Unam Sanctam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam

THE PRINCESS OF HEAVEN - BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

2016-07-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

Treats of the Presentation of the Princess of Heaven in the Temple, the Favors She Received at the Hand of God, the Sublime Perfection with which She Observed the Rules of the Temple, the Heavenly Excellence of Her Heroic Virtues and Visions, Her Most Holy Espousal and other Events up to the Incarnation of the Son of God.

HER PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE.
The three years’ time decreed by the Lord having been completed, Joachim and Anne set out from Nazareth, accompanied by a few kindred and bringing with them the true living Ark of the covenant, the most holy Mary, borne on the arms of her mother in order to be deposited in the holy temple of Jerusalem. The beautiful Child, by her fervent and loving aspirations, hastened after the ointments of her Beloved, seeking in the temple Him, whom She bore in her heart. This humble procession was scarcely noticed by earthly creatures, but it was invisibly accompanied by the angelic spirits, who, in order to celebrate this event, had hastened from heaven in greater numbers than ordinary as her bodyguard, and were singing in heavenly strains the glory and praise of the Most High. The Princess of heaven heard and saw them as She hastened her beautiful steps along in the sight of the highest and the true Solomon. Thus they pursued their journey from Nazareth to the holy city of Jerusalem, and also the parents of the holy child Mary felt in their hearts great joy and consolation of spirit.

They arrived at the holy temple, and the blessed Anne on entering took her Daughter and Mistress by the hand, accompanied and assisted by saint Joachim. All three offered a devout and fervent prayer to the Lord; the parents offering to God their Daughter, and the most holy Child, in profound humility, adoration and worship, offering up Herself. She alone perceived that the Most High received and accepted Her, and, amid divine splendor which filled the temple, She heard a voice saying to Her: "Come, my Beloved, my Spouse, come to my temple, where I wish to hear thy voice of praise and worship." Having offered their prayers, they rose and betook themselves to the priest. The parents consigned their Child into his hands and he gave them his blessing. Together they conducted Her to the portion of the temple buildings, where many young girls lived to be brought up in retirement and in virtuous habits, until old enough to assume the state of matrimony. It was a place of retirement especially selected for the first-born daughters of the royal tribe of Juda and the sacerdotal tribe of Levi.

Fifteen stairs led up to the entrance of these apartments. Other priests came down these stairs in order to welcome the blessed child Mary. The one that had received them, being according to the law one of a minor order, placed Her on the first step. Mary, with his permission, turned and kneeling down before Joachim and Anne, asked their blessing and kissed their hands, recommending herself to their prayers before God. The holy parents in tenderest tears gave Her their blessing; whereupon She ascended the fifteen stairs without any assistance. She hastened upward with incomparable fervor and joy, neither turning back, nor shedding tears, nor showing any childish regret at parting from her parents. To see Her, in so tender an age, so full of strange majesty and firmness of mind, excited the admiration of all those present. The priests received Her among the rest of the maidens, and saint Simeon consigned Her to the teachers, one of whom was the prophetess Anne. This holy matron had been prepared by the Lord by especial grace and enlightenment, so that She joyfully took charge of this Child of Joachim and Anne. She considered the charge a special favor of divine Providence and merited by her holiness and virtue to have Her as a disciple, who was to be the Mother of God and Mistress of all the creatures.

Sorrowfully her parents Joachim and Anne retraced their journey to Nazareth, now poor as deprived of the rich Treasure of their house. But the Most High consoled and comforted them in their affliction. The holy priest Simeon, although he did not at this time know of the mystery enshrined in the child Mary, obtained great light as to her sanctity and her special selection by the Lord; also the other priests looked upon Her with great reverence and esteem. In ascending the fifteen stairs the Child brought to fulfillment, that, which Jacob saw happening in sleep; for here too were angels ascending and descending: the ones accompanying, the others meeting their Queen as She hastened up; whereas at the top God was waiting in order to welcome Her as his Daughter and Spouse. She also felt by the effects of the overflowing love, that this truly was the house of God and the portal of heaven.

The child Mary, when brought to her teacher, knelt in profound humility before her and asked her blessing. She begged to be admitted among those under her direction, obedience and counsel, and asked her kind forbearance in the labor and trouble, which She would occasion. The prophetess Anne, her teacher, received Her with pleasure, and said to Her: "My Daughter, Thou shalt find in me a helpful mother and I will take care of Thee and of thy education with all possible solicitude." Then the holy Child proceeded to address Herself with the same humility to all the maidens which were then present; each one She greeted and embraced, offering Herself as their servant and requesting them, as older and more advanced than She in the duties of their position, to instruct and command Her. She also gave them thanks, that without her merit they admitted Her to their company.

When the heavenly child Mary had dismissed her parents and entered upon her life in the temple, her teacher assigned to Her a place among the rest of the maidens, each of whom occupied a large alcove or little room. The Princess of heaven prostrated Herself on the pavement, and, remembering that it was holy ground and part of the temple, She kissed it. In humble adoration She gave thanks to the Lord for this new benefit, and She thanked even the earth for supporting Her and allowing Her to stand in this holy place; for She held Herself unworthy of treading and remaining upon it. Then She turned toward her holy angels and said to them: "Celestial princes, messengers of the Almighty, most faithful friends and companions, I beseech you with all the powers of my soul to remain with me in this holy temple of my Lord and as my vigilant sentinels, reminding me of all that I should do; instructing me and directing me as the teachers and guides of my actions, so that I may fulfill in all things the perfect will of the Most High, give pleasure to the holy priests and obey my teacher and my companions." And addressing in particular those whom I mentioned above as the twelve angels of the Apocalypse, She said: "And I beseech you, my ambassadors, if the Almighty permit you, go and console my holy parents in their affliction and solitude."

While the twelve angels executed her command, Mary remained with the others in heavenly conversation. She began to feel a supernal influence of great power and sweetness, spiritualizing Her and elevating Her in burning ecstasy, and immediately the Most High commanded the seraphim to assist in illumining and preparing her most holy soul. Instantly She was filled with a divine light and force, which perfected and proportioned her faculties in accordance with the mysteries now to be manifested to Her. Thus prepared and accompanied by her holy angels and many others, in the midst of a refulgent host, the celestial Child was raised body and soul to the empyrean heaven, where She was received by the holy Trinity with befitting benevolence and pleasure. She prostrated Herself in the presence of the most mighty and high Lord, as She was wont to do in all her visions, and adored Him in profound reverence and humility. Then She was further transformed by new workings of divine light, so that She saw, intuitively and face to face, the Divinity itself. This was the second time that It manifested Itself to Her in this intuitive manner during the first three years of her life.

By no human tongue or any sensible faculty could the effects of this vision and participation of the divine Essence ever be described. The Person of the Father spoke to the future Mother of his Son, and said: "My Dove, my beloved One, I desire thee to see the treasures of my immutable being and of my infinite perfections, and also to perceive the hidden gifts destined for the souls, whom I have chosen as heirs of my glory and who are rescued by the life-blood of the Lamb. Behold, my Daughter, how liberal I am toward my creatures, that know and love Me; how true in my words, how faithful in my promises, how powerful and admirable in my works. Take notice, my Spouse, how ineffably true it is, that he who follows Me does not walk in darkness. I desire that thou, as my chosen One, be an eye-witness of the treasures which I hold in reserve for raising up the humble, enriching the poor, exalting the downtrodden, and for rewarding all that the mortals shall do and suffer for my name."

Other great mysteries were shown to the holy child in this vision of the Divinity, for as the object presented to the soul in such repeated intuitive visions is infinite, that which remains to be seen will always remain infinite and will excite greater and greater wonder and love in the one thus favored. The most holy Mary answered the Lord and said: "Most high, supreme and eternal God, incomprehensible Thou art in thy magnificence, overflowing in thy riches, unspeakable in thy mysteries, most faithful in thy promises, true in thy words, most perfect in thy works, for Thou art the Lord, infinite and eternal in thy essence and perfections. But, most high Lord, what shall my littleness begin to do at the sight of thy magnificence? I acknowledge myself unworthy to look upon thy greatness, yet I am in great need of being regarded by it. In thy presence, Lord, all creation is as nothing. What shall I thy servant do, who am but dust? Fulfill in me all thy desire and thy pleasure; and if trouble and persecutions suffered by mortals in patience, if humility and meekness are so precious in thy eyes, do not consent, O my Beloved, that I be deprived of such a rich treasure and pledge of thy love. But as the rewards of these tribulations, give them to thy servants and friends, who deserve them better than I, for I have not yet labored in thy service and pleasure."

The Most High was much pleased with the petition of the heavenly Child and He gave Her to understand that He would admit Her to suffering and labor for his love in the course of her life, without at the time revealing to Her the order and the manner in which He was to dispense them. The Princess of heaven gave thanks for this blessing and favor of being chosen to labor and suffer for the glory of God’s name. Burning with desire of securing such favor, She asked of his Majesty to be allowed to make four vows in his presence: of chastity, of poverty, of obedience, and of perpetual enclosure in the temple whither He had called Her. To this petition the Lord answered and said to Her: "My Spouse, my thoughts rise above all that is created, and thou, my chosen one, dost not yet know what is to happen to thee in the course of thy life, and thou dost not yet understand why it is impossible to fulfill thy fervent desires altogether in the manner in which thou now dost imagine. The vow of chastity I permit and I desire that thou make it; I wish that from this moment thou renounce earthly riches. It is also my will that as far as possible thou observe whatever pertains to the other vows, just as if thou hadst made them all. Thy desire shall be fulfilled through many other virgins in the coming law of grace; for, in order to imitate thee and to serve Me, they will make these same vows and live together in community and thou shalt be the Mother of many daughters."

The most holy Child then, in the presence of the Lord, made the vow of chastity and as for the rest without binding Herself, She renounced all affection for terrestrial and created things. She moreover resolved to obey all creatures for the sake of God. In the fulfillment of these promises She was more punctual, fervent and faithful than any who have ever made these vows or ever will make them. Forthwith the clear and intuitive vision of the Divinity ceased, but She was not immediately restored to the earth. For, remaining in the empyrean heaven, She enjoyed another, an imaginary vision of the Lord in a lower state of ecstasy, so that in connection with it, She saw other mysteries.

In this secondary and imaginary vision some of the seraphim closest to the Lord approached Her and by his command adorned and clothed Her in the following manner. First all her senses were illumined with an effulgent light, which filled them with grace and beauty. Then they robed Her in a mantle or tunic of most exquisite splendor, and girded Her with a cincture of vary-colored and transparent stones, of flashing brilliancy, which adorned Her beyond human comprehension. They signified the immaculate purity and the various heroic virtues of her soul. They placed on Her also a necklace or collar of inestimable and entrancing beauty, which contained three large stones, symbolic of the three great virtues of faith, hope and charity; this they hung around her neck letting it fall to her breast as if indicating the seat of these precious virtues. They also adorned her hands with seven rings of rare beauty whereby the Holy Ghost wished to proclaim that He had enriched Her with his holy gifts in a most eminent degree. In addition to all this the most holy Trinity crowned her head with an imperial diadem, made of inestimable material and set with most precious stones, constituting Her thereby as his Spouse and as the Empress of heaven. In testimony whereof the white and refulgent vestments were emblazoned with letters or figures of the finest and the most shining gold, proclaiming: Mary, Daughter of the eternal Father, Spouse of the Holy Ghost and Mother of the true Light. This last name or title the heavenly Mistress did not understand; but the angels understood it, who, lost in wonder and praise of the Author, were assisting at this new and strange ceremony. Finally the attention of all the angelic spirits was drawn toward the Most High and a voice proceeded from the throne of the blessed Trinity, which, addressing the most holy Mary, spoke to Her: "Thou shalt be our Spouse, our beloved and chosen One among all creatures for all eternity; the angels shall serve thee and all the nations and generations shall call thee blessed" (Luc. 1, 48).

The sovereign Child being thus attired in the court dress of the Divinity, then celebrated a more glorious and marvelous espousal than ever could enter the mind of the highest cherubim and seraphim. For the Most High accepted Her as his sole and only Spouse and conferred upon Her the highest dignity which can befall a creature; He deposited within Her his own Divinity in the person of the Word and with it all the treasures of grace befitting such eminence. Meanwhile the most Humble among the humble was lost in the abyss of love and wonder which these benefits and favors caused in Her , and in the presence of the Lord She spoke: "Most high King and incomprehensible God, who art Thou and who am I , that thy condescension should look upon me who am dust, unworthy of such mercy? In Thee, my Lord, as in a clear mirror seeing thy immutable being, I behold and understand without error my lowliness and vileness, I admire thy immensity and deprecate my nothingness. At the sight of Thee I am annihilated and lost in astonishment, that the infinite Majesty should stoop to so lowly a worm, who can merit only oblivion and contempt of all the creatures. O Lord, my only Good, how art Thou magnified and exalted in this deed! What marvel dost Thou cause through me in thy angelic spirits, who understand thy infinite bounty, magnificence and mercy in raising up from the dust her who in it is poor, and placing her among the princes (Ps. 112, 7)! I accept Thee, O my King and my Lord, as my Spouse and I offer myself as thy slave. Let not my understanding attend to any other object, nor my memory hold any other image, nor my will seek other object or pleasure than Thee, my highest Good, my true and only Love. Let not my eyes look upon human creature, nor my faculties and senses attend upon anything beside Thee and whatever thy Majesty shall direct. Thou alone for thy spouse, my Beloved, and she for Thee only, who art the immutable and eternal Good."

The Most High received with ineffable pleasure this consent of the sovereign Princess to enter into the new espousal with her most holy soul. As upon his True Spouse and as Mistress of all creation, He now lavished upon Her all the treasures of his grace and power, instructing Her to ask for whatever She desired and assuring Her that nothing would ever be denied Her. The most humble Dove at once proceeded to beseech the Lord with the most burning charity, to send His Onlybegotten to the world as a remedy for mortals; that all men be called to the true knowledge of his Divinity; that her natural parents, Joachim and Anne, receive an increase of the loving gifts of his right hand; that the poor and afflicted be consoled and comforted in their troubles; and that in Herself be fulfilled the pleasure of the divine will. These were some of the more express petitions addressed by the new Spouse on this occasion to the blessed Trinity. And all the angelic host sang new songs of admiration in praise of the Most High, while those appointed by his Majesty, midst heavenly music, bore back the holy Child from the empyrean heaven to the place in the temple, from which they had brought Her.

In order to commence at once to put in practice what She had promised in the presence of the Lord, She betook Herself to her instructress and offered all that her mother, saint Anne, had left for her comfort and sustenance, with the exception of a few books and clothes. She requested Her to give it to the poor or use it for any other purpose according to her pleasure, and that She command and direct Her what She was to do. The discreet matron, (who was, as I have already said, the prophetess Anne) by divine impulse accepted and approved of the offering of the beautiful Child and dismissed Her entirely poor and stripped of everything except the garments which She wore. She resolved to take care of Her in a special manner as one destitute and poor; for the other maidens each possessed their spending money and a certain sum assigned and destined for their wearing apparel and for other necessities according to their inclinations.

The holy matron, having first consulted the high priest, also gave to the sweetest Child a rule of life. By thus despoiling and resigning Herself the Queen and Mistress of creation obtained a complete freedom and detachment from all creatures and from her own Self, neither possessing nor desiring anything except only the most ardent love of God and her own abasement and humiliation.

WORDS OF THE QUEEN. (The Virgin Mary speaks to Sister Mary of Agreda, Spain.)

My daughter, among the great and ineffable favors of the Omnipotent in the course of my life, was the one which thou has just learned and described; for by this clear vision of the Divinity and of the incomprehensible essence I acquired knowledge of the most hidden sacraments and mysteries, and in this adornment and espousal I received incomparable blessings and felt the sweetest workings of the Divinity in my spirit. My desire to take the four vows of poverty, obedience, chastity and enclosure pleased the Lord very much, and I merited thereby that the Godfearing in the Church and in the law of grace are drawn to live under these vows, as is the custom in the present time. This was the beginning of that which you religious practice now, fulfilling the words of David in the forty-fourth psalm: "After Her shall virgins be brought to the King;" for the Lord ordained that my aspirations be the foundation of religious life and of the evangelical law. I fulfilled entirely and perfectly all that I proposed to the Lord, as far as was possible in my state of life; never did I look upon the face of a man, not even on that of my husband Joseph, nor on that of the angels, when they appeared to me in human form, though I saw and knew them all in God. Never did I incline toward any creature, rational or irrational, nor toward any human operation or tendency. But in all things I was governed by the Most High, either directly by Himself or indirectly through the obedience, to which I freely subjected myself.

Be careful therefore, my daughter, and fear so dreadful a danger; by divine assistance of grace raise thyself above thyself, never permitting thy will to consent to any disorderly affection or movement. I wish thee to consume thyself in dying to thy passions and in becoming entirely spiritualized, so that having extinguished within thee all that is of earth, thou mayest come to lead an angelic life and conversation. In order to deserve the name of spouse of Christ, thou must pass beyond the limits and the sphere of a human being and ascend to another state and divine existence. Although thou art earth, thou must be a blessed earth, without the thorns of passion, one whose fruit is all for the Lord, its Master. If thou hast for thy Spouse that supreme and mighty Lord, who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, consider it beneath thy dignity to turn thy eyes, and much more thy heart, toward such vile slaves, as are the human creatures, for even the angels love and respect thee for thy dignity as spouse of the Most High. If even among men it is held to be a daring and boundless insolence in a plebeian to cast longing eyes upon the spouse of a prince, what a crime would it be to cast them on the spouse of the heavenly and omnipotent King? And it would not be a smaller crime if she herself would receive and consent to such familiarity. Consider and assure thyself that the punishment reserved for this sin is inconceivably terrible and I do not show it to thee visibly, lest thou perish in thy weakness. I wish that for thee my instructions suffice to urge thee to the fulfillment of all I admonish and to imitate me as my disciple, as far as thy powers go. Be also solicitous in recalling this instruction to the mind of thy nuns and in seeing that they live up to it.

My daughter, the greatest happiness, which can befall any soul in this mortal life, is that the Almighty call her to his house consecrated to his service. For by this benefit He rescues the soul from a dangerous slavery and relieves her of the vile servitude of the world, where, deprived of true liberty, she eats her bread in the sweat of her brow. Who is so dull and insipid as not to know the dangers of the worldly life, which is hampered by all the abominable and most wicked laws and customs introduced by the astuteness of the devil and the perversity of men? The better part is religious life and retirement; in it is found security, outside is a torment and a stormy sea, full of sorrow and unhappiness. Through the hardness of their heart and the total forgetfulness of themselves men do not know this truth and are not attracted by its blessings. But thou, O soul, be not deaf to the voice of the Most High, attend and correspond to it in thy actions: I wish to remind thee, that one of the greatest snares of the demon is to counteract the call of the Lord, whenever he seeks to attract and incline the soul to a life of perfection in his service.

Even by itself, the public and sacred act of receiving the habit and entering religion, although it is not always performed with proper fervor and purity of intention, is enough to rouse the wrath and fury of the infernal dragon and his demons; for they know that this act tends not only to the glory of the Lord and the joy of the holy angels, but that religious life will bring the soul to holiness and perfection. It very often happens, that they who have received the habit with earthly and human motives, are afterwards visited by divine grace, which perfects them and sets all things aright. If this is possible even when the beginning was without a good intention, how much more powerful and efficacious will be the light and influence of grace and the discipline of religious life, when the soul enters under the influence of divine love and with a sincere and earnest desire of finding God, and of serving and loving Him?

2010-12-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
CARITAS IN VERITATE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
THE LAY FAITHFUL
AND ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
ON INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IN CHARITY AND TRUTH

INTRODUCTION

1. Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

2. Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). For the Church, instructed by the Gospel, charity is everything because, as Saint John teaches (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16) and as I recalled in my first Encyclical Letter, “God is love” (Deus Caritas Est): everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope.

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility. Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living. This is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence.

3. Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature. Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.

4. Because it is filled with truth, charity can be understood in the abundance of its values, it can be shared and communicated. Truth, in fact, is lógos which creates diá-logos, and hence communication and communion. Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. Truth opens and unites our minds in the lógos of love: this is the Christian proclamation and testimony of charity. In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, charity is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis.

5. Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity.

This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church's social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ's love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses charity's power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history. It is at the same time the truth of faith and of reason, both in the distinction and also in the convergence of those two cognitive fields. Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth. What they need even more is that this truth should be loved and demonstrated. Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present.

6. “Caritas in veritate” is the principle around which the Church's social doctrine turns, a principle that takes on practical form in the criteria that govern moral action. I would like to consider two of these in particular, of special relevance to the commitment to development in an increasingly globalized society: justice and the common good.

First of all, justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God's love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.

7. Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society[4]. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have. Like all commitment to justice, it has a place within the testimony of divine charity that paves the way for eternity through temporal action. Man's earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations[5], in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God.

8. In 1967, when he issued the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, my venerable predecessor Pope Paul VI illuminated the great theme of the development of peoples with the splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ's charity. He taught that life in Christ is the first and principal factor of development[6] and he entrusted us with the task of travelling the path of development with all our heart and all our intelligence[7], that is to say with the ardour of charity and the wisdom of truth. It is the primordial truth of God's love, grace bestowed upon us, that opens our lives to gift and makes it possible to hope for a “development of the whole man and of all men”[8], to hope for progress “from less human conditions to those which are more human”[9], obtained by overcoming the difficulties that are inevitably encountered along the way.

At a distance of over forty years from the Encyclical's publication, I intend to pay tribute and to honour the memory of the great Pope Paul VI, revisiting his teachings on integral human development and taking my place within the path that they marked out, so as to apply them to the present moment. This continual application to contemporary circumstances began with the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, with which the Servant of God Pope John Paul II chose to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Populorum Progressio. Until that time, only Rerum Novarum had been commemorated in this way. Now that a further twenty years have passed, I express my conviction that Populorum Progressio deserves to be considered “the Rerum Novarum of the present age”, shedding light upon humanity's journey towards unity.

9. Love in truth — caritas in veritate — is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), opening up the path towards reciprocity of consciences and liberties.

The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12].

CHAPTER ONE

THE MESSAGE
OF POPULORUM PROGRESSIO

10. A fresh reading of Populorum Progressio, more than forty years after its publication, invites us to remain faithful to its message of charity and truth, viewed within the overall context of Paul VI's specific magisterium and, more generally, within the tradition of the Church's social doctrine. Moreover, an evaluation is needed of the different terms in which the problem of development is presented today, as compared with forty years ago. The correct viewpoint, then, is that of the Tradition of the apostolic faith[13], a patrimony both ancient and new, outside of which Populorum Progressio would be a document without roots — and issues concerning development would be reduced to merely sociological data.

11. The publication of Populorum Progressio occurred immediately after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, and in its opening paragraphs it clearly indicates its close connection with the Council[14]. Twenty years later, in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, John Paul II, in his turn, emphasized the earlier Encyclical's fruitful relationship with the Council, and especially with the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes[15]. I too wish to recall here the importance of the Second Vatican Council for Paul VI's Encyclical and for the whole of the subsequent social Magisterium of the Popes. The Council probed more deeply what had always belonged to the truth of the faith, namely that the Church, being at God's service, is at the service of the world in terms of love and truth. Paul VI set out from this vision in order to convey two important truths. The first is that the whole Church, in all her being and acting — when she proclaims, when she celebrates, when she performs works of charity — is engaged in promoting integral human development. She has a public role over and above her charitable and educational activities: all the energy she brings to the advancement of humanity and of universal fraternity is manifested when she is able to operate in a climate of freedom. In not a few cases, that freedom is impeded by prohibitions and persecutions, or it is limited when the Church's public presence is reduced to her charitable activities alone. The second truth is that authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension[16]. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space. Enclosed within history, it runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth; humanity thus loses the courage to be at the service of higher goods, at the service of the great and disinterested initiatives called forth by universal charity. Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development simply be handed to him. In the course of history, it was often maintained that the creation of institutions was sufficient to guarantee the fulfilment of humanity's right to development. Unfortunately, too much confidence was placed in those institutions, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone. Moreover, such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him, development is either denied, or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of development. Only through an encounter with God are we able to see in the other something more than just another creature[17], to recognize the divine image in the other, thus truly coming to discover him or her and to mature in a love that “becomes concern and care for the other.”[18]

12. The link between Populorum Progressio and the Second Vatican Council does not mean that Paul VI's social magisterium marked a break with that of previous Popes, because the Council constitutes a deeper exploration of this magisterium within the continuity of the Church's life[19]. In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church's social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it. It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new[20]. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus[21]. Coherence does not mean a closed system: on the contrary, it means dynamic faithfulness to a light received. The Church's social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the new problems that are constantly emerging[22]. This safeguards the permanent and historical character of the doctrinal “patrimony”[23] which, with its specific characteristics, is part and parcel of the Church's ever-living Tradition[24]. Social doctrine is built on the foundation handed on by the Apostles to the Fathers of the Church, and then received and further explored by the great Christian doctors. This doctrine points definitively to the New Man, to the “last Adam [who] became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45), the principle of the charity that “never ends” (1 Cor 13:8). It is attested by the saints and by those who gave their lives for Christ our Saviour in the field of justice and peace. It is an expression of the prophetic task of the Supreme Pontiffs to give apostolic guidance to the Church of Christ and to discern the new demands of evangelization. For these reasons, Populorum Progressio, situated within the great current of Tradition, can still speak to us today.

