and effort, said Bishop Bambera, emphasizing that “anything that is worthwhile is worth working for.”

He said, “If we listen with care, if we open our own hearts and minds to what we can learn from one another, I think we’re well on the way to achieving a more peaceful coexistence.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – “With tears in our eyes, let us raise our prayer for peace,” Pope Francis said as he thanked the people of Bethlehem and Palestinian authorities for a Nativity scene to decorate the Vatican audience hall.

A Christmas creche conveys the “message of peace and love that Jesus left us,” the pope said Dec. 7 during a meeting with the artisans, volunteers and government representatives responsible for the Christmas decorations in the Paul VI Audience Hall and in St. Peter’s Square.

Pope Francis asked them all to remember the people in the Holy Land and in other parts of the world who are “suffering from the tragedy of war.”

“Enough war, enough violence,” he said. “Do you know that one of the most profitable investments here is in arms production? Profit for killing — But why? Enough wars! May there be peace in all the world and for all people, whom God loves.”

In the creche in the audience hall Dec. 7, the olive-wood baby Jesus was lying on a white and black kaffiyeh, a Palestinian headdress. Some commentators remarked that the choice seemed to imply that Jesus was born a Palestinian rather than a Jew. And The Times of Israel called it “provocative.”

In a tweet describing the Nativity scene, the American Jewish Committee wrote, “We are disappointed and troubled that a meaningful religious tradition has been politicized in this way.”

When the pope stopped to pray before the Bethlehem creche at the end of his general audience Dec. 11, the baby Jesus statue and kaffiyeh-draped manger were gone. The Vatican press office offered no comment beyond a reminder that traditionally the baby is not placed in a Nativity scene until Christmas Eve.

In the meantime, the Vatican announced Dec. 10 that Pope Francis would meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Dec. 12. The two last met in 2021 at the Vatican.

Neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian embassies to the Holy See responded to a request Dec. 10 for comment about the kaffiyeh in the creche.

The Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square for 2024 came from Grado, Italy, an island surrounded by a lagoon dotted with other tiny islands where the people have “casoni” or mud and thatch huts; traditionally people out fishing would stop to rest and fix lunch in the huts.

The townspeople, with 40 volunteer artists and craftspeople, recreated a casone for the Holy Family in St. Peter’s Square. And the three Magi journey toward the baby Jesus in a flat-bottomed boat piloted by an old fisherwoman.

Pope Francis noted that “a ‘batela,’ the typical flat-bottomed boat” is needed to cross the water.

Today, too, “a boat is needed to reach Jesus,” he said. “The church is the boat. One does not reach Jesus alone — never — we reach him together, we reach him as a community, on that great little boat that Peter continues to lead and on which, huddling together a little, there is room for everyone.”

“In the church, there is always room for everyone,” Pope Francis insisted. “One might say, ‘But what about sinners?’ They are the first, they are the privileged, because Jesus came for the sinners, for all of us, not for the saints. For everyone. Do not forget this. Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone inside.”

Antonio Boemo, the designer of the Nativity scene in the square, told reporters the scene is composed of 102 pieces of recycled material which will be dismantled and taken back to Grado after Christmas.

He also noted that Mary is holding a lily in her lap. On Christmas Eve, the lily will be replaced with a statue of the baby Jesus.

Pope Francis, at the morning audience, and officials from the small mountain town of Ledro in northern Italy, speaking in the evening, insisted the red pine Christmas tree the town sent to the Vatican was cut down as part of an ecologically sound forest management project.

A local group had launched a petition in October to prevent what they called “fir tree-icide.”

Pope Francis said the old tree giving its life to provide the space and light the younger trees need to grow “can be a beautiful image of the church,” which spreads the light of Christ “precisely due to the succession of generations of believers who gather around the single origin, Jesus: the old gave life to the young, the young embrace and protect the old, in a mission in the world and on a journey toward Heaven.”