13. In addition to its important link with the entirety of the Church's social doctrine, Populorum Progressio is closely connected to the overall magisterium of Paul VI, especially his social magisterium. His was certainly a social teaching of great importance: he underlined the indispensable importance of the Gospel for building a society according to freedom and justice, in the ideal and historical perspective of a civilization animated by love. Paul VI clearly understood that the social question had become worldwide [25] and he grasped the interconnection between the impetus towards the unification of humanity and the Christian ideal of a single family of peoples in solidarity and fraternity. In the notion of development, understood in human and Christian terms, he identified the heart of the Christian social message, and he proposed Christian charity as the principal force at the service of development. Motivated by the wish to make Christ's love fully visible to contemporary men and women, Paul VI addressed important ethical questions robustly, without yielding to the cultural weaknesses of his time.

14. In his Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens of 1971, Paul VI reflected on the meaning of politics, and the danger constituted by utopian and ideological visions that place its ethical and human dimensions in jeopardy. These are matters closely connected with development. Unfortunately the negative ideologies continue to flourish. Paul VI had already warned against the technocratic ideology so prevalent today[26], fully aware of the great danger of entrusting the entire process of development to technology alone, because in that way it would lack direction. Technology, viewed in itself, is ambivalent. If on the one hand, some today would be inclined to entrust the entire process of development to technology, on the other hand we are witnessing an upsurge of ideologies that deny in toto the very value of development, viewing it as radically anti-human and merely a source of degradation. This leads to a rejection, not only of the distorted and unjust way in which progress is sometimes directed, but also of scientific discoveries themselves, which, if well used, could serve as an opportunity of growth for all. The idea of a world without development indicates a lack of trust in man and in God. It is therefore a serious mistake to undervalue human capacity to exercise control over the deviations of development or to overlook the fact that man is constitutionally oriented towards “being more”. Idealizing technical progress, or contemplating the utopia of a return to humanity's original natural state, are two contrasting ways of detaching progress from its moral evaluation and hence from our responsibility.

15. Two further documents by Paul VI without any direct link to social doctrine — the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968) and the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (8 December 1975) — are highly important for delineating the fully human meaning of the development that the Church proposes. It is therefore helpful to consider these texts too in relation to Populorum Progressio.

The Encyclical Humanae Vitae emphasizes both the unitive and the procreative meaning of sexuality, thereby locating at the foundation of society the married couple, man and woman, who accept one another mutually, in distinction and in complementarity: a couple, therefore, that is open to life[27]. This is not a question of purely individual morality: Humanae Vitae indicates the strong links between life ethics and social ethics, ushering in a new area of magisterial teaching that has gradually been articulated in a series of documents, most recently John Paul II's Encyclical Evangelium Vitae[28]. The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics, fully aware that “a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.”[29]

The Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, for its part, is very closely linked with development, given that, in Paul VI's words, “evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of man's concrete life, both personal and social.”[30] “Between evangelization and human advancement — development and liberation — there are in fact profound links”[31]: on the basis of this insight, Paul VI clearly presented the relationship between the proclamation of Christ and the advancement of the individual in society. Testimony to Christ's charity, through works of justice, peace and development, is part and parcel of evangelization, because Jesus Christ, who loves us, is concerned with the whole person. These important teachings form the basis for the missionary aspect[32] of the Church's social doctrine, which is an essential element of evangelization[33]. The Church's social doctrine proclaims and bears witness to faith. It is an instrument and an indispensable setting for formation in faith.

16. In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI taught that progress, in its origin and essence, is first and foremost a vocation: “in the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfil himself, for every life is a vocation.”[34] This is what gives legitimacy to the Church's involvement in the whole question of development. If development were concerned with merely technical aspects of human life, and not with the meaning of man's pilgrimage through history in company with his fellow human beings, nor with identifying the goal of that journey, then the Church would not be entitled to speak on it. Paul VI, like Leo XIII before him in Rerum Novarum[35], knew that he was carrying out a duty proper to his office by shedding the light of the Gospel on the social questions of his time[36].

To regard development as a vocation is to recognize, on the one hand, that it derives from a transcendent call, and on the other hand that it is incapable, on its own, of supplying its ultimate meaning. Not without reason the word “vocation” is also found in another passage of the Encyclical, where we read: “There is no true humanism but that which is open to the Absolute, and is conscious of a vocation which gives human life its true meaning.”[37] This vision of development is at the heart of Populorum Progressio, and it lies behind all Paul VI's reflections on freedom, on truth and on charity in development. It is also the principal reason why that Encyclical is still timely in our day.

17. A vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. The “types of messianism which give promises but create illusions”[38] always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal. This false security becomes a weakness, because it involves reducing man to subservience, to a mere means for development, while the humility of those who accept a vocation is transformed into true autonomy, because it sets them free. Paul VI was in no doubt that obstacles and forms of conditioning hold up development, but he was also certain that “each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure.”[39] This freedom concerns the type of development we are considering, but it also affects situations of underdevelopment which are not due to chance or historical necessity, but are attributable to human responsibility. This is why “the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance”[40]. This too is a vocation, a call addressed by free subjects to other free subjects in favour of an assumption of shared responsibility. Paul VI had a keen sense of the importance of economic structures and institutions, but he had an equally clear sense of their nature as instruments of human freedom. Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner.

18. Besides requiring freedom, integral human development as a vocation also demands respect for its truth. The vocation to progress drives us to “do more, know more and have more in order to be more”[41]. But herein lies the problem: what does it mean “to be more”? Paul VI answers the question by indicating the essential quality of “authentic” development: it must be “integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man”[42]. Amid the various competing anthropological visions put forward in today's society, even more so than in Paul VI's time, the Christian vision has the particular characteristic of asserting and justifying the unconditional value of the human person and the meaning of his growth. The Christian vocation to development helps to promote the advancement of all men and of the whole man. As Paul VI wrote: “What we hold important is man, each man and each group of men, and we even include the whole of humanity”[43]. In promoting development, the Christian faith does not rely on privilege or positions of power, nor even on the merits of Christians (even though these existed and continue to exist alongside their natural limitations)[44], but only on Christ, to whom every authentic vocation to integral human development must be directed. The Gospel is fundamental for development, because in the Gospel, Christ, “in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals humanity to itself”[45]. Taught by her Lord, the Church examines the signs of the times and interprets them, offering the world “what she possesses as her characteristic attribute: a global vision of man and of the human race”[46]. Precisely because God gives a resounding “yes” to man[47], man cannot fail to open himself to the divine vocation to pursue his own development. The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development. This is the central message of Populorum Progressio, valid for today and for all time. Integral human development on the natural plane, as a response to a vocation from God the Creator[48], demands self-fulfilment in a “transcendent humanism which gives [to man] his greatest possible perfection: this is the highest goal of personal development”[49]. The Christian vocation to this development therefore applies to both the natural plane and the supernatural plane; which is why, “when God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose and the ‘good' begins to wane”[50].

19. Finally, the vision of development as a vocation brings with it the central place of charity within that development. Paul VI, in his Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, pointed out that the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of the material order. He invited us to search for them in other dimensions of the human person: first of all, in the will, which often neglects the duties of solidarity; secondly in thinking, which does not always give proper direction to the will. Hence, in the pursuit of development, there is a need for “the deep thought and reflection of wise men in search of a new humanism which will enable modern man to find himself anew”[51]. But that is not all. Underdevelopment has an even more important cause than lack of deep thought: it is “the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples”[52]. Will it ever be possible to obtain this brotherhood by human effort alone? As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers. Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is. Paul VI, presenting the various levels in the process of human development, placed at the summit, after mentioning faith, “unity in the charity of Christ who calls us all to share as sons in the life of the living God, the Father of all”[53].

20. These perspectives, which Populorum Progressio opens up, remain fundamental for giving breathing-space and direction to our commitment for the development of peoples. Moreover, Populorum Progressio repeatedly underlines the urgent need for reform[54], and in the face of great problems of injustice in the development of peoples, it calls for courageous action to be taken without delay. This urgency is also a consequence of charity in truth. It is Christ's charity that drives us on: “caritas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14). The urgency is inscribed not only in things, it is not derived solely from the rapid succession of events and problems, but also from the very matter that is at stake: the establishment of authentic fraternity.

The importance of this goal is such as to demand our openness to understand it in depth and to mobilize ourselves at the level of the “heart”, so as to ensure that current economic and social processes evolve towards fully human outcomes.

CHAPTER TWO

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IN OUR TIME

21. Paul VI had an articulated vision of development. He understood the term to indicate the goal of rescuing peoples, first and foremost, from hunger, deprivation, endemic diseases and illiteracy. From the economic point of view, this meant their active participation, on equal terms, in the international economic process; from the social point of view, it meant their evolution into educated societies marked by solidarity; from the political point of view, it meant the consolidation of democratic regimes capable of ensuring freedom and peace. After so many years, as we observe with concern the developments and perspectives of the succession of crises that afflict the world today, we ask to what extent Paul VI's expectations have been fulfilled by the model of development adopted in recent decades. We recognize, therefore, that the Church had good reason to be concerned about the capacity of a purely technological society to set realistic goals and to make good use of the instruments at its disposal. Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty. The economic development that Paul VI hoped to see was meant to produce real growth, of benefit to everyone and genuinely sustainable. It is true that growth has taken place, and it continues to be a positive factor that has lifted billions of people out of misery — recently it has given many countries the possibility of becoming effective players in international politics. Yet it must be acknowledged that this same economic growth has been and continues to be weighed down by malfunctions and dramatic problems, highlighted even further by the current crisis. This presents us with choices that cannot be postponed concerning nothing less than the destiny of man, who, moreover, cannot prescind from his nature. The technical forces in play, the global interrelations, the damaging effects on the real economy of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of peoples, often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention, the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources: all this leads us today to reflect on the measures that would be necessary to provide a solution to problems that are not only new in comparison to those addressed by Pope Paul VI, but also, and above all, of decisive impact upon the present and future good of humanity. The different aspects of the crisis, its solutions, and any new development that the future may bring, are increasingly interconnected, they imply one another, they require new efforts of holistic understanding and a new humanistic synthesis. The complexity and gravity of the present economic situation rightly cause us concern, but we must adopt a realistic attitude as we take up with confidence and hope the new responsibilities to which we are called by the prospect of a world in need of profound cultural renewal, a world that needs to rediscover fundamental values on which to build a better future. The current crisis obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future. In this spirit, with confidence rather than resignation, it is appropriate to address the difficulties of the present time.

22. Today the picture of development has many overlapping layers. The actors and the causes in both underdevelopment and development are manifold, the faults and the merits are differentiated. This fact should prompt us to liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways, and it should lead us to examine objectively the full human dimension of the problems. As John Paul II has already observed, the demarcation line between rich and poor countries is no longer as clear as it was at the time of Populorum Progressio[55]. The world's wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. In rich countries, new sectors of society are succumbing to poverty and new forms of poverty are emerging. In poorer areas some groups enjoy a sort of “superdevelopment” of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation. “The scandal of glaring inequalities”[56] continues. Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries, both old and new, as well as in poor ones. Among those who sometimes fail to respect the human rights of workers are large multinational companies as well as local producers. International aid has often been diverted from its proper ends, through irresponsible actions both within the chain of donors and within that of the beneficiaries. Similarly, in the context of immaterial or cultural causes of development and underdevelopment, we find these same patterns of responsibility reproduced. On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care. At the same time, in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behaviour persist which hinder the process of development.

23. Many areas of the globe today have evolved considerably, albeit in problematical and disparate ways, thereby taking their place among the great powers destined to play important roles in the future. Yet it should be stressed that progress of a merely economic and technological kind is insufficient. Development needs above all to be true and integral. The mere fact of emerging from economic backwardness, though positive in itself, does not resolve the complex issues of human advancement, neither for the countries that are spearheading such progress, nor for those that are already economically developed, nor even for those that are still poor, which can suffer not just through old forms of exploitation, but also from the negative consequences of a growth that is marked by irregularities and imbalances.

After the collapse of the economic and political systems of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the end of the so-called opposing blocs, a complete re-examination of development was needed. Pope John Paul II called for it, when in 1987 he pointed to the existence of these blocs as one of the principal causes of underdevelopment[57], inasmuch as politics withdrew resources from the economy and from the culture, and ideology inhibited freedom. Moreover, in 1991, after the events of 1989, he asked that, in view of the ending of the blocs, there should be a comprehensive new plan for development, not only in those countries, but also in the West and in those parts of the world that were in the process of evolving[58]. This has been achieved only in part, and it is still a real duty that needs to be discharged, perhaps by means of the choices that are necessary to overcome current economic problems.

24. The world that Paul VI had before him — even though society had already evolved to such an extent that he could speak of social issues in global terms — was still far less integrated than today's world. Economic activity and the political process were both largely conducted within the same geographical area, and could therefore feed off one another. Production took place predominantly within national boundaries, and financial investments had somewhat limited circulation outside the country, so that the politics of many States could still determine the priorities of the economy and to some degree govern its performance using the instruments at their disposal. Hence Populorum Progressio assigned a central, albeit not exclusive, role to “public authorities”[59].

In our own day, the State finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial. This new context has altered the political power of States.

Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State's public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodelled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today's world. Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally, that have come about through the activity of organizations operating in civil society; in this way it is to be hoped that the citizens' interest and participation in the res publica will become more deeply rooted.

25. From the social point of view, systems of protection and welfare, already present in many countries in Paul VI's day, are finding it hard and could find it even harder in the future to pursue their goals of true social justice in today's profoundly changed environment. The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State. Systems of social security can lose the capacity to carry out their task, both in emerging countries and in those that were among the earliest to develop, as well as in poor countries. Here budgetary policies, with cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers' associations. Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum[60], for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.

The mobility of labour, associated with a climate of deregulation, is an important phenomenon with certain positive aspects, because it can stimulate wealth production and cultural exchange. Nevertheless, uncertainty over working conditions caused by mobility and deregulation, when it becomes endemic, tends to create new forms of psychological instability, giving rise to difficulty in forging coherent life-plans, including that of marriage. This leads to situations of human decline, to say nothing of the waste of social resources. In comparison with the casualties of industrial society in the past, unemployment today provokes new forms of economic marginalization, and the current crisis can only make this situation worse. Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering. I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world's economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: “Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life”[61].

26. On the cultural plane, compared with Paul VI's day, the difference is even more marked. At that time cultures were relatively well defined and had greater opportunity to defend themselves against attempts to merge them into one. Today the possibilities of interaction between cultures have increased significantly, giving rise to new openings for intercultural dialogue: a dialogue that, if it is to be effective, has to set out from a deep-seated knowledge of the specific identity of the various dialogue partners. Let it not be forgotten that the increased commercialization of cultural exchange today leads to a twofold danger. First, one may observe a cultural eclecticism that is often assumed uncritically: cultures are simply placed alongside one another and viewed as substantially equivalent and interchangeable. This easily yields to a relativism that does not serve true intercultural dialogue; on the social plane, cultural relativism has the effect that cultural groups coexist side by side, but remain separate, with no authentic dialogue and therefore with no true integration. Secondly, the opposite danger exists, that of cultural levelling and indiscriminate acceptance of types of conduct and life-styles. In this way one loses sight of the profound significance of the culture of different nations, of the traditions of the various peoples, by which the individual defines himself in relation to life's fundamental questions[62]. What eclecticism and cultural levelling have in common is the separation of culture from human nature. Thus, cultures can no longer define themselves within a nature that transcends them[63], and man ends up being reduced to a mere cultural statistic. When this happens, humanity runs new risks of enslavement and manipulation.

27. Life in many poor countries is still extremely insecure as a consequence of food shortages, and the situation could become worse: hunger still reaps enormous numbers of victims among those who, like Lazarus, are not permitted to take their place at the rich man's table, contrary to the hopes expressed by Paul VI[64]. Feed the hungry (cf. Mt 25: 35, 37, 42) is an ethical imperative for the universal Church, as she responds to the teachings of her Founder, the Lord Jesus, concerning solidarity and the sharing of goods. Moreover, the elimination of world hunger has also, in the global era, become a requirement for safeguarding the peace and stability of the planet. Hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional needs, and also capable of addressing the primary needs and necessities ensuing from genuine food crises, whether due to natural causes or political irresponsibility, nationally and internationally. The problem of food insecurity needs to be addressed within a long-term perspective, eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries. This can be done by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology that can make the best use of the human, natural and socio-economic resources that are more readily available at the local level, while guaranteeing their sustainability over the long term as well. All this needs to be accomplished with the involvement of local communities in choices and decisions that affect the use of agricultural land. In this perspective, it could be useful to consider the new possibilities that are opening up through proper use of traditional as well as innovative farming techniques, always assuming that these have been judged, after sufficient testing, to be appropriate, respectful of the environment and attentive to the needs of the most deprived peoples. At the same time, the question of equitable agrarian reform in developing countries should not be ignored. The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life. It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination[65]. It is important, moreover, to emphasize that solidarity with poor countries in the process of development can point towards a solution of the current global crisis, as politicians and directors of international institutions have begun to sense in recent times. Through support for economically poor countries by means of financial plans inspired by solidarity — so that these countries can take steps to satisfy their own citizens' demand for consumer goods and for development — not only can true economic growth be generated, but a contribution can be made towards sustaining the productive capacities of rich countries that risk being compromised by the crisis.

28. One of the most striking aspects of development in the present day is the important question of respect for life, which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. It is an aspect which has acquired increasing prominence in recent times, obliging us to broaden our concept of poverty[66] and underdevelopment to include questions connected with the acceptance of life, especially in cases where it is impeded in a variety of ways.

Not only does the situation of poverty still provoke high rates of infant mortality in many regions, but some parts of the world still experience practices of demographic control, on the part of governments that often promote contraception and even go so far as to impose abortion. In economically developed countries, legislation contrary to life is very widespread, and it has already shaped moral attitudes and praxis, contributing to the spread of an anti-birth mentality; frequent attempts are made to export this mentality to other States as if it were a form of cultural progress.

Some non-governmental Organizations work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization in poor countries, in some cases not even informing the women concerned. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures. Further grounds for concern are laws permitting euthanasia as well as pressure from lobby groups, nationally and internationally, in favour of its juridical recognition.

Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away[67]. The acceptance of life strengthens moral fibre and makes people capable of mutual help. By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens, and instead, they can promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual.

29. There is another aspect of modern life that is very closely connected to development: the denial of the right to religious freedom. I am not referring simply to the struggles and conflicts that continue to be fought in the world for religious motives, even if at times the religious motive is merely a cover for other reasons, such as the desire for domination and wealth. Today, in fact, people frequently kill in the holy name of God, as both my predecessor John Paul II and I myself have often publicly acknowledged and lamented[68]. Violence puts the brakes on authentic development and impedes the evolution of peoples towards greater socio-economic and spiritual well-being. This applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism[69], which generates grief, destruction and death, obstructs dialogue between nations and diverts extensive resources from their peaceful and civil uses.

Yet it should be added that, as well as religious fanaticism that in some contexts impedes the exercise of the right to religious freedom, so too the deliberate promotion of religious indifference or practical atheism on the part of many countries obstructs the requirements for the development of peoples, depriving them of spiritual and human resources. God is the guarantor of man's true development, inasmuch as, having created him in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. Man is not a lost atom in a random universe[70]: he is God's creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved. If man were merely the fruit of either chance or necessity, or if he had to lower his aspirations to the limited horizon of the world in which he lives, if all reality were merely history and culture, and man did not possess a nature destined to transcend itself in a supernatural life, then one could speak of growth, or evolution, but not development. When the State promotes, teaches, or actually imposes forms of practical atheism, it deprives its citizens of the moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for attaining integral human development and it impedes them from moving forward with renewed dynamism as they strive to offer a more generous human response to divine love[71]. In the context of cultural, commercial or political relations, it also sometimes happens that economically developed or emerging countries export this reductive vision of the person and his destiny to poor countries. This is the damage that “superdevelopment”[72] causes to authentic development when it is accompanied by “moral underdevelopment”[73].

30. In this context, the theme of integral human development takes on an even broader range of meanings: the correlation between its multiple elements requires a commitment to foster the interaction of the different levels of human knowledge in order to promote the authentic development of peoples. Often it is thought that development, or the socio-economic measures that go with it, merely require to be implemented through joint action. This joint action, however, needs to be given direction, because “all social action involves a doctrine”[74]. In view of the complexity of the issues, it is obvious that the various disciplines have to work together through an orderly interdisciplinary exchange. Charity does not exclude knowledge, but rather requires, promotes, and animates it from within. Knowledge is never purely the work of the intellect. It can certainly be reduced to calculation and experiment, but if it aspires to be wisdom capable of directing man in the light of his first beginnings and his final ends, it must be “seasoned” with the “salt” of charity. Deeds without knowledge are blind, and knowledge without love is sterile. Indeed, “the individual who is animated by true charity labours skilfully to discover the causes of misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it resolutely”[75]. Faced with the phenomena that lie before us, charity in truth requires first of all that we know and understand, acknowledging and respecting the specific competence of every level of knowledge. Charity is not an added extra, like an appendix to work already concluded in each of the various disciplines: it engages them in dialogue from the very beginning. The demands of love do not contradict those of reason. Human knowledge is insufficient and the conclusions of science cannot indicate by themselves the path towards integral human development. There is always a need to push further ahead: this is what is required by charity in truth[76]. Going beyond, however, never means prescinding from the conclusions of reason, nor contradicting its results. Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love.

31. This means that moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand, and that charity must animate them in a harmonious interdisciplinary whole, marked by unity and distinction. The Church's social doctrine, which has “an important interdisciplinary dimension”[77], can exercise, in this perspective, a function of extraordinary effectiveness. It allows faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church's social doctrine displays its dimension of wisdom. Paul VI had seen clearly that among the causes of underdevelopment there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating a guiding synthesis[78], for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects”[79] is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge[80], the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences[81], the difficulties encountered by dialogue between science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral good of man in its various dimensions. The “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application”[82] is indispensable if we are to succeed in adequately weighing all the elements involved in the question of development and in the solution of socio-economic problems.

32. The significant new elements in the picture of the development of peoples today in many cases demand new solutions. These need to be found together, respecting the laws proper to each element and in the light of an integral vision of man, reflecting the different aspects of the human person, contemplated through a lens purified by charity. Remarkable convergences and possible solutions will then come to light, without any fundamental component of human life being obscured.

The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner[83], and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone. All things considered, this is also required by “economic logic”. Through the systemic increase of social inequality, both within a single country and between the populations of different countries (i.e. the massive increase in relative poverty), not only does social cohesion suffer, thereby placing democracy at risk, but so too does the economy, through the progressive erosion of “social capital”: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence.

Economic science tells us that structural insecurity generates anti-productive attitudes wasteful of human resources, inasmuch as workers tend to adapt passively to automatic mechanisms, rather than to release creativity. On this point too, there is a convergence between economic science and moral evaluation. Human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs.

It should be remembered that the reduction of cultures to the technological dimension, even if it favours short-term profits, in the long term impedes reciprocal enrichment and the dynamics of cooperation. It is important to distinguish between short- and long-term economic or sociological considerations. Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development. Moreover, the human consequences of current tendencies towards a short-term economy — sometimes very short-term — need to be carefully evaluated. This requires further and deeper reflection on the meaning of the economy and its goals[84], as well as a profound and far-sighted revision of the current model of development, so as to correct its dysfunctions and deviations. This is demanded, in any case, by the earth's state of ecological health; above all it is required by the cultural and moral crisis of man, the symptoms of which have been evident for some time all over the world.

33. More than forty years after Populorum Progressio, its basic theme, namely progress, remains an open question, made all the more acute and urgent by the current economic and financial crisis. If some areas of the globe, with a history of poverty, have experienced remarkable changes in terms of their economic growth and their share in world production, other zones are still living in a situation of deprivation comparable to that which existed at the time of Paul VI, and in some cases one can even speak of a deterioration. It is significant that some of the causes of this situation were identified in Populorum Progressio, such as the high tariffs imposed by economically developed countries, which still make it difficult for the products of poor countries to gain a foothold in the markets of rich countries. Other causes, however, mentioned only in passing in the Encyclical, have since emerged with greater clarity. A case in point would be the evaluation of the process of decolonization, then at its height. Paul VI hoped to see the journey towards autonomy unfold freely and in peace. More than forty years later, we must acknowledge how difficult this journey has been, both because of new forms of colonialism and continued dependence on old and new foreign powers, and because of grave irresponsibility within the very countries that have achieved independence.

The principal new feature has been the explosion of worldwide interdependence, commonly known as globalization. Paul VI had partially foreseen it, but the ferocious pace at which it has evolved could not have been anticipated. Originating within economically developed countries, this process by its nature has spread to include all economies. It has been the principal driving force behind the emergence from underdevelopment of whole regions, and in itself it represents a great opportunity. Nevertheless, without the guidance of charity in truth, this global force could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions within the human family. Hence charity and truth confront us with an altogether new and creative challenge, one that is certainly vast and complex. It is about broadening the scope of reason and making it capable of knowing and directing these powerful new forces, animating them within the perspective of that “civilization of love” whose seed God has planted in every people, in every culture.

CHAPTER THREE

FRATERNITY, ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT AND CIVIL SOCIETY

34. Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin. The Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals”[85]. In the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident, the economy has been included for some time now. We have a clear proof of this at the present time. The conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Then, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise. As I said in my Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, history is thereby deprived of Christian hope[86], deprived of a powerful social resource at the service of integral human development, sought in freedom and in justice. Hope encourages reason and gives it the strength to direct the will[87]. It is already present in faith, indeed it is called forth by faith. Charity in truth feeds on hope and, at the same time, manifests it. As the absolutely gratuitous gift of God, hope bursts into our lives as something not due to us, something that transcends every law of justice. Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God's presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us. Truth — which is itself gift, in the same way as charity — is greater than we are, as Saint Augustine teaches[88]. Likewise the truth of ourselves, of our personal conscience, is first of all given to us. In every cognitive process, truth is not something that we produce, it is always found, or better, received. Truth, like love, “is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings”[89].

Because it is a gift received by everyone, charity in truth is a force that builds community, it brings all people together without imposing barriers or limits. The human community that we build by ourselves can never, purely by its own strength, be a fully fraternal community, nor can it overcome every division and become a truly universal community. The unity of the human race, a fraternal communion transcending every barrier, is called into being by the word of God-who-is-Love. In addressing this key question, we must make it clear, on the one hand, that the logic of gift does not exclude justice, nor does it merely sit alongside it as a second element added from without; on the other hand, economic, social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity.

35. In a climate of mutual trust, the market is the economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and services of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their needs and desires. The market is subject to the principles of so-called commutative justice, which regulates the relations of giving and receiving between parties to a transaction. But the social doctrine of the Church has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy, not only because it belongs within a broader social and political context, but also because of the wider network of relations within which it operates. In fact, if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well. Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function. And today it is this trust which has ceased to exist, and the loss of trust is a grave loss. It was timely when Paul VI in Populorum Progressio insisted that the economic system itself would benefit from the wide-ranging practice of justice, inasmuch as the first to gain from the development of poor countries would be rich ones[90]. According to the Pope, it was not just a matter of correcting dysfunctions through assistance. The poor are not to be considered a “burden”[91], but a resource, even from the purely economic point of view. It is nevertheless erroneous to hold that the market economy has an inbuilt need for a quota of poverty and underdevelopment in order to function at its best. It is in the interests of the market to promote emancipation, but in order to do so effectively, it cannot rely only on itself, because it is not able to produce by itself something that lies outside its competence. It must draw its moral energies from other subjects that are capable of generating them.

36. Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.

The Church has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society. In and of itself, the market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak. Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations. Admittedly, the market can be a negative force, not because it is so by nature, but because a certain ideology can make it so. It must be remembered that the market does not exist in the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction. Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.

The Church's social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or “after” it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner.

The great challenge before us, accentuated by the problems of development in this global era and made even more urgent by the economic and financial crisis, is to demonstrate, in thinking and behaviour, not only that traditional principles of social ethics like transparency, honesty and responsibility cannot be ignored or attenuated, but also that in commercial relationships the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity. This is a human demand at the present time, but it is also demanded by economic logic. It is a demand both of charity and of truth.

37. The Church's social doctrine has always maintained that justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs. Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence. The social sciences and the direction taken by the contemporary economy point to the same conclusion. Perhaps at one time it was conceivable that first the creation of wealth could be entrusted to the economy, and then the task of distributing it could be assigned to politics. Today that would be more difficult, given that economic activity is no longer circumscribed within territorial limits, while the authority of governments continues to be principally local. Hence the canons of justice must be respected from the outset, as the economic process unfolds, and not just afterwards or incidentally. Space also needs to be created within the market for economic activity carried out by subjects who freely choose to act according to principles other than those of pure profit, without sacrificing the production of economic value in the process. The many economic entities that draw their origin from religious and lay initiatives demonstrate that this is concretely possible.

In the global era, the economy is influenced by competitive models tied to cultures that differ greatly among themselves. The different forms of economic enterprise to which they give rise find their main point of encounter in commutative justice. Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics, and what is more, it needs works redolent of the spirit of gift. The economy in the global era seems to privilege the former logic, that of contractual exchange, but directly or indirectly it also demonstrates its need for the other two: political logic, and the logic of the unconditional gift.

38. My predecessor John Paul II drew attention to this question in Centesimus Annus, when he spoke of the need for a system with three subjects: the market, the State and civil society[92]. He saw civil society as the most natural setting for an economy of gratuitousness and fraternity, but did not mean to deny it a place in the other two settings. Today we can say that economic life must be understood as a multi-layered phenomenon: in every one of these layers, to varying degrees and in ways specifically suited to each, the aspect of fraternal reciprocity must be present. In the global era, economic activity cannot prescind from gratuitousness, which fosters and disseminates solidarity and responsibility for justice and the common good among the different economic players. It is clearly a specific and profound form of economic democracy. Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone[93], and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. While in the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement, today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place. What is needed, therefore, is a market that permits the free operation, in conditions of equal opportunity, of enterprises in pursuit of different institutional ends. Alongside profit-oriented private enterprise and the various types of public enterprise, there must be room for commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends to take root and express themselves. It is from their reciprocal encounter in the marketplace that one may expect hybrid forms of commercial behaviour to emerge, and hence an attentiveness to ways of civilizing the economy. Charity in truth, in this case, requires that shape and structure be given to those types of economic initiative which, without rejecting profit, aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents, of profit as an end in itself.

39. Paul VI in Populorum Progressio called for the creation of a model of market economy capable of including within its range all peoples and not just the better off. He called for efforts to build a more human world for all, a world in which “all will be able to give and receive, without one group making progress at the expense of the other”[94]. In this way he was applying on a global scale the insights and aspirations contained in Rerum Novarum, written when, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the idea was first proposed — somewhat ahead of its time — that the civil order, for its self-regulation, also needed intervention from the State for purposes of redistribution. Not only is this vision threatened today by the way in which markets and societies are opening up, but it is evidently insufficient to satisfy the demands of a fully humane economy. What the Church's social doctrine has always sustained, on the basis of its vision of man and society, is corroborated today by the dynamics of globalization.

When both the logic of the market and the logic of the State come to an agreement that each will continue to exercise a monopoly over its respective area of influence, in the long term much is lost: solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness, all of which stand in contrast with giving in order to acquire (the logic of exchange) and giving through duty (the logic of public obligation, imposed by State law). In order to defeat underdevelopment, action is required not only on improving exchange-based transactions and implanting public welfare structures, but above all on gradually increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion. The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society. The market of gratuitousness does not exist, and attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law. Yet both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift.

40. Today's international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise. Old models are disappearing, but promising new ones are taking shape on the horizon. Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value. Owing to their growth in scale and the need for more and more capital, it is becoming increasingly rare for business enterprises to be in the hands of a stable director who feels responsible in the long term, not just the short term, for the life and the results of his company, and it is becoming increasingly rare for businesses to depend on a single territory. Moreover, the so-called outsourcing of production can weaken the company's sense of responsibility towards the stakeholders — namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment and broader society — in favour of the shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and who therefore enjoy extraordinary mobility. Today's international capital market offers great freedom of action. Yet there is also increasing awareness of the need for greater social responsibility on the part of business. Even if the ethical considerations that currently inform debate on the social responsibility of the corporate world are not all acceptable from the perspective of the Church's social doctrine, there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference. In recent years a new cosmopolitan class of managers has emerged, who are often answerable only to the shareholders generally consisting of anonymous funds which de facto determine their remuneration. By contrast, though, many far-sighted managers today are becoming increasingly aware of the profound links between their enterprise and the territory or territories in which it operates. Paul VI invited people to give serious attention to the damage that can be caused to one's home country by the transfer abroad of capital purely for personal advantage[95]. John Paul II taught that investment always has moral, as well as economic significance[96]. All this — it should be stressed — is still valid today, despite the fact that the capital market has been significantly liberalized, and modern technological thinking can suggest that investment is merely a technical act, not a human and ethical one. There is no reason to deny that a certain amount of capital can do good, if invested abroad rather than at home. Yet the requirements of justice must be safeguarded, with due consideration for the way in which the capital was generated and the harm to individuals that will result if it is not used where it was produced[97]. What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development. It is true that the export of investments and skills can benefit the populations of the receiving country. Labour and technical knowledge are a universal good. Yet it is not right to export these things merely for the sake of obtaining advantageous conditions, or worse, for purposes of exploitation, without making a real contribution to local society by helping to bring about a robust productive and social system, an essential factor for stable development.

41. In the context of this discussion, it is helpful to observe that business enterprise involves a wide range of values, becoming wider all the time. The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other. In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way. There are a number of reasons, of a meta-economic kind, for saying this. Business activity has a human significance, prior to its professional one[98]. It is present in all work, understood as a personal action, an “actus personae”[99], which is why every worker should have the chance to make his contribution knowing that in some way “he is working ‘for himself'”[100]. With good reason, Paul VI taught that “everyone who works is a creator”[101]. It is in response to the needs and the dignity of the worker, as well as the needs of society, that there exist various types of business enterprise, over and above the simple distinction between “private” and “public”. Each of them requires and expresses a specific business capacity. In order to construct an economy that will soon be in a position to serve the national and global common good, it is appropriate to take account of this broader significance of business activity. It favours cross-fertilization between different types of business activity, with shifting of competences from the “non-profit” world to the “profit” world and vice versa, from the public world to that of civil society, from advanced economies to developing countries.

Political authority also involves a wide range of values, which must not be overlooked in the process of constructing a new order of economic productivity, socially responsible and human in scale. As well as cultivating differentiated forms of business activity on the global plane, we must also promote a dispersed political authority, effective on different levels. The integrated economy of the present day does not make the role of States redundant, but rather it commits governments to greater collaboration with one another. Both wisdom and prudence suggest not being too precipitous in declaring the demise of the State. In terms of the resolution of the current crisis, the State's role seems destined to grow, as it regains many of its competences. In some nations, moreover, the construction or reconstruction of the State remains a key factor in their development. The focus of international aid, within a solidarity-based plan to resolve today's economic problems, should rather be on consolidating constitutional, juridical and administrative systems in countries that do not yet fully enjoy these goods. Alongside economic aid, there needs to be aid directed towards reinforcing the guarantees proper to the State of law: a system of public order and effective imprisonment that respects human rights, truly democratic institutions. The State does not need to have identical characteristics everywhere: the support aimed at strengthening weak constitutional systems can easily be accompanied by the development of other political players, of a cultural, social, territorial or religious nature, alongside the State. The articulation of political authority at the local, national and international levels is one of the best ways of giving direction to the process of economic globalization. It is also the way to ensure that it does not actually undermine the foundations of democracy.

42. Sometimes globalization is viewed in fatalistic terms, as if the dynamics involved were the product of anonymous impersonal forces or structures independent of the human will[102]. In this regard it is useful to remember that while globalization should certainly be understood as a socio-economic process, this is not its only dimension. Underneath the more visible process, humanity itself is becoming increasingly interconnected; it is made up of individuals and peoples to whom this process should offer benefits and development[103], as they assume their respective responsibilities, singly and collectively. The breaking-down of borders is not simply a material fact: it is also a cultural event both in its causes and its effects. If globalization is viewed from a deterministic standpoint, the criteria with which to evaluate and direct it are lost. As a human reality, it is the product of diverse cultural tendencies, which need to be subjected to a process of discernment. The truth of globalization as a process and its fundamental ethical criterion are given by the unity of the human family and its development towards what is good. Hence a sustained commitment is needed so as to promote a person-based and community-oriented cultural process of world-wide integration that is open to transcendence.

Despite some of its structural elements, which should neither be denied nor exaggerated, “globalization, a priori, is neither good nor bad. It will be what people make of it”[104]. We should not be its victims, but rather its protagonists, acting in the light of reason, guided by charity and truth. Blind opposition would be a mistaken and prejudiced attitude, incapable of recognizing the positive aspects of the process, with the consequent risk of missing the chance to take advantage of its many opportunities for development. The processes of globalization, suitably understood and directed, open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale; if badly directed, however, they can lead to an increase in poverty and inequality, and could even trigger a global crisis. It is necessary to correct the malfunctions, some of them serious, that cause new divisions between peoples and within peoples, and also to ensure that the redistribution of wealth does not come about through the redistribution or increase of poverty: a real danger if the present situation were to be badly managed. For a long time it was thought that poor peoples should remain at a fixed stage of development, and should be content to receive assistance from the philanthropy of developed peoples. Paul VI strongly opposed this mentality in Populorum Progressio. Today the material resources available for rescuing these peoples from poverty are potentially greater than before, but they have ended up largely in the hands of people from developed countries, who have benefited more from the liberalization that has occurred in the mobility of capital and labour. The world-wide diffusion of forms of prosperity should not therefore be held up by projects that are self-centred, protectionist or at the service of private interests. Indeed the involvement of emerging or developing countries allows us to manage the crisis better today. The transition inherent in the process of globalization presents great difficulties and dangers that can only be overcome if we are able to appropriate the underlying anthropological and ethical spirit that drives globalization towards the humanizing goal of solidarity. Unfortunately this spirit is often overwhelmed or suppressed by ethical and cultural considerations of an individualistic and utilitarian nature. Globalization is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon which must be grasped in the diversity and unity of all its different dimensions, including the theological dimension. In this way it will be possible to experience and to steer the globalization of humanity in relational terms, in terms of communion and the sharing of goods.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLE
RIGHTS AND DUTIES
THE ENVIRONMENT

43. “The reality of human solidarity, which is a benefit for us, also imposes a duty”[105]. Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people's integral development. Hence it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence[106]. Nowadays we are witnessing a grave inconsistency. On the one hand, appeals are made to alleged rights, arbitrary and non-essential in nature, accompanied by the demand that they be recognized and promoted by public structures, while, on the other hand, elementary and basic rights remain unacknowledged and are violated in much of the world[107]. A link has often been noted between claims to a “right to excess”, and even to transgression and vice, within affluent societies, and the lack of food, drinkable water, basic instruction and elementary health care in areas of the underdeveloped world and on the outskirts of large metropolitan centres. The link consists in this: individual rights, when detached from a framework of duties which grants them their full meaning, can run wild, leading to an escalation of demands which is effectively unlimited and indiscriminate. An overemphasis on rights leads to a disregard for duties. Duties set a limit on rights because they point to the anthropological and ethical framework of which rights are a part, in this way ensuring that they do not become licence. Duties thereby reinforce rights and call for their defence and promotion as a task to be undertaken in the service of the common good. Otherwise, if the only basis of human rights is to be found in the deliberations of an assembly of citizens, those rights can be changed at any time, and so the duty to respect and pursue them fades from the common consciousness. Governments and international bodies can then lose sight of the objectivity and “inviolability” of rights. When this happens, the authentic development of peoples is endangered[108]. Such a way of thinking and acting compromises the authority of international bodies, especially in the eyes of those countries most in need of development. Indeed, the latter demand that the international community take up the duty of helping them to be “artisans of their own destiny”[109], that is, to take up duties of their own. The sharing of reciprocal duties is a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights.

44. The notion of rights and duties in development must also take account of the problems associated with population growth. This is a very important aspect of authentic development, since it concerns the inalienable values of life and the family[110]. To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view. Suffice it to consider, on the one hand, the significant reduction in infant mortality and the rise in average life expectancy found in economically developed countries, and on the other hand, the signs of crisis observable in societies that are registering an alarming decline in their birth rate. Due attention must obviously be given to responsible procreation, which among other things has a positive contribution to make to integral human development. The Church, in her concern for man's authentic development, urges him to have full respect for human values in the exercise of his sexuality. It cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment, nor can sex education be reduced to technical instruction aimed solely at protecting the interested parties from possible disease or the “risk” of procreation. This would be to impoverish and disregard the deeper meaning of sexuality, a meaning which needs to be acknowledged and responsibly appropriated not only by individuals but also by the community. It is irresponsible to view sexuality merely as a source of pleasure, and likewise to regulate it through strategies of mandatory birth control. In either case materialistic ideas and policies are at work, and individuals are ultimately subjected to various forms of violence. Against such policies, there is a need to defend the primary competence of the family in the area of sexuality[111], as opposed to the State and its restrictive policies, and to ensure that parents are suitably prepared to undertake their responsibilities.

Morally responsible openness to life represents a rich social and economic resource. Populous nations have been able to emerge from poverty thanks not least to the size of their population and the talents of their people. On the other hand, formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty and in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates; this has become a crucial problem for highly affluent societies. The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called “replacement level”, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the “brain pool” upon which nations can draw for their needs. Furthermore, smaller and at times miniscule families run the risk of impoverishing social relations, and failing to ensure effective forms of solidarity. These situations are symptomatic of scant confidence in the future and moral weariness. It is thus becoming a social and even economic necessity once more to hold up to future generations the beauty of marriage and the family, and the fact that these institutions correspond to the deepest needs and dignity of the person. In view of this, States are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society[112], and to assume responsibility for its economic and fiscal needs, while respecting its essentially relational character.

45. Striving to meet the deepest moral needs of the person also has important and beneficial repercussions at the level of economics. The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred. Today we hear much talk of ethics in the world of economy, finance and business. Research centres and seminars in business ethics are on the rise; the system of ethical certification is spreading throughout the developed world as part of the movement of ideas associated with the responsibilities of business towards society. Banks are proposing “ethical” accounts and investment funds. “Ethical financing” is being developed, especially through micro-credit and, more generally, micro-finance. These processes are praiseworthy and deserve much support. Their positive effects are also being felt in the less developed areas of the world. It would be advisable, however, to develop a sound criterion of discernment, since the adjective “ethical” can be abused. When the word is used generically, it can lend itself to any number of interpretations, even to the point where it includes decisions and choices contrary to justice and authentic human welfare.

Much in fact depends on the underlying system of morality. On this subject the Church's social doctrine can make a specific contribution, since it is based on man's creation “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27), a datum which gives rise to the inviolable dignity of the human person and the transcendent value of natural moral norms. When business ethics prescinds from these two pillars, it inevitably risks losing its distinctive nature and it falls prey to forms of exploitation; more specifically, it risks becoming subservient to existing economic and financial systems rather than correcting their dysfunctional aspects. Among other things, it risks being used to justify the financing of projects that are in reality unethical. The word “ethical”, then, should not be used to make ideological distinctions, as if to suggest that initiatives not formally so designated would not be ethical. Efforts are needed — and it is essential to say this — not only to create “ethical” sectors or segments of the economy or the world of finance, but to ensure that the whole economy — the whole of finance — is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label, but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature. The Church's social teaching is quite clear on the subject, recalling that the economy, in all its branches, constitutes a sector of human activity[113].

46. When we consider the issues involved in the relationship between business and ethics, as well as the evolution currently taking place in methods of production, it would appear that the traditionally valid distinction between profit-based companies and non-profit organizations can no longer do full justice to reality, or offer practical direction for the future. In recent decades a broad intermediate area has emerged between the two types of enterprise. It is made up of traditional companies which nonetheless subscribe to social aid agreements in support of underdeveloped countries, charitable foundations associated with individual companies, groups of companies oriented towards social welfare, and the diversified world of the so-called “civil economy” and the “economy of communion”. This is not merely a matter of a “third sector”, but of a broad new composite reality embracing the private and public spheres, one which does not exclude profit, but instead considers it a means for achieving human and social ends. Whether such companies distribute dividends or not, whether their juridical structure corresponds to one or other of the established forms, becomes secondary in relation to their willingness to view profit as a means of achieving the goal of a more humane market and society. It is to be hoped that these new kinds of enterprise will succeed in finding a suitable juridical and fiscal structure in every country. Without prejudice to the importance and the economic and social benefits of the more traditional forms of business, they steer the system towards a clearer and more complete assumption of duties on the part of economic subjects. And not only that. The very plurality of institutional forms of business gives rise to a market which is not only more civilized but also more competitive.

47. The strengthening of different types of businesses, especially those capable of viewing profit as a means for achieving the goal of a more humane market and society, must also be pursued in those countries that are excluded or marginalized from the influential circles of the global economy. In these countries it is very important to move ahead with projects based on subsidiarity, suitably planned and managed, aimed at affirming rights yet also providing for the assumption of corresponding responsibilities. In development programmes, the principle of the centrality of the human person, as the subject primarily responsible for development, must be preserved. The principal concern must be to improve the actual living conditions of the people in a given region, thus enabling them to carry out those duties which their poverty does not presently allow them to fulfil. Social concern must never be an abstract attitude. Development programmes, if they are to be adapted to individual situations, need to be flexible; and the people who benefit from them ought to be directly involved in their planning and implementation. The criteria to be applied should aspire towards incremental development in a context of solidarity — with careful monitoring of results — inasmuch as there are no universally valid solutions. Much depends on the way programmes are managed in practice. “The peoples themselves have the prime responsibility to work for their own development. But they will not bring this about in isolation”[114]. These words of Paul VI are all the more timely nowadays, as our world becomes progressively more integrated. The dynamics of inclusion are hardly automatic. Solutions need to be carefully designed to correspond to people's concrete lives, based on a prudential evaluation of each situation. Alongside macro-projects, there is a place for micro-projects, and above all there is need for the active mobilization of all the subjects of civil society, both juridical and physical persons.

International cooperation requires people who can be part of the process of economic and human development through the solidarity of their presence, supervision, training and respect. From this standpoint, international organizations might question the actual effectiveness of their bureaucratic and administrative machinery, which is often excessively costly. At times it happens that those who receive aid become subordinate to the aid-givers, and the poor serve to perpetuate expensive bureaucracies which consume an excessively high percentage of funds intended for development. Hence it is to be hoped that all international agencies and non-governmental organizations will commit themselves to complete transparency, informing donors and the public of the percentage of their income allocated to programmes of cooperation, the actual content of those programmes and, finally, the detailed expenditure of the institution itself.

48. Today the subject of development is also closely related to the duties arising from our relationship to the natural environment. The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. When nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes. In nature, the believer recognizes the wonderful result of God's creative activity, which we may use responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation. If this vision is lost, we end up either considering nature an untouchable taboo or, on the contrary, abusing it. Neither attitude is consonant with the Christian vision of nature as the fruit of God's creation.

Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator (cf. Rom 1:20) and his love for humanity. It is destined to be “recapitulated” in Christ at the end of time (cf. Eph 1:9-10; Col 1:19-20). Thus it too is a “vocation”[115]. Nature is at our disposal not as “a heap of scattered refuse”[116], but as a gift of the Creator who has given it an inbuilt order, enabling man to draw from it the principles needed in order “to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). But it should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense. This having been said, it is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a “grammar” which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation. Today much harm is done to development precisely as a result of these distorted notions. Reducing nature merely to a collection of contingent data ends up doing violence to the environment and even encouraging activity that fails to respect human nature itself. Our nature, constituted not only by matter but also by spirit, and as such, endowed with transcendent meaning and aspirations, is also normative for culture. Human beings interpret and shape the natural environment through culture, which in turn is given direction by the responsible use of freedom, in accordance with the dictates of the moral law. Consequently, projects for integral human development cannot ignore coming generations, but need to be marked by solidarity and inter-generational justice, while taking into account a variety of contexts: ecological, juridical, economic, political and cultural[117].

49. Questions linked to the care and preservation of the environment today need to give due consideration to the energy problem. The fact that some States, power groups and companies hoard non-renewable energy resources represents a grave obstacle to development in poor countries. Those countries lack the economic means either to gain access to existing sources of non-renewable energy or to finance research into new alternatives. The stockpiling of natural resources, which in many cases are found in the poor countries themselves, gives rise to exploitation and frequent conflicts between and within nations. These conflicts are often fought on the soil of those same countries, with a heavy toll of death, destruction and further decay. The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process, in order to plan together for the future.

On this front too, there is a pressing moral need for renewed solidarity, especially in relationships between developing countries and those that are highly industrialized[118]. The technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption, either through an evolution in manufacturing methods or through greater ecological sensitivity among their citizens. It should be added that at present it is possible to achieve improved energy efficiency while at the same time encouraging research into alternative forms of energy. What is also needed, though, is a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them. The fate of those countries cannot be left in the hands of whoever is first to claim the spoils, or whoever is able to prevail over the rest. Here we are dealing with major issues; if they are to be faced adequately, then everyone must responsibly recognize the impact they will have on future generations, particularly on the many young people in the poorer nations, who “ask to assume their active part in the construction of a better world”[119].

50. This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources. Human beings legitimately exercise a responsible stewardship over nature, in order to protect it, to enjoy its fruits and to cultivate it in new ways, with the assistance of advanced technologies, so that it can worthily accommodate and feed the world's population. On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself — God's gift to his children — and through hard work and creativity. At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it. This means being committed to making joint decisions “after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying”[120]. Let us hope that the international community and individual governments will succeed in countering harmful ways of treating the environment. It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations: the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate obliges all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet[121]. One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of “efficiency” is not value-free.

51. The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa. This invites contemporary society to a serious review of its life-style, which, in many parts of the world, is prone to hedonism and consumerism, regardless of their harmful consequences[122]. What is needed is an effective shift in mentality which can lead to the adoption of new life-styles “in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments”[123]. Every violation of solidarity and civic friendship harms the environment, just as environmental deterioration in turn upsets relations in society. Nature, especially in our time, is so integrated into the dynamics of society and culture that by now it hardly constitutes an independent variable. Desertification and the decline in productivity in some agricultural areas are also the result of impoverishment and underdevelopment among their inhabitants. When incentives are offered for their economic and cultural development, nature itself is protected. Moreover, how many natural resources are squandered by wars! Peace in and among peoples would also provide greater protection for nature. The hoarding of resources, especially water, can generate serious conflicts among the peoples involved. Peaceful agreement about the use of resources can protect nature and, at the same time, the well-being of the societies concerned.

The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere. In so doing, she must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone. She must above all protect mankind from self-destruction. There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology”[124] is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society and its good relationship with nature.

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves. The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society.

52. Truth, and the love which it reveals, cannot be produced: they can only be received as a gift. Their ultimate source is not, and cannot be, mankind, but only God, who is himself Truth and Love. This principle is extremely important for society and for development, since neither can be a purely human product; the vocation to development on the part of individuals and peoples is not based simply on human choice, but is an intrinsic part of a plan that is prior to us and constitutes for all of us a duty to be freely accepted. That which is prior to us and constitutes us — subsistent Love and Truth — shows us what goodness is, and in what our true happiness consists. It shows us the road to true development.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE COOPERATION
OF THE HUMAN FAMILY

53. One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation. If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love. Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a “stranger” in a random universe. Man is alienated when he is alone, when he is detached from reality, when he stops thinking and believing in a foundation[125]. All of humanity is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias[126]. Today humanity appears much more interactive than in the past: this shared sense of being close to one another must be transformed into true communion. The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side[127].

Pope Paul VI noted that “the world is in trouble because of the lack of thinking”[128]. He was making an observation, but also expressing a wish: a new trajectory of thinking is needed in order to arrive at a better understanding of the implications of our being one family; interaction among the peoples of the world calls us to embark upon this new trajectory, so that integration can signify solidarity[129] rather than marginalization. Thinking of this kind requires a deeper critical evaluation of the category of relation. This is a task that cannot be undertaken by the social sciences alone, insofar as the contribution of disciplines such as metaphysics and theology is needed if man's transcendent dignity is to be properly understood.

As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. Hence these relations take on fundamental importance. The same holds true for peoples as well. A metaphysical understanding of the relations between persons is therefore of great benefit for their development. In this regard, reason finds inspiration and direction in Christian revelation, according to which the human community does not absorb the individual, annihilating his autonomy, as happens in the various forms of totalitarianism, but rather values him all the more because the relation between individual and community is a relation between one totality and another[130]. Just as a family does not submerge the identities of its individual members, just as the Church rejoices in each “new creation” (Gal 6:15; 2 Cor 5:17) incorporated by Baptism into her living Body, so too the unity of the human family does not submerge the identities of individuals, peoples and cultures, but makes them more transparent to each other and links them more closely in their legitimate diversity.

54. The theme of development can be identified with the inclusion-in-relation of all individuals and peoples within the one community of the human family, built in solidarity on the basis of the fundamental values of justice and peace. This perspective is illuminated in a striking way by the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance. The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity. God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: “that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn 17:22). The Church is a sign and instrument of this unity[131]. Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model. In particular, in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness does not mean loss of individual identity but profound interpenetration. This also emerges from the common human experiences of love and truth. Just as the sacramental love of spouses unites them spiritually in “one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5; Eph 5:31) and makes out of the two a real and relational unity, so in an analogous way truth unites spirits and causes them to think in unison, attracting them as a unity to itself.

55. The Christian revelation of the unity of the human race presupposes a metaphysical interpretation of the “humanum” in which relationality is an essential element. Other cultures and religions teach brotherhood and peace and are therefore of enormous importance to integral human development. Some religious and cultural attitudes, however, do not fully embrace the principle of love and truth and therefore end up retarding or even obstructing authentic human development. There are certain religious cultures in the world today that do not oblige men and women to live in communion but rather cut them off from one other in a search for individual well-being, limited to the gratification of psychological desires. Furthermore, a certain proliferation of different religious “paths”, attracting small groups or even single individuals, together with religious syncretism, can give rise to separation and disengagement. One possible negative effect of the process of globalization is the tendency to favour this kind of syncretism[132] by encouraging forms of “religion” that, instead of bringing people together, alienate them from one another and distance them from reality. At the same time, some religious and cultural traditions persist which ossify society in rigid social groupings, in magical beliefs that fail to respect the dignity of the person, and in attitudes of subjugation to occult powers. In these contexts, love and truth have difficulty asserting themselves, and authentic development is impeded.

For this reason, while it may be true that development needs the religions and cultures of different peoples, it is equally true that adequate discernment is needed. Religious freedom does not mean religious indifferentism, nor does it imply that all religions are equal[133]. Discernment is needed regarding the contribution of cultures and religions, especially on the part of those who wield political power, if the social community is to be built up in a spirit of respect for the common good. Such discernment has to be based on the criterion of charity and truth. Since the development of persons and peoples is at stake, this discernment will have to take account of the need for emancipation and inclusivity, in the context of a truly universal human community. “The whole man and all men” is also the criterion for evaluating cultures and religions. Christianity, the religion of the “God who has a human face”[134], contains this very criterion within itself.

56. The Christian religion and other religions can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions. The Church's social doctrine came into being in order to claim “citizenship status” for the Christian religion[135]. Denying the right to profess one's religion in public and the right to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has negative consequences for true development. The exclusion of religion from the public square — and, at the other extreme, religious fundamentalism — hinders an encounter between persons and their collaboration for the progress of humanity. Public life is sapped of its motivation and politics takes on a domineering and aggressive character. Human rights risk being ignored either because they are robbed of their transcendent foundation or because personal freedom is not acknowledged. Secularism and fundamentalism exclude the possibility of fruitful dialogue and effective cooperation between reason and religious faith. Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development.

57. Fruitful dialogue between faith and reason cannot but render the work of charity more effective within society, and it constitutes the most appropriate framework for promoting fraternal collaboration between believers and non-believers in their shared commitment to working for justice and the peace of the human family. In the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Council fathers asserted that “believers and unbelievers agree almost unanimously that all things on earth should be ordered towards man as to their centre and summit”[136]. For believers, the world derives neither from blind chance nor from strict necessity, but from God's plan. This is what gives rise to the duty of believers to unite their efforts with those of all men and women of good will, with the followers of other religions and with non-believers, so that this world of ours may effectively correspond to the divine plan: living as a family under the Creator's watchful eye. A particular manifestation of charity and a guiding criterion for fraternal cooperation between believers and non-believers is undoubtedly the principle of subsidiarity[137], an expression of inalienable human freedom. Subsidiarity is first and foremost a form of assistance to the human person via the autonomy of intermediate bodies. Such assistance is offered when individuals or groups are unable to accomplish something on their own, and it is always designed to achieve their emancipation, because it fosters freedom and participation through assumption of responsibility. Subsidiarity respects personal dignity by recognizing in the person a subject who is always capable of giving something to others. By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being, subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state. It is able to take account both of the manifold articulation of plans — and therefore of the plurality of subjects — as well as the coordination of those plans. Hence the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way[138], if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice.

58. The principle of subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa, since the former without the latter gives way to social privatism, while the latter without the former gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need. This general rule must also be taken broadly into consideration when addressing issues concerning international development aid. Such aid, whatever the donors' intentions, can sometimes lock people into a state of dependence and even foster situations of localized oppression and exploitation in the receiving country. Economic aid, in order to be true to its purpose, must not pursue secondary objectives. It must be distributed with the involvement not only of the governments of receiving countries, but also local economic agents and the bearers of culture within civil society, including local Churches. Aid programmes must increasingly acquire the characteristics of participation and completion from the grass roots. Indeed, the most valuable resources in countries receiving development aid are human resources: herein lies the real capital that needs to accumulate in order to guarantee a truly autonomous future for the poorest countries. It should also be remembered that, in the economic sphere, the principal form of assistance needed by developing countries is that of allowing and encouraging the gradual penetration of their products into international markets, thus making it possible for these countries to participate fully in international economic life. Too often in the past, aid has served to create only fringe markets for the products of these donor countries. This was often due to a lack of genuine demand for the products in question: it is therefore necessary to help such countries improve their products and adapt them more effectively to existing demand. Furthermore, there are those who fear the effects of competition through the importation of products — normally agricultural products — from economically poor countries. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that for such countries, the possibility of marketing their products is very often what guarantees their survival in both the short and long term. Just and equitable international trade in agricultural goods can be beneficial to everyone, both to suppliers and to customers. For this reason, not only is commercial orientation needed for production of this kind, but also the establishment of international trade regulations to support it and stronger financing for development in order to increase the productivity of these economies.

59. Cooperation for development must not be concerned exclusively with the economic dimension: it offers a wonderful opportunity for encounter between cultures and peoples. If the parties to cooperation on the side of economically developed countries — as occasionally happens — fail to take account of their own or others' cultural identity, or the human values that shape it, they cannot enter into meaningful dialogue with the citizens of poor countries. If the latter, in their turn, are uncritically and indiscriminately open to every cultural proposal, they will not be in a position to assume responsibility for their own authentic development[139]. Technologically advanced societies must not confuse their own technological development with a presumed cultural superiority, but must rather rediscover within themselves the oft-forgotten virtues which made it possible for them to flourish throughout their history. Evolving societies must remain faithful to all that is truly human in their traditions, avoiding the temptation to overlay them automatically with the mechanisms of a globalized technological civilization. In all cultures there are examples of ethical convergence, some isolated, some interrelated, as an expression of the one human nature, willed by the Creator; the tradition of ethical wisdom knows this as the natural law[140]. This universal moral law provides a sound basis for all cultural, religious and political dialogue, and it ensures that the multi-faceted pluralism of cultural diversity does not detach itself from the common quest for truth, goodness and God. Thus adherence to the law etched on human hearts is the precondition for all constructive social cooperation. Every culture has burdens from which it must be freed and shadows from which it must emerge. The Christian faith, by becoming incarnate in cultures and at the same time transcending them, can help them grow in universal brotherhood and solidarity, for the advancement of global and community development.

60. In the search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for all. What aid programme is there that can hold out such significant growth prospects — even from the point of view of the world economy — as the support of populations that are still in the initial or early phases of economic development? From this perspective, more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard. One way of doing so is by reviewing their internal social assistance and welfare policies, applying the principle of subsidiarity and creating better integrated welfare systems, with the active participation of private individuals and civil society. In this way, it is actually possible to improve social services and welfare programmes, and at the same time to save resources — by eliminating waste and rejecting fraudulent claims — which could then be allocated to international solidarity. A more devolved and organic system of social solidarity, less bureaucratic but no less coordinated, would make it possible to harness much dormant energy, for the benefit of solidarity between peoples.

One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State. Provided it does not degenerate into the promotion of special interests, this can help to stimulate forms of welfare solidarity from below, with obvious benefits in the area of solidarity for development as well.

61. Greater solidarity at the international level is seen especially in the ongoing promotion — even in the midst of economic crisis — of greater access to education, which is at the same time an essential precondition for effective international cooperation. The term “education” refers not only to classroom teaching and vocational training — both of which are important factors in development — but to the complete formation of the person. In this regard, there is a problem that should be highlighted: in order to educate, it is necessary to know the nature of the human person, to know who he or she is. The increasing prominence of a relativistic understanding of that nature presents serious problems for education, especially moral education, jeopardizing its universal extension. Yielding to this kind of relativism makes everyone poorer and has a negative impact on the effectiveness of aid to the most needy populations, who lack not only economic and technical means, but also educational methods and resources to assist people in realizing their full human potential.

An illustration of the significance of this problem is offered by the phenomenon of international tourism[141], which can be a major factor in economic development and cultural growth, but can also become an occasion for exploitation and moral degradation. The current situation offers unique opportunities for the economic aspects of development — that is to say the flow of money and the emergence of a significant amount of local enterprise — to be combined with the cultural aspects, chief among which is education. In many cases this is what happens, but in other cases international tourism has a negative educational impact both for the tourist and the local populace. The latter are often exposed to immoral or even perverted forms of conduct, as in the case of so-called sex tourism, to which many human beings are sacrificed even at a tender age. It is sad to note that this activity often takes place with the support of local governments, with silence from those in the tourists' countries of origin, and with the complicity of many of the tour operators. Even in less extreme cases, international tourism often follows a consumerist and hedonistic pattern, as a form of escapism planned in a manner typical of the countries of origin, and therefore not conducive to authentic encounter between persons and cultures. We need, therefore, to develop a different type of tourism that has the ability to promote genuine mutual understanding, without taking away from the element of rest and healthy recreation. Tourism of this type needs to increase, partly through closer coordination with the experience gained from international cooperation and enterprise for development.

62. Another aspect of integral human development that is worthy of attention is the phenomenon of migration. This is a striking phenomenon because of the sheer numbers of people involved, the social, economic, political, cultural and religious problems it raises, and the dramatic challenges it poses to nations and the international community. We can say that we are facing a social phenomenon of epoch-making proportions that requires bold, forward-looking policies of international cooperation if it is to be handled effectively. Such policies should set out from close collaboration between the migrants' countries of origin and their countries of destination; it should be accompanied by adequate international norms able to coordinate different legislative systems with a view to safeguarding the needs and rights of individual migrants and their families, and at the same time, those of the host countries. No country can be expected to address today's problems of migration by itself. We are all witnesses of the burden of suffering, the dislocation and the aspirations that accompany the flow of migrants. The phenomenon, as everyone knows, is difficult to manage; but there is no doubt that foreign workers, despite any difficulties concerning integration, make a significant contribution to the economic development of the host country through their labour, besides that which they make to their country of origin through the money they send home. Obviously, these labourers cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce. They must not, therefore, be treated like any other factor of production. Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance[142].

63. No consideration of the problems associated with development could fail to highlight the direct link between poverty and unemployment. In many cases, poverty results from a violation of the dignity of human work, either because work opportunities are limited (through unemployment or underemployment), or “because a low value is put on work and the rights that flow from it, especially the right to a just wage and to the personal security of the worker and his or her family”[143]. For this reason, on 1 May 2000 on the occasion of the Jubilee of Workers, my venerable predecessor Pope John Paul II issued an appeal for “a global coalition in favour of ‘decent work”'[144], supporting the strategy of the International Labour Organization. In this way, he gave a strong moral impetus to this objective, seeing it as an aspiration of families in every country of the world. What is meant by the word “decent” in regard to work? It means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labour; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one's roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living.

64. While reflecting on the theme of work, it is appropriate to recall how important it is that labour unions — which have always been encouraged and supported by the Church — should be open to the new perspectives that are emerging in the world of work. Looking to wider concerns than the specific category of labour for which they were formed, union organizations are called to address some of the new questions arising in our society: I am thinking, for example, of the complex of issues that social scientists describe in terms of a conflict between worker and consumer. Without necessarily endorsing the thesis that the central focus on the worker has given way to a central focus on the consumer, this would still appear to constitute new ground for unions to explore creatively. The global context in which work takes place also demands that national labour unions, which tend to limit themselves to defending the interests of their registered members, should turn their attention to those outside their membership, and in particular to workers in developing countries where social rights are often violated. The protection of these workers, partly achieved through appropriate initiatives aimed at their countries of origin, will enable trade unions to demonstrate the authentic ethical and cultural motivations that made it possible for them, in a different social and labour context, to play a decisive role in development. The Church's traditional teaching makes a valid distinction between the respective roles and functions of trade unions and politics. This distinction allows unions to identify civil society as the proper setting for their necessary activity of defending and promoting labour, especially on behalf of exploited and unrepresented workers, whose woeful condition is often ignored by the distracted eye of society.

65. Finance, therefore — through the renewed structures and operating methods that have to be designed after its misuse, which wreaked such havoc on the real economy — now needs to go back to being an instrument directed towards improved wealth creation and development. Insofar as they are instruments, the entire economy and finance, not just certain sectors, must be used in an ethical way so as to create suitable conditions for human development and for the development of peoples. It is certainly useful, and in some circumstances imperative, to launch financial initiatives in which the humanitarian dimension predominates. However, this must not obscure the fact that the entire financial system has to be aimed at sustaining true development. Above all, the intention to do good must not be considered incompatible with the effective capacity to produce goods. Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another. If love is wise, it can find ways of working in accordance with provident and just expediency, as is illustrated in a significant way by much of the experience of credit unions.

Both the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation, and experimentation with new forms of finance, designed to support development projects, are positive experiences that should be further explored and encouraged, highlighting the responsibility of the investor. Furthermore, the experience of micro-finance, which has its roots in the thinking and activity of the civil humanists — I am thinking especially of the birth of pawnbroking — should be strengthened and fine-tuned. This is all the more necessary in these days when financial difficulties can become severe for many of the more vulnerable sectors of the population, who should be protected from the risk of usury and from despair. The weakest members of society should be helped to defend themselves against usury, just as poor peoples should be helped to derive real benefit from micro-credit, in order to discourage the exploitation that is possible in these two areas. Since rich countries are also experiencing new forms of poverty, micro-finance can give practical assistance by launching new initiatives and opening up new sectors for the benefit of the weaker elements in society, even at a time of general economic downturn.

66. Global interconnectedness has led to the emergence of a new political power, that of consumers and their associations. This is a phenomenon that needs to be further explored, as it contains positive elements to be encouraged as well as excesses to be avoided. It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral — and not simply economic — act. Hence the consumer has a specific social responsibility, which goes hand-in- hand with the social responsibility of the enterprise. Consumers should be continually educated[145] regarding their daily role, which can be exercised with respect for moral principles without diminishing the intrinsic economic rationality of the act of purchasing. In the retail industry, particularly at times like the present when purchasing power has diminished and people must live more frugally, it is necessary to explore other paths: for example, forms of cooperative purchasing like the consumer cooperatives that have been in operation since the nineteenth century, partly through the initiative of Catholics. In addition, it can be helpful to promote new ways of marketing products from deprived areas of the world, so as to guarantee their producers a decent return. However, certain conditions need to be met: the market should be genuinely transparent; the producers, as well as increasing their profit margins, should also receive improved formation in professional skills and technology; and finally, trade of this kind must not become hostage to partisan ideologies. A more incisive role for consumers, as long as they themselves are not manipulated by associations that do not truly represent them, is a desirable element for building economic democracy.

67. In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect[146] and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good[147], and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization[149]. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.

CHAPTER SIX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES
AND TECHNOLOGY

68. The development of peoples is intimately linked to the development of individuals. The human person by nature is actively involved in his own development. The development in question is not simply the result of natural mechanisms, since as everybody knows, we are all capable of making free and responsible choices. Nor is it merely at the mercy of our caprice, since we all know that we are a gift, not something self-generated. Our freedom is profoundly shaped by our being, and by its limits. No one shapes his own conscience arbitrarily, but we all build our own “I” on the basis of a “self” which is given to us. Not only are other persons outside our control, but each one of us is outside his or her own control. A person's development is compromised, if he claims to be solely responsible for producing what he becomes. By analogy, the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can re-create itself through the “wonders” of technology, just as economic development is exposed as a destructive sham if it relies on the “wonders” of finance in order to sustain unnatural and consumerist growth. In the face of such Promethean presumption, we must fortify our love for a freedom that is not merely arbitrary, but is rendered truly human by acknowledgment of the good that underlies it. To this end, man needs to look inside himself in order to recognize the fundamental norms of the natural moral law which God has written on our hearts.

69. The challenge of development today is closely linked to technological progress, with its astounding applications in the field of biology. Technology — it is worth emphasizing — is a profoundly human reality, linked to the autonomy and freedom of man. In technology we express and confirm the hegemony of the spirit over matter. “The human spirit, ‘increasingly free of its bondage to creatures, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation of the Creator'”[150]. Technology enables us to exercise dominion over matter, to reduce risks, to save labour, to improve our conditions of life. It touches the heart of the vocation of human labour: in technology, seen as the product of his genius, man recognizes himself and forges his own humanity. Technology is the objective side of human action[151] whose origin and raison d'etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself. For this reason, technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his aspirations towards development, it expresses the inner tension that impels him gradually to overcome material limitations. Technology, in this sense, is a response to God's command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15) that he has entrusted to humanity, and it must serve to reinforce the covenant between human beings and the environment, a covenant that should mirror God's creative love.

70. Technological development can give rise to the idea that technology is self-sufficient when too much attention is given to the “how” questions, and not enough to the many “why” questions underlying human activity. For this reason technology can appear ambivalent. Produced through human creativity as a tool of personal freedom, technology can be understood as a manifestation of absolute freedom, the freedom that seeks to prescind from the limits inherent in things. The process of globalization could replace ideologies with technology[152], allowing the latter to become an ideological power that threatens to confine us within an a priori that holds us back from encountering being and truth. Were that to happen, we would all know, evaluate and make decisions about our life situations from within a technocratic cultural perspective to which we would belong structurally, without ever being able to discover a meaning that is not of our own making. The “technical” worldview that follows from this vision is now so dominant that truth has come to be seen as coinciding with the possible. But when the sole criterion of truth is efficiency and utility, development is automatically denied. True development does not consist primarily in “doing”. The key to development is a mind capable of thinking in technological terms and grasping the fully human meaning of human activities, within the context of the holistic meaning of the individual's being. Even when we work through satellites or through remote electronic impulses, our actions always remain human, an expression of our responsible freedom. Technology is highly attractive because it draws us out of our physical limitations and broadens our horizon. But human freedom is authentic only when it responds to the fascination of technology with decisions that are the fruit of moral responsibility. Hence the pressing need for formation in an ethically responsible use of technology. Moving beyond the fascination that technology exerts, we must reappropriate the true meaning of freedom, which is not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being, beginning with our own personal being.

71. This deviation from solid humanistic principles that a technical mindset can produce is seen today in certain technological applications in the fields of development and peace. Often the development of peoples is considered a matter of financial engineering, the freeing up of markets, the removal of tariffs, investment in production, and institutional reforms — in other words, a purely technical matter. All these factors are of great importance, but we have to ask why technical choices made thus far have yielded rather mixed results. We need to think hard about the cause. Development will never be fully guaranteed through automatic or impersonal forces, whether they derive from the market or from international politics. Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the requirements of the common good. Both professional competence and moral consistency are necessary. When technology is allowed to take over, the result is confusion between ends and means, such that the sole criterion for action in business is thought to be the maximization of profit, in politics the consolidation of power, and in science the findings of research. Often, underneath the intricacies of economic, financial and political interconnections, there remain misunderstandings, hardships and injustice. The flow of technological know-how increases, but it is those in possession of it who benefit, while the situation on the ground for the peoples who live in its shadow remains unchanged: for them there is little chance of emancipation.

72. Even peace can run the risk of being considered a technical product, merely the outcome of agreements between governments or of initiatives aimed at ensuring effective economic aid. It is true that peace-building requires the constant interplay of diplomatic contacts, economic, technological and cultural exchanges, agreements on common projects, as well as joint strategies to curb the threat of military conflict and to root out the underlying causes of terrorism. Nevertheless, if such efforts are to have lasting effects, they must be based on values rooted in the truth of human life. That is, the voice of the peoples affected must be heard and their situation must be taken into consideration, if their expectations are to be correctly interpreted. One must align oneself, so to speak, with the unsung efforts of so many individuals deeply committed to bringing peoples together and to facilitating development on the basis of love and mutual understanding. Among them are members of the Christian faithful, involved in the great task of upholding the fully human dimension of development and peace.

73. Linked to technological development is the increasingly pervasive presence of the means of social communications. It is almost impossible today to imagine the life of the human family without them. For better or for worse, they are so integral a part of life today that it seems quite absurd to maintain that they are neutral — and hence unaffected by any moral considerations concerning people. Often such views, stressing the strictly technical nature of the media, effectively support their subordination to economic interests intent on dominating the market and, not least, to attempts to impose cultural models that serve ideological and political agendas. Given the media's fundamental importance in engineering changes in attitude towards reality and the human person, we must reflect carefully on their influence, especially in regard to the ethical-cultural dimension of globalization and the development of peoples in solidarity. Mirroring what is required for an ethical approach to globalization and development, so too the meaning and purpose of the media must be sought within an anthropological perspective. This means that they can have a civilizing effect not only when, thanks to technological development, they increase the possibilities of communicating information, but above all when they are geared towards a vision of the person and the common good that reflects truly universal values. Just because social communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or internationalize development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity. In fact, human freedom is intrinsically linked with these higher values. The media can make an important contribution towards the growth in communion of the human family and the ethos of society when they are used to promote universal participation in the common search for what is just.

74. A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is radically called into question. In this most delicate and critical area, the fundamental question asserts itself force-fully: is man the product of his own labours or does he depend on God? Scientific discoveries in this field and the possibilities of technological intervention seem so advanced as to force a choice between two types of reasoning: reason open to transcendence or reason closed within immanence. We are presented with a clear either/ or. Yet the rationality of a self-centred use of technology proves to be irrational because it implies a decisive rejection of meaning and value. It is no coincidence that closing the door to transcendence brings one up short against a difficulty: how could being emerge from nothing, how could intelligence be born from chance?[153] Faced with these dramatic questions, reason and faith can come to each other's assistance. Only together will they save man. Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life[154].

75. Paul VI had already recognized and drawn attention to the global dimension of the social question[155]. Following his lead, we need to affirm today that the social question has become a radically anthropological question, in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but also how it is manipulated, as bio-technology places it increasingly under man's control. In vitro fertilization, embryo research, the possibility of manufacturing clones and human hybrids: all this is now emerging and being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp. Here we see the clearest expression of technology's supremacy. In this type of culture, the conscience is simply invited to take note of technological possibilities. Yet we must not underestimate the disturbing scenarios that threaten our future, or the powerful new instruments that the “culture of death” has at its disposal. To the tragic and widespread scourge of abortion we may well have to add in the future — indeed it is already surreptiously present — the systematic eugenic programming of births. At the other end of the spectrum, a pro-euthanasia mindset is making inroads as an equally damaging assertion of control over life that under certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living. Underlying these scenarios are cultural viewpoints that deny human dignity. These practices in turn foster a materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life. Who could measure the negative effects of this kind of mentality for development? How can we be surprised by the indifference shown towards situations of human degradation, when such indifference extends even to our attitude towards what is and is not human? What is astonishing is the arbitrary and selective determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely tolerated. While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human. God reveals man to himself; reason and faith work hand in hand to demonstrate to us what is good, provided we want to see it; the natural law, in which creative Reason shines forth, reveals our greatness, but also our wretchedness insofar as we fail to recognize the call to moral truth.

76. One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”[156], born of God's creative love and destined for eternal life. The human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator. When he is far away from God, man is unsettled and ill at ease. Social and psychological alienation and the many neuroses that afflict affluent societies are attributable in part to spiritual factors. A prosperous society, highly developed in material terms but weighing heavily on the soul, is not of itself conducive to authentic development. The new forms of slavery to drugs and the lack of hope into which so many people fall can be explained not only in sociological and psychological terms but also in essentially spiritual terms. The emptiness in which the soul feels abandoned, despite the availability of countless therapies for body and psyche, leads to suffering. There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people's spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as body and soul.

77. The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone. Yet everyone experiences the many immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life. Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things. In all knowledge and in every act of love the human soul experiences something “over and above”, which seems very much like a gift that we receive, or a height to which we are raised. The development of individuals and peoples is likewise located on a height, if we consider the spiritual dimension that must be present if such development is to be authentic. It requires new eyes and a new heart, capable of rising above a materialistic vision of human events, capable of glimpsing in development the “beyond” that technology cannot give. By following this path, it is possible to pursue the integral human development that takes its direction from the driving force of charity in truth.

CONCLUSION

78. Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is. In the face of the enormous problems surrounding the development of peoples, which almost make us yield to discouragement, we find solace in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5) and then encourages us: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). As we contemplate the vast amount of work to be done, we are sustained by our faith that God is present alongside those who come together in his name to work for justice. Paul VI recalled in Populorum Progressio that man cannot bring about his own progress unaided, because by himself he cannot establish an authentic humanism. Only if we are aware of our calling, as individuals and as a community, to be part of God's family as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism. The greatest service to development, then, is a Christian humanism[157] that enkindles charity and takes its lead from truth, accepting both as a lasting gift from God. Openness to God makes us open towards our brothers and sisters and towards an understanding of life as a joyful task to be accomplished in a spirit of solidarity. On the other hand, ideological rejection of God and an atheism of indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the chief obstacles to development today. A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism. Only a humanism open to the Absolute can guide us in the promotion and building of forms of social and civic life — structures, institutions, culture and ethos — without exposing us to the risk of becoming ensnared by the fashions of the moment. Awareness of God's undying love sustains us in our laborious and stimulating work for justice and the development of peoples, amid successes and failures, in the ceaseless pursuit of a just ordering of human affairs. God's love calls us to move beyond the limited and the ephemeral, it gives us the courage to continue seeking and working for the benefit of all, even if this cannot be achieved immediately and if what we are able to achieve, alongside political authorities and those working in the field of economics, is always less than we might wish[158]. God gives us the strength to fight and to suffer for love of the common good, because he is our All, our greatest hope.

79. Development needs Christians with their arms raised towards God in prayer, Christians moved by the knowledge that truth-filled love, caritas in veritate, from which authentic development proceeds, is not produced by us, but given to us. For this reason, even in the most difficult and complex times, besides recognizing what is happening, we must above all else turn to God's love. Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God's providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if “hearts of stone” are to be transformed into “hearts of flesh” (Ezek 36:26), rendering life on earth “divine” and thus more worthy of humanity. All this is of man, because man is the subject of his own existence; and at the same time it is of God, because God is at the beginning and end of all that is good, all that leads to salvation: “the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's” (1 Cor 3:22-23). Christians long for the entire human family to call upon God as “Our Father!” In union with the only-begotten Son, may all people learn to pray to the Father and to ask him, in the words that Jesus himself taught us, for the grace to glorify him by living according to his will, to receive the daily bread that we need, to be understanding and generous towards our debtors, not to be tempted beyond our limits, and to be delivered from evil (cf. Mt 6:9-13).

At the conclusion of the Pauline Year, I gladly express this hope in the Apostle's own words, taken from the Letter to the Romans: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honour” (Rom 12:9-10). May the Virgin Mary — proclaimed Mater Ecclesiae by Paul VI and honoured by Christians as Speculum Iustitiae and Regina Pacis — protect us and obtain for us, through her heavenly intercession, the strength, hope and joy necessary to continue to dedicate ourselves with generosity to the task of bringing about the “development of the whole man and of all men”[159].

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 29 June, the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in the year 2009, the fifth of my Pontificate.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

The Mystical City of God, The Divine History and Life of The Virgin Mother of God

2010-11-29T05:46:00.005-08:00

Treats of the Presentation of the Princess of Heaven in the Temple, the Favors She Received at the Hand of God, the Sublime Perfection with which She Observed the Rules of the Temple, the Heavenly Excellence of Her Heroic Virtues and Visions, Her Most Holy Espousal and other Events up to the Incarnation of the Son of God

HER PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE.
The three years’ time decreed by the Lord having been completed, Joachim and Anne set out from Nazareth, accompanied by a few kindred and bringing with them the true living Ark of the covenant, the most holy Mary, borne on the arms of her mother in order to be deposited in the holy temple of Jerusalem. The beautiful Child, by her fervent and loving aspirations, hastened after the ointments of her Beloved, seeking in the temple Him, whom She bore in her heart. This humble procession was scarcely noticed by earthly creatures, but it was invisibly accompanied by the angelic spirits, who, in order to celebrate this event, had hastened from heaven in greater numbers than ordinary as her bodyguard, and were singing in heavenly strains the glory and praise of the Most High. The Princess of heaven heard and saw them as She hastened her beautiful steps along in the sight of the highest and the true Solomon. Thus they pursued their journey from Nazareth to the holy city of Jerusalem, and also the parents of the holy child Mary felt in their hearts great joy and consolation of spirit.

WORDS OF THE QUEEN. (The Virgin Mary speaks to Sister Mary of Agreda, Spain.)

*The Road to Hell (Prophetic Dream of St. John Bosco 1868 A.D.)

2010-11-29T05:09:00.000-08:00

The Holy Saint John Bosco had a Prophetic Vision of Hell in 1868 A.D., (*which is recorded in its entirety below.) Many of the dreams of St. John Bosco could more properly be called visions, for God used this means to reveal His will for the Saint and for the boys of the Oratory, as well as the future of the Salesian Congregation. Not only did his dreams lead and direct the Saint, they also gave him wisdom and guidance by which he was able to help and guide others upon their ways. He was just nine years of age when he had his first dream that laid out his life mission. It was this dream that impressed Pope Pius IX so much that he ordered St. John Bosco to write down his dreams for the encouragement of his Congregation and the rest of us. Through dreams God allowed him to know the future of each of the boys of his Oratory. Through dreams God let him know the boys' state of their souls. On February 1, 1865 St. John Bosco announced that one of the boys will die soon. He knew the boy through the dream the night before. On March 16, 1865, Anthony Ferraris passed away after receiving the Last Sacraments. John Bisio, who helped Anthony and his mother during the former's last hour, confirmed the story of his part in this episode by a formal oath, concluding as foIlows: "Don Bosco told us many other dreams concerning Oratory boys' deaths. We believed them to be true prophecies. We still do, because unfailingly they came true. During the seven years I lived at the Oratory, not a boy died without Don Bosco predicting his death. We were also convinced that whoever died there under his care and assistance surely went to heaven."
On Sunday night, May 3 [1868], the feast of Saint Joseph's patronage, Don Bosco resumed the narration of his dreams:
I have another dream to tell you, a sort of aftermath of those I told you last Thursday and Friday which totally exhausted me. Call them dreams or whatever you like. Always, as you know, on the night of April 17 a frightful toad seemed bent on devouring me. When it finally vanished, a voice said to me: "Why don't you tell them?" I turned in that direction and saw a distinguished person standing by my bed. Feeling guilty about my silence, I asked: "What should I tell my boys?"
"What you have seen and heard in your last dreams and what you have wanted to know and shall have revealed to you tomorrow night!" He then vanished.
I spent the whole next day worrying about the miserable night in store for me, and when evening came, loath to go to bed, I sat at my desk browsing through books until midnight. The mere thought of having more nightmares thoroughly scare me. However, with great effort, I finally went to bed.

"Get up and follow me!" he said. "For Heaven's sake," I protested, "leave me alone. I am exhausted! I've been tormented by a toothache for several days now and need rest. Besides, nightmares have completely worn me out." I said this because this man's apparition always means trouble, fatigue, and terror for me.
"Get up," he repeated. "You have no time to lose."
I complied and followed him. "Where are you taking me?" I asked.
"Never mind. You'll see." He led me to a vast, boundless plain, veritably a lifeless desert, with not a soul in sight or a tree or brook. Yellowed, dried-up vegetation added to the desolation I had no idea where I was or what was I to do. For a moment I even lost sight of my guide and feared that I was lost, utterly alone. Father Rua, Father Francesia, nowhere to be seen. When I finally saw my friend coming toward me, I sighed in relief.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"Come with me and you will find out!"
"All right. I'll go with you."
He led the way and I followed in silence, but after a long, dismal trudge, I began worrying whether I would ever be able to cross that vast expanse, what with my toothache and swollen legs. Suddenly I saw a road ahead.
"Where to now?" I asked my guide.
"This way," he replied.
We took the road. It was beautiful, wide, and neatly paved. "The way of sinners is made plain with stones, and in their end is hell, and darkness, and pains. " (Ecclesiasticus 21: 11, stones: broad and easy.) Both sides were lined with magnificent verdant hedges dotted with gorgeous flowers. Roses, especially, peeped everywhere through the leaves. At first glance, the road was level and comfortable, and so I ventured upon it without the least suspicion, but soon I noticed that it insensibly kept sloping downward. Though it did not look steep at all, I found myself moving so swiftly that I felt I was effortlessly gliding through the air. Really, I was gliding and hardly using my feet. Then the thought struck me that the return trip would be very long and arduous.
"How shall we get back to the Oratory?" I asked worriedly.
"Do not worry," he answered. "The Almighty wants you to go. He who leads you on will also know how to lead you back."
The road is sloping downward. As we were continuing on our way, flanked by banks of roses and other flowers, I became aware that the Oratory boys and very many others whom I did not know were following me. Somehow I found myself in their midst. As I was looking at them, I noticed now one, now another fall to the ground and instantly be dragged by an unseen force toward a frightful drop, distantly visible, which sloped into a furnace. "What makes these boys fall?" I asked my companion. "The proud have hidden a net for me. And they have stretched out cords for a snare: they have laid for me a stumbling-block by the wayside." (Psalms 139: 6)
"Take a closer look," he replied.
I did. Traps were everywhere, some close to the ground, others at eye level, but all well concealed. Unaware of their danger, many boys got caught, and they tripped, they would sprawl to the ground, legs in the air. Then, when they managed to get back on their feet, they would run headlong down the road toward the abyss. Some got trapped by the head, others by the neck, hand, arms, legs, or sides, and were pulled down instantly. The ground traps, fine as spiders' webs and hardly visible, seemed very flimsy and harmless; yet, to my surprise, every boy they snared fell to the ground.
Noticing my astonishment, the guide remarked, "Do you know what this is?"
"Just some filmy fiber," I answered.
"A mere nothing," he said, "just plain human respect.",
Seeing that many boys were being caught in those straps. I asked, "Why do so many get caught? Who pulls them down?"
"Go nearer and you will see!" he told me.
I followed his advice but saw nothing peculiar.
"Look closer," he insisted.
I picked up one of the traps and tugged. I immediately felt some resistance. I pulled harder, only to feel that, instead of drawing the thread closer, I was being pulled down myself. I did not resist and soon found myself at the mouth of a frightful cave. I halted, unwilling to venture into that deep cavern, and again started pulling the thread toward me. It gave a little, but only through great effort on my part. I kept tugging, and after a long while a huge, hideous monster emerged, clutching a rope to which all those traps were tied together. He was the one who instantly dragged down anyone who got caught in them. It won't do to match my strength with his, I said to myself. I'll certainly lose. I'd better fight him with the Sign of the Cross and with short invocations.
Then I went back to my guide. "Now you know who he is," he said to me.
"I surely do! It is the devil himself!"
Carefully examining many of the traps, I saw that each bore an inscription: Pride, Disobedience, Envy, Sixth Commandment, Theft, Gluttony, Sloth, Anger and so on. Stepping back a bit to see which ones trapped the greater number of boys, I discovered that the most dangerous were those of impurity, disobedience, and pride. In fact, these three were linked to together. Many other traps also did great harm, but not as much as the first two. Still watching, I noticed many boys running faster than others. "Why such haste?" I asked.
"Because they are dragged by the snare of human respect."
Looking even more closely, I spotted knives among the traps. A providential hand had put them there for cutting oneself free. The bigger ones, symbolizing meditation, were for use against the trap of pride; others, not quite as big, symbolized spiritual reading well made. There were also two swords representing devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, especially through frequent Holy Communion, and to the Blessed Virgin. There was also a hammer symbolizing confession, and other knives signifying devotion to Saint Joseph, to Saint Aloysius, and to other Saints. By these means quite a few boys were able to free themselves or evade capture.
Indeed I saw some lads walking safely through all those traps, either by good timing before the trap sprung on them or by making it slip off them if they got caught.
When my guide was satisfied that I had observed everything, he made me continue along that rose-hedged road, but the farther we went the scarcer the roses became. Long thorns began to show up, and soon the roses were no more. The hedges became sun-scorched, leafless, and thorn-studded. Withered branches torn from the bushes lay criss-crossed along the roadbed, littering it with thorns and making it impassable. We had come now to a gulch whose steep sides hid what lay beyond. The road, still sloping downward, was becoming ever more horrid, rutted, guttered, and bristling with rocks and boulders. I lost track of all my boys, most of whom had left this treacherous road for other paths.
I kept going, but the farther I advanced, the more arduous and steep became the descent, so that I tumbled and fell several times, lying prostrate until I could catch my breath. Now and then my guide supported me or helped me to rise. At every step my joints seemed to give way, and I thought my shinbones would snap. Panting, I said to my guide, "My good fellow, my legs won't carry me another step. I just can't go any farther." He did not answer but continued walking. Taking heart, I followed until, seeing me soaked in perspiration and thoroughly exhausted, he led me to a little clearing alongside the road. I sat down, took a deep breath, and felt a little better. From my resting place, the road I had already traveled looked very steep, jagged, and strewn with loose stones, but what lay ahead seemed so much worse that I closed my eyes in horror.
"Let's go back," I pleaded. "If we go any farther, how shall we ever get back to the Oratory? I will never make it up this slope."
"Now that we have come so far, do you want me to leave you here?" my guide sternly asked.
At this threat, I wailed, "How can I survive without your help?"
"Then follow me."
We continued our descent, the road now becoming so frightfully steep that it was almost impossible to stand erect. And then, at the bottom of this precipice, at the entrance of a dark valley, an enormous building loomed into sight, its towering portal, tightly locked, facing our road. When I finally got to the bottom, I became smothered by a suffocating heat, while a greasy, green-tinted smoke lit by flashes of scarlet flames rose from behind those enormous walls which loomed higher than mountains.
"Where are we? What is this?" I asked my guide.
"Read the inscription on that portal and you will know."
I looked up and read these words: "The place of no reprieve." I realized that we were at the gates of Hell. The guide led me all around this horrible place. At regular distance bronze portals like the first overlooked precipitous descents; on each was an inscription, such as: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matthew 25: 41) "Every tree that yielded not good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the the fire." (Matthew 7: 19)
I tried to copy them into my notebook, but my guide restrained me: "There is no need. You have them all in Holy Scripture. You even have some of them inscribed in your porticoes."
At such a sight I wanted to turn back and return to the Oratory. As a matter of fact, I did start back, but my guide ignored my attempt. After trudging through a steep, never-ending ravine, we again came to the foot of the precipice facing the first portal. Suddenly the guide turned to me. Upset and startled, he motioned to me to step aside. "Look!" he said.
I looked up in terror and saw in the distance someone racing down the path at an uncontrollable speed. I kept my eyes on him, trying to identify him, and as he got closer, I recognized him as one of my boys. His disheveled hair was partly standing upright on his head and partly tossed back by the wind. His arms were outstretched as though he were thrashing the water in an attempt to stay afloat. He wanted to stop, but could not. Tripping on the protruding stones, he kept falling even faster. "Let's help him, let's stop him," I shouted, holding out my hands in a vain effort to restrain him.
"Leave him alone," the guide replied.
"Why?"
"Don't you know how terrible God's vengeance is? Do you think you can restrain one who is fleeing from His just wrath?"
Meanwhile the youth had turned his fiery gaze backward in an attempt to see if God's wrath were still pursuing him. The next moment he fell tumbling to the bottom of the ravine and crashed against the bronze portal as though he could find no better refuge in his flight.
"Why was he looking backward in terror?" I asked.
"Because God's wrath will pierce Hell's gates to reach and torment him even in the midst of fire!"
As the boy crashed into the portal, it sprang open with a roar, and instantly a thousand inner portals opened with a deafening clamor as if struck by a body that had been propelled by an invisible, most violent, irresistible gale. As these bronze doors -- one behind the other, though at a considerable distance from each other -- remained momentarily open, I saw far into the distance something like furnace jaws sprouting fiery balls the moment the youth hurtled into it. As swiftly as they had opened, the portals then clanged shut again. For a third time I tried to jot down the name of that unfortunate lad, but the guide again restrained me. "Wait," he ordered.
"Watch!"
Three other boys of ours, screaming in terror and with arms outstretched, were rolling down one behind the other like massive rocks, I recognized them as they too crashed against the portal. In that split second, it sprang open and so did the other thousand. The three lads were sucked into that endless corridor amid a long-drawn, fading, infernal echo, and then the portals clanged shut again. At intervals, many other lads came tumbling down after them. I saw one unlucky boy being pushed down the slope by an evil companion. Others fell singly or with others, arm in arm or side by side. Each of them bore the name of his sin on his forehead. I kept calling to them as they hurtled down, but they did not hear me. Again the portals would open thunderously and slam shut with a rumble. Then, dead silence!
"Bad companions, bad books, and bad habits," my guide exclaimed, "are mainly responsible for so many eternally lost."
The traps I had seen earlier were indeed dragging the boys to ruin. Seeing so many going to perdition, I cried out disconsolately, "If so many of our boys end up this way, we are working in vain. How can we prevent such tragedies?"
"This is their present state," my guide replied, "and that is where they would go if they were to die now."
"Then let me jot down their names so that I may warn them and put them back on the path to Heaven."
"Do you really believe that some of them would reform if you were to warn them? Then and there your warning might impress them, but soon they will forget it, saying, 'It was just a dream,' and they will do worse than before. Others, realizing they have been unmasked, receive the sacraments, but this will be neither spontaneous nor meritorious; others will go to confession because of a momentary fear of Hell but will still be attached to sin."
"Then is there no way to save these unfortunate lads? Please, tell me what I can do for them."
"They have superiors; let them obey them. They have rules; let them observe them. They have the sacraments; let them receive them."
Just then a new group of boys came hurtling down and the portals momentarily opened. "Let's go in," the guide said to me.
I pulled back in horror. I could not wait to rush back to the Oratory to warn the boys lest others might be lost as well.
"Come," my guide insisted. "You'll learn much. But first tell me: Do you wish to go alone or with me?" He asked this to make me realize that I was not brave enough and therefore needed his friendly assistance.
"Alone inside that horrible place?" I replied. "How will I ever be able to find my way out without your help?" Then a thought came to my mind and aroused my courage. Before one is condemned to Hell, I said to myself, he must be judged. And I haven't been judged yet!
"Let's go," I exclaimed resolutely. We entered that narrow, horrible corridor and whizzed through it with lightning speed. Threatening inscriptions shone eerily over all the inner gateways. The last one opened into a vast, grim courtyard with a large, unbelievably forbidding entrance at the far end. Above it stood this inscription:
"These shall go into everlasting punishment." (Matthew 25: 46) The walls all about were similarly inscribed. I asked my guide if I could read them, and he consented. These were the inscriptions:
"He will give fire, and worms into their flesh, and they may burn and may feel forever." (Judith 16: 21)
"The pool of fire where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." (Apocalypse 20: 9-10)
"And the smoke of their torments shall ascend up forever and ever." (Apocalypse 14: 11)
"A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth." (Job 10: 22)
"There is no peace to the wicked." (Isaias 47: 22)
"There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:12)
While I moved from one inscription to another, my guide, who had stood in the center of the courtyard, came up to me.
"From here on," he said, "no one may have a helpful companion, a comforting friend, a loving heart, a compassionate glance, or a benevolent word. All this is gone forever. Do you just want to see or would you rather experience these things yourself?"
"I only want to see!" I answered.
"Then come with me," my friend added, and, taking me in tow, he stepped through that gate into a corridor at whose far end stood an observation platform, closed by a huge, single crystal pane reaching from the pavement to the ceiling. As soon as I crossed its threshold, I felt an indescribable terror and dared not take another step. Ahead of me I could see something like an immense cave which gradually disappeared into recesses sunk far into the bowels of the mountains. They were all ablaze, but theirs was not an earthly fire with leaping tongues of flames. The entire cave --walls, ceiling, floor, iron, stones, wood, and coal -- everything was a glowing white at temperatures of thousands of degrees. Yet the fire did not incinerate, did not consume. I simply can't find words to describe the cavern's horror. "The nourishment thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord as a torrent of brimstone kindling it." (Isaias 30: 33)
I was staring in bewilderment about me when a lad dashed out of a gate. Seemingly unaware of anything else, he emitted a most shrilling scream, like one who is about to fall into a cauldron of liquid bronze, and plummeted into the center of the cave. Instantly he too became incandescent and perfectly motionless, while the echo of his dying wail lingered for an instant more.
Terribly frightened, I stared briefly at him for a while. He seemed to be one of my Oratory boys. "Isn't he so and so?" I asked my guide.
"Yes," was the answer.
"Why is he so still, so incandescent?"
"You chose to see," he replied. "Be satisfied with that. Just keep looking. Besides, "Everyone shall be salted with fire." (Mark 9: 48)
As I looked again, another boy came hurtling down into the cave at breakneck speed. He too was from the Oratory. As he fell, so he remained. He too emitted one single heart-rending shriek that blended with the last echo of the scream that came from the youth who had preceded him. Other boys kept hurtling in the same way in increasing numbers, all screaming the same way and then all becoming equally motionless and incandescent. I noticed that the first seemed frozen to the spot, one hand and one foot raised into the air; the second boy seemed bent almost double to the floor. Others stood or hung in various other positions, balancing themselves on one foot or hand, sitting or lying on their backs or on their sides, standing or kneeling, hands clutching their hair. Briefly, the scene resembled a large statuary group of youngsters cast into ever more painful postures. Other lads hurtled into that same furnace. Some I knew; others were strangers to me. I then recalled what is written in the Bible to the effect that as one falls into Hell, so he shall forever remain. ". . . in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be." (Ecclesiastes 11:3)
More frightened than ever, I asked my guide, "When these boys come dashing into this cave, don't they know where they are going?"
"They surely do. They have been warned a thousand times, but they still choose to rush into the fire because they do not detest sin and are loath to forsake it. Furthermore, they despise and reject God's incessant, merciful invitations to do penance. Thus provoked, Divine Justice harries them, hounds them, and goads them on so that they cannot halt until they reach this place."
"Oh, how miserable these unfortunate boys must feel in knowing they no longer have any hope," I exclaimed. "If you really want to know their innermost frenzy and fury, go a little closer," my guide remarked.
I took a few steps forward and saw that many of those poor wretches were savagely striking at each other like mad dogs. Others were clawing their own faces and hands, tearing their own flesh and spitefully throwing it about. Just then the entire ceiling of the cave became as transparent as crystal and revealed a patch of Heaven and their radiant companions safe for all eternity.
The poor wretches, fuming and panting with envy, burned with rage because they had once ridiculed the just. "The wicked shall see, and be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth, and pine away. . . " (Psalms 111: 10) "Why do hear no sound?" I asked my guide,
"Go closer!" he advised.
Pressing my ear to the crystal window, I heard screams and sobs, blasphemies and imprecations against the Saints. It was a tumult of voices and cries, shrill and confused.
"When they recall the happy lot of their good companions," he replied, "they are obliged to admit: "We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold, how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints. Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us." (Wisdom 5:4-6) "We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we have not known. What hath pride profited us ? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us ? All those things are passed away like a shadow." (Wisdom 5: 7-9)
"Here time is no more. Here is only eternity."
While I viewed the condition of many of my boys in utter terror, a thought suddenly struck me. "How can these boys be damned?" I asked. "Last night they were still alive at the Oratory!"
"The boys you see here," he answered, "are all dead to God's grace. Were they to die now or persist in their evil ways, they would be damned. But we are wasting time. Let us go on."
He led me away and we went down through a corridor into a lower cavern, at whose entrance I read: "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched." (Isaias 66: 24) "He will give fire, and worms into their flesh, and they may burn and may feel forever." (Judith 16: 21)
Here one could see how atrocious was the remorse of those who had been pupils in our schools. What a torment was their, to remember each unforgiven sin and its just punishment, the countless, even extraordinary means they had had to mend their ways, persevere in virtue, and earn paradise, and their lack of response to the many favors promised and bestowed by the Virgin Mary. What a torture to think that they couId have been saved so easily, yet now are irredeemably lost, and to remember the many good resolutions made and never kept. Hell is indeed paved with good intentions!
In this lower cavern I again saw those Oratory boys who had fallen into the fiery furnace. Some are listening to me right now; others are former pupils or even strangers to me. I drew closer to them and noticed that they were all covered with worms and vermin which gnawed at their vitals, hearts, eyes, hands, legs, and entire bodies so ferociously as to defy description. Helpless and motionless, they were a prey to every kind of torment. Hoping I might be able to speak with them or to hear something from them, I drew even closer but no one spoke or even looked at me. I then asked my guide why, and he explained that the damned are totally deprived of freedom. Each must fully endure his own punishment, with absolutely no reprieve whatever. "And now," he added, "you too must enter that cavern."
"Oh, no!" I objected in terror. "Before going to Hell, one has to be judged. I have not been judged yet, and so I will not go to Hell!"
"Listen," he said, "what would you rather do: visit Hell and save your boys, or stay outside and leave them in agony?"
For a moment I was struck speechless. "Of course I love my boys and wish to save them all," I replied, "but isn't there some other way out?"
"Yes, there is a way," he went on, "provided you do all you can."
I breathed more easily and instantly said to myself, I don't mind slaving if I can rescue these beloved sons of mine from such torments.
"Come inside then," my friend went on, "and see how our good, almighty God lovingly provides a thousand means for guiding your boys to penance and saving them from everlasting death."
Taking my hand, he led me into the cave. As I stepped in, I found myself suddenly transported into a magnificent hall whose curtained glass doors concealed more entrances.
Above one of them I read this inscription: The Sixth Commandment. Pointing to it, my guide exclaimed, "Transgressions of this commandment caused the eternal ruin of many boys."
"Didn't they go to confession?"
"They did, but they either omitted or insufficiently confessed the sins against the beautiful virtue of purity, saying for instance that they had committed such sins two or three times when it was four or five. Other boys may have fallen into that sin but once in their childhood, and, through shame, never confessed it or did so insufficiently. Others were not truly sorry or sincere in their resolve to avoid it in the future. There were even some who, rather than examine their conscience, spent their time trying to figure out how best to deceive their confessor. Anyone dying in this frame of mind chooses to be among the damned, and so he is doomed for all eternity. Only those who die truly repentant shall be eternally happy. Now do you want to see why our merciful God brought you here?" He lifted the curtain and I saw a group of Oratory boys -- all known to me -- who were there because of this sin. Among them were some whose conduct seems to be good.
"Now you will surely let me take down their names so that I may warn them individually," I exclaimed. "Then what do you suggest I tell them?"
"Always preach against immodesty. A generic warning will suffice. Bear in mind that even if you did admonish them individually, they would promise, but not always in earnest. For a firm resolution, one needs God's grace which will not be denied to your boys if they pray. God manifests His power especially by being merciful and forgiving. On your part, pray and make sacrifices. As for the boys, let them listen to your admonitions and consult their conscience. It will tell them what to do."
We spent the next half hour discussing the requisites of a good confession. Afterward, my guide several times exclaimed in a loud voice, "Avertere! Avertere!"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Change life! "
Perplexed, I bowed my head and made as if to withdraw, but he held me back.
"You haven't seen everything yet," he explained.
He turned and lifted another curtain bearing this inscription: "They who would become rich, fall into temptation, and to the snare of the devil." (1 Timothy 6: 9) (Note: would become rich: wish to become rich, seek riches, set their heart and affections toward riches.)
"This does not apply to my boys! I countered, "because they are as poor as I am. We are not rich and do not want to be. We give it no thought."
As the curtain was lifted, however, I saw a group of boys, all known to me. They were in pain, like those I had seen before. Pointing to them, my guide remarked, "As you see, the inscription does apply to your boys."
"But how?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "some boys are so attached to material possessions that their love of God is lessened. Thus they sin against charity, piety, and meekness. Even the mere desire of riches can corrupt the heart, especially if such a desire leads to injustice. Your boys are poor, but remember that greed and idleness are bad counselors. One of your boys committed substantial thefts in his native town, and though he could make restitution, he gives it not a thought. There are others who try to break into the pantry or the prefect's or economer's office; those who rummage in their companions' trunks for food, money, or possessions; those who steal stationery and books...."
After naming these boys and others as well, he continued, "Some are here for having stolen clothes, linen, blankets, and coats from the Oratory wardrobe in order to send them home to their families; others for willful, serious damage; others, yet, for not having given back what they had borrowed or for having kept sums of money they were supposed to hand over to the superior. Now that you know who these boys are," he concluded, "admonish them. Tell them to curb all vain, harmful desires, to obey God's law and to safeguard their reputation jealously lest greed lead them to greater excesses and plunge them into sorrow, death, and damnation."
I couldn't understand why such dreadful punishments should be meted out for infractions that boys thought so little of, but my guide shook me out of my thoughts by saying: "Recall what you were told when you saw those spoiled grapes on the wine." With these words he lifted another curtain which hid many of our Oratory boys, all of whom I recognized instantly. The inscription on the curtain read: The root of all evils.
"Do you know what that means?" he asked me immediately.
"What sin does that refer to?"
"Pride?"
"No!"
"And yet I have always heard that pride is the root of all evil."
"It is, generally speaking, but, specifically, do you know what led Adam and Eve to commit the first sin for which they were driven away from their earthly paradise?"
"Disobedience?"
"Exactly! Disobedience is the root of all evil."
"What shall I tell my boys about it?"
"Listen carefully: the boys you see here are those who prepare such a tragic end for themselves by being disobedient. So-and-so and so-and-so, who you think went to bed, leave the dormitory later in the night to roam about the playground, and, contrary to orders, they stray into dangerous areas and up scaffolds, endangering even their lives. Others go to church, but, ignoring recommendations, they misbehave; instead of praying, they daydream or cause a disturbance. There are also those who make themselves comfortable so as to doze off during church services, and those who only make believe they are going to church. Woe to those who neglect prayer! He who does not pray dooms himself to perdition. Some are here because, instead of singing hymns or saying the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, they read frivolous or -- worse yet -- forbidden books." He then went on mentioning other serious breaches of discipline.
When he was done, I was deeply moved.
"May I mention all these things to my boys?" I asked, looking at him straight in the eye.
"Yes, you may tell them whatever you remember."
"What advice shall I give them to safeguard them from such a tragedy?"
"Keep telling them that by obeying God, the Church, their parents, and their superiors, even in little things, they will be saved."
"Anything else?"
"Warn them against idleness. Because of idleness David fell into sin. Tell them to keep busy at all times, because the devil will not then have a chance to tempt them."
I bowed my head and promised. Faint with dismay, I could only mutter, "Thanks for having been so good to me. Now, please lead me out of here."
"All right, then, come with me." Encouragingly he took my hand and held me up because I could hardly stand on my feet. Leaving that hall, in no time at all we retraced our steps through that horrible courtyard and the long corridor. But as soon as we stepped across the last bronze portal, he turned to me and said, "Now that you have seen what others suffer, you too must experience a touch of Hell."
"No, no!" I cried in terror.
He insisted, but I kept refusing.
"Do not be afraid," he told me; "just try it. Touch this wall."
I could not muster enough courage and tried to get away, but he held me back. "Try it," he insisted. Gripping my arm firmly, he pulled me to the wall. "Only one touch," he cornmanded, "so that you may say you have both seen and touched the walls of eternal suffering and that you may understand what the last wall must be like if the first is so unendurable. Look at this wall!" I did intently. It seemed incredibly thick. "There are a thousand walls between this and the real fire of Hell," my guide continued. "A thousand walls encompass it, each a thousand measures thick and equally distant from the next one. Each measure is a thousand miles. This wall therefore is millions and millions of miles from Hell's real fire. It is just a remote rim of Hell itself."
When he said this, I instinctively pulled back, but he seized my hand, forced it open, and pressed it against the first of the thousand walls. The sensation was so utterly excruciating that I leaped back with a scream and found myself sitting up in bed. My hand was stinging and I kept rubbing it to ease the pain. When I got up this morning I noticed that it was swollen. Having my hand pressed against the wall, though only in a dream, felt so real that, later, the skin of my palm peeled off.
Bear in mind that I have tried not to frighten you very much, and so I have not described these things in all their horror as I saw them and as they impressed me. We know that Our Lord always portrayed Hell in symbols because, had He described it as it really is, we would not have understood Him. No mortal can comprehend these things. The Lord knows them and He reveals them to whomever He wills. [END]

"To adhere to a false Bishop of Rome [a false "pope"] is to be out of communion with the Church." -St. Cyprian

The Holy Spirit and His Gifts

2010-11-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

If you’ve gone through Confirmation Class and were confirmed, you received the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the seven gifts that began to work in you at your Baptism. Can you name them? Have you used them? Do you still have them? Do you feel alive spiritually, or are you “going through the motions”?

Reality is both physical and spiritual. The only difference is our physical eyes cannot see the spiritual. But, we can “feel” the Spirit and be in touch with the Spirit and know of His power.

We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For most of us, the Father and Son are pretty easy to relate to. For many Catholics, the Holy Spirit is another matter. Let’s lay a foundation first, then I’ll explain how you can deepen your spirituality and “get in touch” with the Spirit.

The traditional Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are listed in Isaiah 11:2. The Hebrew text lists only six, but the Greek has seven. The Early Church used the Greek version of the Old Testament as its official text, and so today, we speak of seven gifts rather than six.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Holy Spirit guides our moral life (our relationship with others) through: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel.

Wisdom – Wisdom sees as God sees, and knows God and divine things, loves God and His ways. It’s linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.” This gift directs the person to order his life in every way according to God. From this order comes peace. The effect is an indivisible union with God. Disordered desires, affections, and attachments destroy peace.

Understanding – Understanding gives insight and applies faith to life. Linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God.” On our own, we cannot penetrate the divine. This gift enlightens us to the Way of Jesus. This gift moves us beyond attachment to creatures and things and purifies us by means of sacrifice and detachment. In an ever growing purity, we come to see Jesus and learn to follow Him.

Knowledge – Knowledge gives us the ability to comprehend the meaning and message of Jesus and connect our experience to faith. It’s linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted.” This gift instructs us of the “nothingness” of being human and the “all” and infinite goodness of God. We weep for the time spent seeking anything but God. We are comforted with hope in our sufferings and embrace what makes us more like Jesus.

Right Judgement/Counsel – Counsel is the ability to know right from wrong and to make good decisions. It helps us to fulfill the divine commandments, especially love. The more developed this gift becomes in us, the more we are able to listen to the Holy Spirit. Linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Christ’s love cannot be separated from His mercy. To love as Jesus loves, we must be merciful.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Holy Spirit guides our theological life (our relationship with God) and directs our will towards God through fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.

Courage/Strength/Fortitude – This gift enables us to overcome our fear, take risks, and be heroic in following Jesus. It is linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness (justice), for they will be satisfied.” This gift strengthens us to bear any suffering for what is good and to do God’s will.

Reverence/Piety – (Only in the Septuagint) This gift equips us with a deep sense of respect and love for the Lord. When we allow this gift to work in us, our love and worship of Jesus becomes intimate and strong. Instead of going through the motions of worship, we have a sense of relationship with Jesus. Linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the land.” Piety makes us meek and gentle desiring only to please God. The land is our heart and it is changed into the heart of Jesus. This means that to win someone over to Christ, we must never use force, but rather meekness and patience.

Wonder and Awe/Fear of the Lord – This gift completes the attitude we must have towards God. He is “Daddy,” yet He is also “Majesty.” This gift causes us to marvel at anything that is God’s work and we become speechless when we behold Him in creation, or other people. Linked to the Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The gift liberates us from sin by extinguishing our desire for earthly things (self-detachment). The effect is to abstain from evil deeds.

The Virtues

Cardinal, Theological, and Moral

How do we live a Christian life? The Gifts of the Holy Spirit empower us. They help us to live the virtues. Here is a short discussion about the three categories of virtues.

The Cardinal virtues are originally from Plato. The name comes from the Latin word “cardo” which means hinge. They are the hinge upon which the door of the moral life swings. Find them in the Bible in Wisdom 8:7.

Prudence – The “mother of all virtues,” a discretion and carefulness in deciding the good of an action. It is associated with wisdom, insight, knowledge. It’s chief rule is Matthew 6:19-20, 33.

Justice – Sometimes ranked as the most important virtue, it gives to each what is due. Closely associated with love (charity), it judges properly with regard to persons rights and interests.

Temperance – The practice of self control and moderation.

Courage or Fortitude – The ability to confront fear, uncertainty or intimidation.

The Theological virtues, found in 1 Corinthians 13:13, are so named because their object is God Himself.

Faith – Faith is steadfastness in belief. Hope – The expectation of good. Love or Charity – Being selfless,
unconditional, having a loving kindness.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the gifts roughly correspond to the virtues (theological and cardinal) in this manner:
Wisdom to Charity                          Knowledge to Faith.
Counsel to Prudence                       Fortitude to Fortitude
Understanding to Faith                    Piety to Justice                            Fear of the Lord to Hope

The Moral virtues (and the Seven Capital sins they oppose)

Chastity (Lust) Embracing of moral wholesomeness and achieving purity of body and thought through education and betterment.

Temperance (Gluttony) Practicing self control and moderation.

Charity (Greed or avarice) Generosity, a willingness to give, a nobility of thought and action.

Diligence (Sloth) A zealous and careful nature in one’s actions and work. Decisive work ethic. Budgeting one’s time. Monitoring activity to guard against laziness.

Patience (Wrath or anger) Resolving conflicts peacefully rather than using violence. The ability to forgive and show mercy to sinners.

Kindness (Envy) Charity, compassion, friendship, and sympathy without prejudice for its own sake.

Humility (Pride) Modest behavior, selflessness, and the giving of respect. Giving credit where credit is due, not unfairly glorifying one’s own self.

Gifts and the moral virtues have similarities. However, though helped and given by grace, virtues operate by human reason and at our will or decision. Gifts are the decision of the Holy Spirit. Virtues can be used when we wish. Gifts operate when the Holy Spirit wishes. Virtues are like an oar in the water that we use to move a boat. Gifts are like a sail. We are in the boat, but it is the Holy Spirit who moves it.

Of course, even when it is the Holy Spirit’s decision to move the boat using the sail, we always have the option to “drop anchor.” It takes a habit of prayer and silence to listen well to the Spirit so we do not work against Him.

Why Do Roman Catholics Pray to Saints?

2010-11-18T08:36:00.000-08:00

Question: Why Do Roman Catholics Pray to Saints?

Like all Christians, Catholics believe in life after death, but they also believe that our relationship with other Christians does not end with death. Catholic prayer to saints is a recognition of this communion.

Do Catholics believe that saints should be worshiped?
Why do they pray to saints?
Is there a difference between prayer and worship?

Answer:

The Communion of Saints

Like all Christians, Catholics believe in life after death. Those who have lived good lives and died in the faith of Christ will, as the Bible tells us, share in his resurrection.
While we live together on earth as Christians, we are in communion, or unity, with one another. But that communion doesn’t end when one of us dies. We believe that Christians in heaven, the saints, remain in communion with those of us on earth.
So, just as we might ask a friend or family member to pray for us, we can approach a saint with our prayers, too.

The Difference Between Prayer and Worship

Many non-Catholic Christians believe that it is wrong to pray to the saints, claiming that our prayers should be directed to God alone. Some Catholics, responding to this criticism, have argued that we do not pray to the saints but with them.
Both groups, however, are confusing prayer with worship. True worship (as opposed to veneration or honor) does indeed belong to God alone, and we should never worship man or any other creature as we worship God. But while worship may take the form of prayer, as in the Mass and other liturgies of the Church, not all prayer is worship. When we pray to the saints, we’re simply asking them to help us, by praying to God on our behalf, or thanking them for having already done so.

Mary's cooperation in the redemption

2010-11-18T08:29:00.001-08:00

Sciptural Foundation
Many Protestants claim that the more advanced doctrines of the Catholic Church about Mary are unscriptural. They say this especially about our teaching concerning her cooperation in the redemption.
First, we want to notice that in the very earliest Fathers of the Church, such as St. Justin Martyr (c. 145-150), we find the New Eve doctrine, i.e., that just as the first Eve really contributed to the damage of original sin, so Mary, the New Eve, really contributed to removing it. They had in mind her obedient acceptance, in faith, to be the Mother of the Messiah.
But today the Church has considerably developed that early teaching. We quote a very official text, the Constitution on the Church of Vatican II, P61: "... in suffering with Him as He died on the cross, she cooperated in the work of the Savior, in an altogether singular way, by obedience, faith, hope and burning love, to restore supernatural life to souls." This same doctrine is found in every Pope from Leo XIII up to and including John Paul II.
So Vatican II was merely restating a repeated teaching. But the way it expressed it is very helpful. It said her role on Calvary was one of obedience. Earlier, in # 56, it had pointed out that obedience twice, in citing St. Irenaeus (late second century): "By obeying, she became a cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race." Then (we first recall the comparison St. Irenaeus made of all sin to a complex knot, in which the Saint said that to untie a knot, one must take the end of the rope backwards through every turn taken in tying it) it added, from St. Irenaeus: "Thus then, the knot of the disobedience of Eve was untied through the obedience of Mary."
At first sight this teaching seems to have no basis in Scripture. But if we look more closely, we will see something quite obvious. First, at the Annunciation, she was asked to consent, in faith, to be the Mother of the Messiah. She knew this perfectly clearly, for as soon as the Archangel said, "He will reign over the house of Jacob forever," she knew that only the Messiah could reign forever. So she knew it was the Messiah. Then there would begin to crowd into her thoughts all the ancient prophecies of the Messiah, especially Isaiah 53, of His dreadful sufferings and death. She was asked to consent to be the Mother of such a Messiah.
She did consent, as St. Luke tells us, saying: "Be it done to me according to your word. "She gave her fiat, her obedience to the will of God, as the angel told her of His will. Did she later retract this acceptance of God's will? Of course not. Any soul either falls back or goes ahead in holiness. Holiness really consists in the alignment of our wills, through grace, with the will of God--for the free will is the only thing free we have. So Mary faithfully stood by Him, keeping in the background when the crowds gave Him praise, but moving out into the dark blackness that hung over Calvary. There she stood.
What was her reaction? Of course, she grieved, as any Mother would, seeing her Son suffering so horribly. And she saw that suffering as our crucifixes do not generally let us see it--they contain no trace at all of the horrid scourging, leaving Him bloody all over.
But now we can begin to realize something tremendous. As we said, spiritual perfection consists in the alignment of our will with the will of the Father. Further, when we know what He positively wills, it is not enough for us to say, as it were: "Let it go". No, we are called on to positively will what He wills. But what did He will in that dread hour? She knew from Isaiah 53:10: "It was the will of the Lord to crush Him with pain." So the Father willed that His Son should die, die then, die so horribly. So did the Son will it. So she was then called upon to will what the Father willed, what her Son willed, in other words, she was called on to will positively that He die, die then, die horribly.
We must add: the redemption was, under one aspect, the making of the New Covenant, foretold by Jeremiah 31:31 ff: "I will make a New covenant. It will not be like the covenant I made with your Fathers, for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master. But this is the Covenant. I will write my law on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people."
In the Covenant of Sinai, the essential condition had been the obedience of the people (Ex 19:5): "If you really hearken to my voice, and keep my covenant, you will be my special people." So the New Covenant would have again as its essential condition obedience, which Jeremiah expressed by speaking of a law written on hearts. Perhaps Jeremiah did not see it fully, but that obedience was to be the obedience of Christ.
What did that law of the Father, written on her heart call for? It called for what we have just said: That she positively will that her Son die, die then, die so horribly. In that, she was joining in the fulfillment of the Covenant condition. He, in Gethsemani, had said: "If it be possible, let this chalice pass ... but nonetheless, not what I will, but what you will." In other words, He obeyed. St. Paul stressed that too in Rom 5:19: "Just as by the disobedience of the one man [the first Adam] the many were made sinners [original sin] so by the obedience of the one man [the New Adam] the many will be constituted just."
In fact, had His death taken place without obedience, it would not have been a redemption, it would have been merely a tragedy. So it was obedience that was the covenant condition, it was that which gave the value to His death.
To look at the same reality from a different perspective, His death was a sacrifice. God had once complained through Isaiah 29:13: "This people honors me with their lips ... their hearts are far from me." The ancient Jews were very adept at what is sometimes, simplistically, called "participation." They loved to make the responses, to sing, to join in processions. But too often it was all empty, for their hearts were far from Him: their hearts did not act in obedience.
But Jesus did offer His sacrifice in obedience. So just as obedience is the covenant condition, so too, it is that without which His sacrifice would be as worthless as those of which God complained through Isaiah.
From a third perspective, the redemption was an act of reparation to make up for sin. Since sin is disobedience of God's will, it was, once again, Christ's obedience which gave his death value to make up for sin. But we return to Our Lady. At the annunciation, she obeyed, she said her fiat. She knew too much for comfort even then, of what that entailed, as we explained above. But now in the blackness of Calvary, she was called on to continue to obey the will of the Father. That she did. As we said, we know this since any soul is required to conform its will to that of the Father. But then, she knew that will of the Father, knew it all too well. It was that He should die then, die horribly. So what she had to do, unless she would break with the Father, was to will what He willed, to will the terrible death of her Son.
All this is, of course, entirely Scriptural. It merely points out that at the start, she obeyed in saying her fiat, as St. Luke tells us. At the Cross, as any soul that loves the will of the Father must do, she had to continue her fiat, to continue to obey. Isaiah 53 had said that, "by His stripes we are healed", that, "it was the will of the Lord to crush Him in pain." Even the Targum knew Isaiah spoke of the Messiah, although in the stiff-necks of many, the message was even inverted. But she was not such, she understood, and yet she did not take back her fiat, she obeyed the will of the Lord. That obedience of hers was a joining in the essential condition of the New Covenant, it was a joining in the necessary interior of His sacrifice.
Her love of Him would multiply the difficulty. It was the love of the best of Mothers for the best of Sons, a Son whom she understood as no other person could. We cannot really calculate the terrible difficulty of her obedience, going counter to such love.
Would the Father accept her obedience as part of the covenant obedience? In the old covenant, He accepted the obedience of even very ordinary, sinful people--how much more hers! Would He put her in such straits, call on her to obey when it was so incredibly hard, and then not accept her obedience as part of the covenant condition even as He had accepted the obedience of very ordinary, sinful people, as we said, in the old covenant.
He could have redeemed us with something immeasurably less painful--the mere fact of the incarnation, even without so much as a short prayer added, would have been superabundant. Yet in His love of all goodness, in His love of us, He would not stop short when there was any way to make it all richer. It was in that attitude that He called for the death of His Son, that He called for her immeasurably difficult obedience.
So, Vatican II in its teaching, merely unfolded, by pondering in hearts, what the Scripture contains, and what the Church over the course of the centuries has gradually come to understand: "In suffering with Him as He died on the cross, she cooperated in the work of the Savior"--in the essential requirement of the New Covenant, in the essential interior of the Great Sacrifice--"by obedience, faith, hope and burning love."
Objection
Now about the objection that since she had to be redeemed, she could not cooperate in the redemption, which would include her own redemption, we have two replies:
1) the Magisterium has taught repeatedly, so often as to constitute an infallible teaching, that she did so cooperate. We see in the collection of papal teachings how precise and clear this teaching is. It cannot be taken as something merely loose or vague, especially since LG ## 56, 61 had said three times that she shared by obedience, the covenant condition, and that which gave its value even to His sacrifice. Pius XII, in the constitution solemnly defining the assumption, had even gone so far as to speak of her role on Calvary as a work "in common" with Him. Even if we could not explain the how, we should still believe an infallible teaching. The saying is very true: a thousand difficulties do not add up to one doubt, when the assurance of the truth is full.
2) We have said that one major aspect of the redemption is that it is a new covenant. Two comments on that:
a) He who makes a covenant does not ask, need not ask of a proposed covenantor: Are you worthy to fulfil this condition, so that if you do this, I will do that? No, the one who makes the covenant has the sovereign right to set whatever terms and conditions He wishes, and to choose whoever he wishes as a covenant partner, especially when the originator of the covenant is God Himself. Really, He could have set as a condition for the whole of redemption an animal sacrifice by any ordinary human, and have even bound Himself by advance promise to accept it.
b) There are two levels within the new covenant, so that if we ask why God gives good things under it, there are two answers, on the two levels. First, on the most basic level, everything He gives is unmerited, unmeritable, for no creature by its own power can establish a claim on God. And He cannot be moved at all. But then, on the secondary level, that is, given the fact that the Father has freely created and entered into a covenant, then if the human fulfills the condition set, the Father owes it to Himself to give what He has promised. Really, even the death of Jesus was on this secondary level. It did not move the Father: He could not be moved, did not need to be moved. It was because the Father always loved us that Jesus came, not that Jesus came and then the Father dropped His anger.
The old language on this subject often spoke much of meriting redemption on a basis of justice. But we must never forget that no creature at all can ever establish any kind of claim on God, whether in justice or on a lesser level, by its own power. It can establish any sort of claim only if God as it were says: "If you do this, I will do that." So St. Augustine wrote well in saying to God (Confessions 9. 5): "You deign to even become a debtor by your promises to those to whom you forgive their debts."
So there is no need to think of Mary as if she had to earn on a primary, basic level. No, as we saw, even the work of Jesus, infinite though it was, was on the secondary level. It was, to borrow an expression from St. Thomas, a hoc propter hoc (ST I. 19. 5. c) "Vult hoc esse propter hoc, sed non propter hoc vult hoc. That is: God in His love of good order, of all that is right, loves to have one thing in place to serve as a reason or title for giving the second thing, even though that title does not at all move Him. Again, we must not forget that He cannot be moved, and needed not to be moved to love us.
When we finally grasp this perspective, when we realize that even the merits of His Son did not move the Father, who did not need to be moved, who could not be moved, but who made a setup suited to His own purpose--we already saw that that purpose entailed two things: His desire to fully satisfy everything that was right, i.e. , to rebalance the scales of the objective order, and, secondly to provide a means of giving to us, of making us open to receive.
Within, then, such a framework, with such an attitude on the part of Our Father, if He, the supreme master who makes the covenant, wants to set whatever condition it pleases Him to set, then if any human, even if it were a mere, an ordinary human, if that human fulfills the covenant condition, then the human is providing the Father with a reason for giving, which the Father did not need, but yet willed for the two reasons just reviewed. So if Our Lady joins in the condition set by the Father, there is no problem at all: she is meeting the condition which His excessive generosity liked to set, as a means of giving us abundant life.
"Corredemptrix"
Mary's cooperation in the work of redemption is sometimes expressed by giving her the title "Corredemptrix." The Popes have used this title, but more rarely and in documents of lesser weight, because it easily admits of misunderstanding. The first extant use of the title is in a fourtheenth century liturgical book from Salzburg. The prefix "co-" signifies that Mary does not contribute independently to the redemption, but only as associated with her divine Son.
What Next?
Now that all graces have been earned, once for all (cf. Hebrews 9:29), is there further role for Our Lady? The mere fact that she shared in earning all graces--for Calvary did not earn just some graces, but all graces--would all by itself warrant our calling her the Mediatrix of all graces. But more about this title in the section on Mary, Mediatrix of all graces.

St. Catherine of Alexandria

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Dates: 290s C.E. (??) - 305 C.E. (?)
Known for: legends vary, but usually known for her torture on a wheel before her martyrdom
Feast Day: November 25
Also known as: Katherine of Alexandria, Saint Catherine of the Wheel, Great Martyr Catherine

How We Know About Saint Catherine of Alexandria:

Eusebius writes about 320 of a Christian woman of Alexandria who refused the advances of the Roman emperor and, as a consequence of her refusal, lost her estates and was banished.

Popular stories add more details, some of which conflict with each other. The following summarizes the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria depicted in those popular stories. The story is found in the Golden Legend and also in an "Acts" of her life.

Legendary Life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria:

Catherine of Alexandria is said to have been born the daughter of Cestus, wealthy man of Alexandria in Egypt. She was noted for her wealth, intelligence, and beauty. She is said to have learned philosophy, languages, science (natural philosophy), and medicine. She refused to marry, not finding any man who was her equal. Either her mother or her reading introduced her to the Christian religion.

She is said to have challenged the emperor (Maximinus or Maximian or his son Maxentius are variously thought to be the anti-Christian emperor in question) when she was eighteen years old. The emperor brought in some 50 philosophers to dispute her Christian ideas -- but she convinced them all to convert, at which point the emperor burned them all to death. She then is said to have converted others, even the empress.

Then the emperor is said to have tried to make her his empress or mistress, and when she refused, she was tortured on a spiked wheel, which miraculously fell apart and the parts killed some who were watching the torture. Finally, the emperor had her beheaded.

Veneration of Saint Catherine of Alexandria:

In about the 8th or 9th century, a story became popular that after she died, St. Catherine's body was carried by angels to Mount Sinai, and that the monastery there was built in honor of this event.

In medieval times, St. Catherine of Alexandria was among the most popular saints, and was often depicted in statues, paintings, and other art in churches and chapels. She has been included as one of the fourteen "holy helpers," or important saints to pray to for healing. She was considered a protector of young girls and especially of those who were students or in cloisters. She was also considered the patroness of wheelwrights, mechanics, millers, philosophers, scribes, and preachers.

St. Catherine was especially popular in France, and she was one of the saints whose voices were heard by Joan of Arc. The popularity of the name "Catherine" (in various spellings) is likely based on Catherine of Alexandria's popularity.
In Orthodox Churches Catherine of Alexandria is known as a "great martyr."
There is no real historical evidence for the details of St. Catherine's life story outside these legends. Writings of visitors to the Mt. Sinai monastery do not mention her legend for the first few centuries after her death.

The feast day of Catherine of Alexandria, November 25, was removed from the Roman Catholic Church's official calendar of saints in 1969, and restored as an optional memorial on that calendar in 2002.

Abstinence as siritual discipline

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The Difference Between Fasting and Abstinence:

Fasting and abstinence are closely related, but there are some differences in these spiritual practices. In general, fasting refers to restrictions on the quantity of the food we eat and on when we consume it, while abstinence refers to the avoidance of particular foods. The most common form of abstinence is the avoidance of meat, a spiritual practice that goes back to the earliest days of the Church.

Depriving Ourselves of Something Good:

Until the Second Vatican Council, Catholics were required to abstain from meat every Friday, as a form of penance in honor of the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross on Good Friday. Since Catholics are normally allowed to eat meat, this prohibition is very different from the dietary laws of the Old Testament or of other religions (such as Islam) today.
In the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10:9-16), St. Peter has a vision in which God reveals that Christians can eat any food. So, when we abstain, it's not because the food is impure; we're voluntarily giving up something good, for our spiritual benefit.

Current Church Law Regarding Abstinence:

That's why, under current Church law, the days of abstinence fall during Lent, the season of spiritual preparation for Easter. On Ash Wednesday and all of the Fridays of Lent, Catholics over the age of 14 are required to abstain from meat and from foods made with meat.
Many Catholics don't realize that Church still recommends abstinence on all Fridays of the year, not just during Lent. In fact, if we don't abstain from meat on non-Lenten Fridays, we're required to substitute some other form of penance.

Going Beyond What's Required:

If you would like to make abstinence a bigger part of your spiritual discipline, a good place to start is to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year. During Lent, you might consider following the traditional rules for Lenten abstinence, which include eating meat at only one meal per day (in addition to strict abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Fridays).
Unlike fasting, abstinence is less likely to be harmful if taken to extremes, but, if you want to extend your discipline beyond what the Church currently prescribes (or beyond what it has prescribed in the past), you should consult your priest.

Canadian saints

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The Canadian Saints

The Saint Canadian Martyrs:

Saint Isaac Jogues, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1608, martyred in 1646).

Saint Jean de Brébeuf, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1593, martyred in 1649).

Saint Charles Garnier, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1606, martyred in 1649).

Saint Antoine Daniel, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1600, martyred in 1648).

Saint Gabriel Lalemant, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1610, martyred in 1649).

Saint Noel Chabanel, Jesuit priest,

(Born in 1613, martyred in 1649).

Saint René Goupil, Jesuit Novice,

(Born in 1608, martyred in 1642).

Saint Jean de La Lande, layperson,

(Born in 160?, martyred in 1646).

The eight Canadian Martyrs lived in Canada from 1625 to 1649. Canonized on June 29, 1930. Celebrated on September 26 in Canada. Feast celebrated on October 19 in the Universal Church.

Other Canadian Saints...

Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys

(Born in 1620, died in 1700).

Co-founded Montréal.

Founder of the Congregation of Notre-Dame.

Canonized on October 31, 1982.

Feast celebrated on January 12.

Saint Marguerite d'Youville

(Born in 1701, died in 1771).

Founder of the Sisters of Charity,

known as the "Grey Nuns."

Canonized in 1990.

Feast celebrated on October 16.

The Canadian Blessed

Blessed André Grasset, Sulpician,

(Born in 1758, died in 1792).

Born in Montréal.

Martyred in Paris on September 2, 1792

during the French Revolution.

Beatified on October 17, 1926.

Feast celebrated on September 2.

Will be raised to sainthood in January, 2002.

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, layperson,

(Born in 1656, died in 1680).

Beatified on June 22, 1980.

Feast celebrated on April 17.

Blessed Marie de l'Incarnation,

(Born in 1599, died in 1672).

Founder of the Urselines Sisters in Québec.

Beatified on June 22, 1980.

Feast celebrated on April 30.

Blessed François de Laval,

(Born in 1623, died in 1708).

First Bishop of Québec.

Beatified on June 22, 1980.

Feast celebrated on May 6.

Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher,

(Born in 1811, died in 1849).

Founder of the Sisters

of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.

Beatified on May 23, 1982.

Feast celebrated on October 6.

Blessed Brother André,

(Born in 1845, died in 1937).

(Also known as "Alfred Bessette")

Brother of the religious Order

of the Holy Cross.

Built the Saint-Joseph Oratory

of Mont-Royal at Montréal.

Beatified on May 23, 1982.

Feast celebrated on January 6.

Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis,

(Born in 1840, died in 1912).

Founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family.

Beatified on September 11, 1984 in Montréal.

Feast celebrated on May 4.

Blessed Louis-Zéphirin Moreau,

(Born in 1824, died in 1901).

Fourth Bishop of Saint Hyacinthe.

Beatified on May 10, 1987.

Feast celebrated on May 24.

Blessed Frédéric Janssoone, Franciscan

(Born in 1838, died in 1916).

Beatified on September 25, 1988.

Feast celebrated on August 5.

Blessed Catherine de Saint-Augustin,

(Born in 1632, Died in 1668).

Founder of the "Hôtel-Dieu" of Québec.

Beatified on April 23, 1989.

Feast celebrated on May 8.

Blessed Dina Bélanger,

(Born in 1897, Died in 1929).

Sister of Jesus-Mary, Sillery.

Beatified on March 20, 1993.

Feast celebrated on September 4.

Blessed Marie-Anne Blondin,

(Born in 1809, Died in 1890).

Founder of the Sisters of Saint Anne.

Beatified on April 29, 2001.

Feast celebrated on April 18.

Blessed Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin,

(Born in 1800, Died in 1851).

Founder of the Sisters of Providence

Beatified on October 7, 2001

Feast celebrated on September 23.

Blessed Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky, C.Ss.R., Bishop and Martyr (Ukrainian)

(Born June 1, 1903, Died June 30, 1973).

Appointed as bishop of this underground church in Lviv, Ukraine.

Secretly ordained as Bishop in 1963.

Beatified on June 27, 2001.

Blessed Bishop Nykyta Budka (Greek-Ukrainian)

(Born June 7, 1877 [Poland], Died October 1, 1949 Soviet concentration camp]).

Ordained on October 25, 1905.

First bishop for Ukrainian Catholics on July 15, 1912 in Canada.

Beatified June 27, 2001 in Ukraine.

The Canadian Venerable

Venerable Vital Grandin,

Oblate of Mary Immaculate,

(Born in 1829, died in 1902).

Bishop of Saint Albert, Alberta.

Declared Venerable on December 15, 1966.

Venerable Alfred Pampalon, Redemptorist,

(Born in 1867, died in 1896).

Declared Venerable on May 14, 1991.

Venerable Élisabeth Bergeron,

(Born in 1851, died in 1936).

Founder of the Sisters of

Saint Joseph, Saint Hyacinthe.

Declared Venerable on January 12, 1996.

Venerable Délia Tétreault,

(Born in 1865, died in 1941).

Founder of the Missionary Sisters

of the Immaculate Conception.

Declared Venerable on December 18, 1997.

Causes Introduced To The Vatican
For Elevation To Sainthood

Jérôme Le Royer de la Dauversière, layperson,

(Born in 1597, died in 1659).

Founder of Montréal and

the welcoming religious of Saint Joseph.

Jeanne Mance, layperson,

(Born in 1606, died in 1673).

Co-founded Montréal and

founder of the "Hôtel-Dieu" of Québec.

Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, Jesuit,

(Born in 1611, died in 1693).

Companion of the Canadian Martyrs.

Didace Pelletier, religious brother,

(Born in 1657, died in 1699).

Carpenter and Church builder.

Jeanne LeBer, layperson in seclusion,

(Born in 1662, died in 1714).

Rosalie Cadron-Jetté,

(Born in 1794, died in 1864).

Founder of the Sisters of Mercy.

Marcelle Mallet,

(Born in 1805, died in 1871).

Founder of the Sisters of Charity of Québec.

Élisabeth Bruyère,

(Born in 1818, died in 1876).

Founder of the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa.

Élisabeth Turgeon,

(Born in 1840, died in 1881).

Founder of the Sisters of the Holy Rosary, Rimouski.

Marie Fitzbach,

(Born in 1806, died in 1885).

Founder of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of Québec.

Éléonore Potvin,

(Born in 1865, died in 1903).

Co-founded the Servants of Jesus-Mary, Hull,

with Father Alexis-Louis Mangin.

Catherine-Aurélie Caouette,

(Born in 1833, died in 1905).

Founder of the Sisters of Adoration

of the Precious Blood, Saint-Hyacinthe.

Alexis-Louis Mangin, priest,

(Born in 1856, died in 1920).

Co-founded the Servants of Jesus-Mary,

Hull with Éléonore Potvin.

Théophanius-Léo (Adolphe Chatillon),

Brother of the Christian Schools,

(Born in 1871, died in 1929).

Gérard Raymond,

(Born in 1912, died in 1932).

Student in the Little Seminary,

(Petit Séminaire) of Québec.

Ovide Charlebois,

Oblate of Mary Immaculate,

(Born in 1862, died in 1933).

Bishop of Keewatin, Manitoba.

Marie-Clément Staub, Assumptionist,

(Born in 1876, died in 1936).

Founder of the Sisters of

Saint Joan of Arc and of the Canadian Montmartre.

Eugène Prévost, priest,

(Born in 1860, died in 1946).

Founder of the Sacerdotal Fraternity

and of the Oblates of Bethany.

Antoine Kowalczyk,

brother of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate,

(Born in 1866, died in 1947).

Louis Émond, layperson,

(Born in 1876, died in 1949).

Co-founded the House of Jesus Carpenter

in Québec with Father Lelièvre of.

Victor Lelièvre,

Oblate of Mary Immaculate,

(Born in 1876, died in 1956).

Apostle of the Sacred Heart.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty,

(Born in 1896, died in 1985).

Founder of the Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario.

Pauline Archer-Vanier,

(Born in 1898, died in 1991).

"Mamie" of the Arch founded

by her son John (Jean) in Trosly-Breuil, France.

Georges Vanier,

(Born in 1888, died in 1967).

Governor-General of Canada from 1959 to 1967.

Biography of St. Padre Pio

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Padre Pio was born May 25, 1887 in Pietrelcina, Italy, a small country town located in southern Italy. His parents were Grazio Mario Forgione (1860-1946) and Maria Guiseppa de Nunzio Forgione (1859-1929). He was baptized the next day, in the nearby Castle Church, with the name of his brother, Francesco, who died in early infancy. Other children in the family were an older brother, Michele; three younger sisters: Felicita, Pellegrina and Grazia; and two children who died as infants.

Religion was the center of life for both Pietrelcina and the Forgione family. The town had many celebrations throughout the year in honor of different saints and the bell in the Castle Church was used not for ringing the hour, but for daily devotional time. Friends have described the Forgione family as "the God-is-everything-people" because they attended Daily Mass, prayed the Rosary nightly and fasted three days a week from meat in honor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Although Padre Pio’s grandparents and parents could not read and write, they memorized Sacred Scripture and told the children Bible stories. It was in this lovely family setting that the seeds of Faith were nurtured within Padre Pio.

From his early childhood, it was evident that Padre Pio had a deep piety. When he was five years old, he solemnly consecrated himself to Jesus. He liked to sing hymns, play church and preferred to be by himself where he could read and pray. As an adult, Padre Pio commented that in his younger years he had conversed with Jesus, the Madonna, his guardian angel, and had suffered attacks by the devil.

Padre Pio’s parents first learned of his desire to become a priest in 1897. A young Capuchin friar was canvassing the countryside seeking donations. Padre Pio was drawn to this spiritual man and told his parents, "I want to be a friar… with a beard." His parents traveled to Morcone, a community thirteen miles north of Pietrelcina, to investigate if the friars would be interested in having their son. The Capuchins were interested, but Padre Pio would need more education than his three years of public schooling.

In order to finance the private tutor needed to educate Padre Pio, his father went to America to find work. During this time, he was confirmed (September 27, 1899), studied with tutors and completed the requirements for entrance into the Capuchin order. At age 15, he took the Habit of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin on January 22, 1903. On the day of his investiture, he took the name of Pio in honor of Saint Pius V, the patron saint of Pietrelcina, and was called Fra, for brother, until his priestly ordination.

A year later, on January 22, 1904, Fra Pio knelt before the altar and made his First Profession of the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. Then, he traveled by oxcart to the seventeenth-century friary of St. Francis of Assisi and began six years of study for the priesthood and continued his development in community life toward the profession of his solemn vows. After three years of temporary profession, Padre Pio took his final vows in 1907.

Then on August 10, 1910, the much-anticipated day finally arrived. The twenty-three year old Fra Pio was ordained a priest by Archbishop Paolo Schinosi at the Cathedral of Benevento. Four days later, he celebrated his first Mass at the parish church of Our Lady of the Angels.

Within a month of his ordination, (September 7, 1910), as Padre Pio was praying in the Piana Romana, Jesus and Mary appeared to him and gave him the wounds of Christ, the Stigmata. For Padre Pio’s doctors, the wounds created much confusion. He asked Jesus to take away "the annoyance," adding, " I do want to suffer, even to die of suffering, but all in secret." The wounds went away and the supernatural life of Padre Pio remained a secret...for a while.

On November 28, 1911, Padre Agostino, who was a contemporary, friend, and confidant, was advised that Padre Pio was ill. He rushed into Padre Pio’s room to care for him. Padre Agostino observed what he thought was a dying man and rushed to the chapel to pray. When he finished praying, he returned to Padre Pio’s room and found his friend alert and full of joy.

This was the beginning of Padre Pio’s documented ecstasies – all of which were "edifying, theologically correct and expressed a deep love for God. "

Due to Padre Pio’s on-going ill health, he was sent home to recuperate and was separated from his religious community from the end of 1911 – 1916. During this time, the Capuchin Constitution required a friar who was sent home because of illness had to maintain his friar life as much as possible. Padre Pio did this. He said Mass and taught school.

On September 4, 1916, Padre Pio was ordered to return to his community life and was assigned to San Giovanni Rotondo, an agricultural community, located in the Gargano Mountains. Our Lady Of Grace Capuchin Friary was approximately a mile from town and was not easy to reach. The Capuchins had a reputation for their holiness and simple life. When Padre Pio became a part of the community at Our Lady of Grace, there were seven friars.

With the outbreak of the war, only three friars stayed at Our Lady of Grace; the others were selected for military service. At the beginning, his responsibilities included teaching at the seminary and being the spiritual director of the students. He spent his free time reading the Bible and handling correspondence. When another friar was called into service, Padre Pio became in charge of the college.

In August 1917 Padre Pio was inducted into the service and assigned to the 4^th Platoon of the 100^th Company of the Italian Medical Corps. During this time he was very unhappy. By mid-October he was in the hospital, but was not discharged. Finally, in March 1918, he was dismissed and returned to San Giovanni Rotondo.

Upon his return, Padre Pio became a spiritual director and had many spiritual daughters and sons. He had five rules for spiritual growth: weekly confession, daily Communion, spiritual reading, meditation and examination of conscience. In explaining his spiritual growth rules, Padre Pio compared dusting a room, used or unused on a weekly basis, to weekly confession. He suggested two times of daily meditation and self-examination: in the morning to "prepare for battle" and in the evening to "purify your soul." Padre Pio’s motto, "Pray, Hope and Don’t Worry" is the synopsis of his application of theology into daily life. A Christian should recognize God in everything, offering everything to Him saying, "Thy will be done". In addition, all should aspire to heaven and put their trust in Him and not worry about what he is doing, as long as it is done with a desire to please God.

In July 1918, Pope Benedict XV urged all Christians to pray for an end to the World War. On July 27, Padre Pio offered himself as a victim for the end of the war. Days later between August 5 -7, Padre Pio had a vision in which Christ appeared and pierced his side. As a result of this experience, Padre Pio had a physical wound in his side. The experience has been identified as a "transverberation" or piercing of the heart indicating the union of love with God.

A few weeks later, on September 20, 1918, Padre Pio was praying in the choir loft in the Church of Our Lady of Grace, when the same Being who appeared to him on August 5, appeared again. It was the wounded Christ. When the ecstasy ended, Padre Pio had received the Visible Stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, which would stay with him for his remaining 50 years.

By early 1919, word about the stigmata began to spread to the outside world. Over the years countless people, including physicians, examined Padre Pio’s wounds. Padre Pio was not interested in the physicians’ attempts to explain his stigmata. He accepted it as a gift from God, though he would have preferred to suffer the pains of Christ’s Passion without the world knowing.

God used Padre Pio – especially the news of his stigmata – to give people hope as they began to rebuild their life after the war. Padre Pio and his spiritual gifts of the stigmata, perfume, prophecy and bilocation was a sign of God in their midst and led people back to their Faith. So life at the friary and the Church of Our Lady of Grace began to revolve around Padre Pio’s ministry. A room and priests were designated to handle the correspondence and the remaining friars heard confessions. San Giovanni Rotondo began to be filled with pilgrims. Since there were no hotels, people slept outdoors. A normal day for Padre Pio was a busy nineteen hours – Mass, hearing confessions and handling correspondence. He usually had less than two hours to sleep.

As his spiritual influence increased, so did the voices of his detractors. Accusations against Padre Pio poured in to the Holy Office (today the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith). By June 1922, restrictions were placed on the public’s access to Padre Pio. His daily Mass time varied each day, without announcement to diminish the crowds, and he was ordered not to answer correspondence from people seeking spiritual direction. It was also rumored that plans were being developed to transfer Padre Pio. However, both local and Church authorities were afraid of public riots and decided that a more remote and isolated place than San Giovanni Rotondo could not be found.

Despite the restrictions and controversies, Padre Pio’s ministry continued. From 1924 – 1931 various statements were made by the Holy See that denied the supernaturality of Padre Pio’s phenomena. On June 9, 1931, the Feast of Corpus Christi, Padre Pio was ordered by the Holy See to desist from all activities except the celebration of the Mass, which was to be in private. By early 1933, Pope Pius XI ordered the Holy See to reverse its ban on Padre Pio’s public celebration of Mass, saying, "I have not been badly disposed toward Padre Pio, but I have been badly informed."

Padre Pio’s faculties were progressively restored. First, the confessions of men were allowed (March 25, 1934) and then women (May 12, 1934). Although he had never been examined for a preaching license, the Capuchin Minister General granted him permission to preach, honoris cuasa, and he preached several times a year. In 1939 when Pope Pius XII was elected pope, he began to encourage people to visit Padre Pio. More and more people began to make pilgrimages.

In 1940, Padre Pio convinced three doctors to move to San Giovanni Rotondo and he announced plans to build a Home to Relieve Suffering. As Padre Pio expressed to Pope Pius, " …a place that the patient might be led to recognize those working for his cure as God's helpers, engaged in preparing the way for the intervention of grace." The doctors were excited about the building, but were fearful that this was not the time to begin such a project with Europe being on the brink of another world war.

These fears did not stop Padre Pio and the project began. After the war, Barbara Ward, a British humanitarian, came to Italy to write an article on postwar reconstruction. She attended Padre Pio’s Mass and met one of the physicians who came to San Giovanni Rotondo to work with the Home to Relieve Suffering. Upon learning of the project, she asked that the Home to Relieve Suffering receive a part of the funds designated for reconstruction. Consequently, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) gave a grant of $325,000 for the project. The building opened its doors on May 5,1956. A year later, Padre Pio announced plans for a medical and religious center where doctors and interns could further their medical studies and Christian formation.

With the opening of the hospital, Padre Pio was truly now an international figure and his followers greatly increased. To accommodate all the pilgrims, a new, large church was constructed.

In the mid-1960s, Padre Pio’s health began to deteriorate, but he continued to say Daily Mass and hear fifty confessions a day. By July of 1968, he was almost bedridden. On the fiftieth anniversary of the stigmata (September 20,1968), Padre Pio celebrated Mass, attended the public recitation of the Rosary and Benediction. On the next day, he was too tired to say Mass or hear confessions. On September 22, he managed to say Mass and the attendees had to struggle to hear him. Just after midnight, in the early morning hours of September 23, Padre Pio called his superior and asked to make his confession. He then renewed his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. At 2:30am, Padre Pio died in his cell. As he foretold, Padre Pio lived sick but died healthy, with the stigmata healed.

On September 26, 1968, over a hundred thousand people gathered at San Giovanni Rotondo to pay their respects to this holy man. He was buried in the crypt prepared for him in the Church of Our Lady of Grace.

Padre Pio’s Daily Life as a Capuchin

3:00 a.m. His day began. He liked to spend several hours in prayer and meditation before Mass.

He would not celebrate Mass prior to 5:00 a.m.

Celebration of Mass – could last up to 2 hours

Padre Pio would bless, meet, and talk to people in the sacristy while vesting

After Mass and removing his vestments, Padre Pio would proceed to the choir on the balcony above the small church and make prayers of thanksgiving.

Then he heard confessions. – all morning (would take a morning break) and several hours in the afternoon

12:00 Noon – would have lunch in the friary refectory

After lunch would go into the garden for 30 minutes of recreation

Would then take a short siesta

Pray a rosary

Early afternoon joined the community for afternoon Office

Would have private prayer time in the choir, sometimes for 2 hours

Would then work on correspondence

Mid Afternoon – resumed hearing confessions

4:30 p.m. Vespers and Benediction

Go into the garden for ten or fifteen minutes

At supper would join his community for juice and a cracker (By 1950, he was eating only an ounce of food a day.)

At sundown he would bless the people underneath the window of the choir

In the evening he would confer with other priests, deliver a lecture in town, or work on more correspondence

Late in the evening Padre Pio joined the community in Compline, the Night Office

The rest of the community would go to sleep, Padre Pio would study Scripture and pray

Nightly he would visit Padre Agostino’s room and get his blessing

Go to his room and read the Bible until 12:45 a.m., until it was time for Matins.

Then he would join 20 friars in the choir

At 1:30 a.m. would lay down

"Every Holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know...It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!" Padre Pio

Padre Pio and Christ's Priesthood

The greatest feature of Padre Pio's life is its perfect conformity to Jesus Christ the Priest. To understand what this means it is necessary to first understand the Priesthood of Christ.

Christ's Priesthood

The entire Old Law, with its institutions and rituals, was a preparation for, and foreshadowing of, the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. Foremost among the properly religious institutions was the spiritual leadership of Jewish worship, with its three-fold division of High Priest, Priests and Levites. The role of the Priest was to accomplish the ritual sacrifices commanded by God, in thanksgiving for His blessings, in expiation for sin and in petition for needs. These sacrifices ranged from the bloody expiatory victims (lambs and bullocks) to the unbloody offerings of incense and cereal (grain). They were most notable for their sheer quantity, offered again and again, day after day, on behalf of Israel, and Israel alone.

However, while commanding these sacrifices God makes clear that he does not need them and that they do not in fact satisfy for sin (Ps. 40:6, Hosea 6:6). Through His prophets He tells of a time when an acceptable sacrifice will be offered by His Suffering Servant (Is. 53:11), and that this Sacrifice will be perpetuated among the Gentiles from end of the world to the other (Mal. 1:11).

Furthermore, with the change of victim (from lambs to the Lamb) there needed to be a change of priesthood, from one fixed in time by bodily descent, to an eternal priesthood that transcended time and was thus spiritual. This priesthood was already anticipated in Scripture and foretold by King David to be present in his descendant, the Messiah.

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High, he blessed Abram with these word: Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth ... (Gen. 14:18-19)

The LORD says to you, my lord: "Take your throne at my right hand, while I make your enemies your footstool." The scepter of your sovereign might the LORD will extend from Zion. The LORD says: "Rule over your enemies! Yours is princely power from the day of your birth. In holy splendor before the daystar, like the dew I begot you." The LORD has sworn and will not waver: Like Melchizedek you are a priest forever." (Psalm 110:1-4)

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews explains it this way.

Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people. No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. In the same way, it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest, but rather the one who said to him: "You are my son; this day I have begotten you"; just as he says in another place: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, declared by God high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. (Heb. 5:1-10)

Thus it was that on the night before He consummated His Sacrifice on the Cross He conferred this Priesthood on the apostles, taking bread and saying,

This is My Body which will be given for you, do this in memory of me.

and taking wine and saying,

This cup is the new covenant in My Blood, do this in memory of me.

Thus, He not only fulfilled His promise to give Himself as spiritual food and drink to His disciples (Jn. 6: 54-55), elevating them to eternal life, but left the New Israel of His Church a priesthood which could sacramentally re-present His Sacrifice offered "once for all" (Heb. 10:10) on Calvary "until He comes again" (1 Cor 11:26, Mal. 1:11).

Padre Pio's Conformity to Christ the Priest

It is into this priesthood, whose gifts are bread and wine and whose priest and victim are one and the same, Jesus Christ, that Padre Pio was ordained on 10 August 1910. The Church teaches that at the supreme moment of the sacramental re-presentation of Calvary in the Mass that the ministerial priest acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ), showing forth in a mystical way the death of the Lord by the separate consecration of His Body and Blood.

To this Holy Sacrifice, offered visibly by way of signs - bread and wine - but presenting the invisible and eternal sacrifice of Christ (Heb. 10:14, Rev. 5:6), Padre Pio dedicated His most intense acts of piety, and obtained from the Father perfect conformity to the crucified Lord. So, close was this conformity that he lived it out even outside of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, through the immolation of the service of the confessional, dedicating long hours to the reconciliation of sinners, through a ministry of intense sufferings offered on behalf of others, through enduring the assaults of the devil that his spiritual children might not, and through the mystical conformity of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ's crucifixion, as the first priest in the history of the Church to do so. In all these ways Padre Pio was both priest and Victim like our High Priest Jesus Christ.

Love of Neighbor

by Most Rev. Paolo Carta, Bishop Emeritus of Foggia

Introduction

"To oppose the barbarity of hatred and violence we proclaim the Civilization of Love." This is the solemn statement of Pope Paul VI. "Padre Pio and the Civilization of Love" was the theme of our first meditation, contemplating and admiring Padre Pio in the fundamental aspect of the Civilization of Love, or rather love for our Lord, in its threefold dimensions of love for the Person of Christ, for the Mother of Christ and for the Church of Christ.

Let us now meditate on the second aspect, the second requirement, the second characteristic, that of the Civilization of Love or love for the brethren.

It is the great commandment of fraternal charity given by Jesus, who said: "I give unto you: a new commandment that you love one another, as I have loved von. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" - Jn 13,34.

Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist, warns in his First Letter 4,20: "If any man says I love God, and hates his brother; he is a liar.... And this commandment we have from God, that he who loves God, also loves his brother - if we love one another God abides in us, and his charity is perfected in us."

And Paul VI specified who the brother is that we must love, giving as motto for the Day of Peace 1971 "Every man is my brother."

Therefore the Civilization of Love is built on love for our Lord and love for neighbour. Padre Pio who was a sublime model of love for our Lord, was also a most shining example of love for the brethren and he put himself generously and heroically at their service to relieve their bodies and souls and save them.

Love for Neighbor by Giving Relief to their Bodies

The Home for the Relief of Suffering that was wanted by Padre Pio and built prodigiously by him is wonderful evidence.

And precisely because this work was inspired by evangelical charity for his neighbour, he had the noble and delicate thought of not wanting to call it a hospital or a clinic. He wanted to call it "home," because the home gives a sense of family, the home is the centre where hearts are united in love where there is concern for everyone, but with preference for the suffering members. And he wanted to call it Home for the Relief to indicate the aim and the trust that the sick person would find comfort, relief, and a serene recuperation of physical and moral energy.

And he wanted to call it Home for the Relief of Suffering because the word suffering has a Christian sense and brings to mind the suffering of Christ in his Passion, in which the sick person participates intimately, giving to his sufferings a high spiritual and supernatural value.

Built by offerings that came from all parts of the world; carried out with the most modern standards, equipped with all the equipment of advanced science and advanced technology, rich with the assistance of zealous Capuchin priests and an excellent order of nuns, Apostles of the Sacred Heart, the Home for the Relief of Suffering will sing for centuries of the immense love Padre Pio had for his brethren in need of health care and religious and moral assistance, in serene and welcoming surroundings animated by the charity of Christ.

To those who pointed out to him that the Home for the Relief of Suffering was too luxurious and refined, Padre Pio replied: "Too luxurious? But if it was possible I would make the Home in gold because the sick person is Jesus, and doing everything for our Lord is doing little."

Before the inauguration, the periodical The Home for the Relief of Suffering wrote: "The Home was born from an ideal of love: that is to contribute towards relieving the sufferings of the human being under the sign of Christian charity; the true, the only charity which takes no notice of the difference of caste or political party, of religion or race, of nobility and wealth. Uniting, in particular, the rich and the poor, abolishing every hateful difference of treatment. The poor man, the very poor man is our brother: we owe him the greatest consideration. Charity, in the Home, will be specially directed to the poor, without making him feel his poverty. It will be a gentle charity, not humiliating but fraternal."

The ideal of love, the Home requests that the doctors bear in mind this exhortation of Padre Pio's of 6 May 1956: "You have the mission of curing the sick; but if you don't bring love to the sickbed, I don't think the medicines will be of much use. I have experienced this: my doctor - when I was ill in 1916-17 - my doctor, when curing me, first of all gave me a word of comfort. Love cannot manage without words. How can you express it if not with words that relieve the sick person spiritually? Bring God to the patients, it will be of more worth than any other cure.

The Home for the Relief of Suffering was solemnly inaugurated on 5 May 1956, Padre Pio's name day. I was Bishop of Foggia at the time and I went to Amendola airport to meet Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, who was to preside at the celebrations. During the speeches I was sitting next to Padre Pio and I admired his humility as his name was praised sky high. During the Cardinal's speech he said: "On Thursday, when the Bishop and the priests wash the feet of the twelve poor men, the following words are sung: where there is charity and love, there is God.' This morning the thought struck me that this beautiful, clear sentence could be reversed: 'Where there is God, there is charity and love.' Where He passes, what He touches, where He comes... carries this note, this unmistakable seal of charity and love. Have you noticed this at San Giovanni Rotondo? Yes. The whole world has noticed it. Here God is; obviously there had to be charity and love!

That the Home for the Relief of Suffering was born of Padre Pio's love for the suffering brethren, glowed also from the words with which on that day he, Padre Pio, presented the work which caused universal admiration. Amongst other things, he said: "I thank the benefactors from all parts of the world who have co-operated. This is the creature that Providence, helped by you, has created. Admire it and together bless our Lord God. A seed has been placed on earth that He will warm with his rays of love. A new army made up of renunciations and love is about to arise to the glory of God for the comfort of souls and of infirm bodies."

On the first anniversary of the inauguration Padre Pio said to the benefactors: "May our Lord be praised. The Home for the Relief of Suffering has already opened its arms to several thousands of infirm bodies and spirits. God has warmed the deposited seed with his rays of love. From today we take up the second stage of the journey to be accomplished. The Home will have to increase the number of beds."

And the number of beds increased in his lifetime. And the number of beds increased after his death. And the number of beds is presently eight hundred and with the new wards this year there will be one thousand beds. (There are now 1,200.) In 1977 the sick admitted and cured have reached the number of 18,360; and from the opening of the Home - May 1956 to 31 December 1977 the patients who were admitted are exactly 306,785. Of this number not a few received medical care free of charge, because they were still without a medical scheme or old-age pensions.

A nun said to me: "But who can count the sick of soul who came to this hospital and went back to their families reconciled with our Lord and sincerely convinced and determined to stay in his grace? The Home of Padre Pio is always available and has open arms at all hours and for every necessity of suffering bodies and souls. The Home has been created for them and we are here for them always available with a heart bigger than the sea, following in the Padre's footsteps, ready to give even our lives to save the Home that. is under such attack."

At this point it is no longer home but city. And it is a city where the Civilization of Love triumphs.

LOVE FOR NEIGHBOUR TO RELIEVE SOULS

But Padre Pio's contribution to the Civilization of Love is even more abundant and generous in the heroic service of giving relief to souls.

The influx of the sick in body is impressive at San Giovanni Rotondo. Far more intense is the rush of the sick of soul.

They came from all parts of the world. They waited days and days for their turn, for their moment of grace and blessing: it was the moment of their confession to Padre Pio. After which they left happy, to tell everyone of the privilege they had received and to keep in their hearts all their lives the memory of the Padre's words sealed in Confession. Never can I forget the holy words he told me the first time I confessed to him, exactly fifteen days after my solemn entrance to Foggia as Bishop. Words of encouragement that went to the bottom of my heart and accompanied me for all of my twenty three years as Bishop, seven in Foggia, sixteen at Sassari with Apostolic Administration of also two other dioceses, Alghero and Ozieri.

And that is the other marvelous aspect under which his figure emerges gigantically before us, Padre Pio the confessor. Or rather, Padre Pio martyr of the confessional.

I am a witness of what happened here around him. Every time I came here I saw a crowd famished for that divine grace that purifies souls, sanctifies and raises them up and rejoices them by virtue of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And I have seen Padre Pio looking at that crowd moved with the same sentiments that animated the Heart of Jesus when He said: I feel pity for this crowd." And I have seen him tired, worn out, languishing and continuing to hear confessions for hours and hours from morning to night, men and women, the sick and the healthy, the rich and the poor, priests and laymen, coming from far and wide.

At the end of a day in the confessional, he wrote: "My work is always assiduous. And it is now one o'clock after midnight that I write these few lines. It is now nineteen hours that I have been working continually. Never mind!"

And he exercised the ministry of confession for the duration of fifty-eight years!

As far as I know in the story of the Church he has probably beaten all the records of resistance in the confessional. in the Cause for the recognition of the heroism of- his virtues for his beatification and canonization, this is certainly his major title of glory, this is the test of his sanctity, this is the most brilliant example that he has left for priests in the whole world in this present century and for centuries to come.

How can this heroism be explained? With love. With love for neighbour. Like Saint Paul, Padre Pio could say: "For the charity of Christ presseth us" 2 Cor 5,14.

In his letters we find splendid traces of this love for Christ that drove him to sacrifice himself, to give himself, for the good of the brethren and the relief of souls.

For our mutual edification, I extract some passages of various letters to his Spiritual Director.

"I am consumed with love for God and love for my neighbour."

"I am rapidly transported to live for my neighbour."

"I have worked, I want to work. I have prayed, I want to pray; I have wept and I want to weep always for my brothers in exile."

"I love souls as I love God."

"You must know that I do not have a free moment: a crowd of souls thirsting for Jesus fall upon me so that I don't know which way to turn. Before such an abundant harvest, on one hand I rejoice in the Lord, because I see the ranks of elect souls always increasing and Jesus loved more; and on the other hand I feel broken by such a weight."

"There have been periods when I heard confessions, without interruption for eighteen hours consecutively."

"I am overloaded with work, because I hear confessions all day and often at night hundreds of thousands of people. I don't have a moment to myself. But God helps me effectively in my ministry."

"I feel the strength to renounce everything, so long as souls return to Jesus and love Jesus."

Sometimes he treated penitents severely, but they were superficial, hypocritical penitents.

He sometimes refused to give absolution but he did this because he did not tolerate perseverance in evil, and because with the gift of scrutiny of hearts, he saw clearly in consciences and discovered the bad dispositions.

There was also a sin, the gravity of which made Padre Pio let fly, obliging him to condemn inexorably: the sin against maternity, the malicious limitation of children. This was a crime - a crime against life at its source - which he felt atrociously; he who had given his own life as a complete gift to our Lord.

In the biographies of Padre Pio we read of extraordinary happenings such as miraculous cures, and the mysterious perfumes that many perceived, from the day he received the stigmata to the day of his death. There is talk also of bilocations, that is to find oneself in two different and distant places at once. In this way General Cadorna, Supreme Commander of the Italian Army replaced after the defeat of Caporetto by General Diaz, in a moment of dejection, saw in front of him a friar, with bleeding hands and a gentle expression. On going to San Giovanni Rotondo he recognized Padre Pio in that friar.

In this way the well-known actor Carlo Campanini, spiritual son of Padre Pio, stated that he had seen him one day entering his house in Rome.

But quite frankly I have never given much importance to these phenomena. For me the phenomenon number one is the downright miracle of his love for the brethren manifested above all by superhuman resistance in the confessional for the relief of souls.

Love for Neighbor by Offering Himself as Victim

In my opinion, the supreme and sublime manifestation of Padre Pio's love for his brethren is constituted by his offering of himself as a victim for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of humanity.

The offering of a victim signifies offering himself to God with a full and perfect disposition of accepting any suffering and even death to obtain extraordinary graces.

On 29 November 19 10, he wrote to his Spiritual Father:

"I want to ask your permission for something. For some time past I have felt the need to offer myself to the Lord as a victim for poor sinners and for the souls in Purgatory. This desire has been growing continually in my heart so that it has now become what I would call a strong passion, I have in fact made this offering to the Lord several times, beseeching to pour out, upon me the punishments prepared for sinners and for the souls in a state of purgation, even increasing them a hundredfold for me, as long as He converts and saves sinners and quickly admits to paradise the souls in Purgatory; but I should now like to make this offering to the Lord in obedience to you. It seems to me that Jesus really wants this. I am sure that you will have no difficulty in granting me this permission" (Letters I).

On December 1910 Padre Benedetto replied:

"Make the offering of which you speak of and it will be most acceptable to the Lord. Extend your own arms also on your cross and by offering to the Father the sacrifice of yourself in union with our most loving Saviour suffer, -groan and pray for the wicked of the earth and for the poor souls in the next life who are so deserving of our compassion in their patient and unspeakable sufferings" (Letters I).

In an apparition of 12 March 1913, Jesus speaks and complains of the ingratitude of men and adds:

"My son, I need victims to calm my Father's just divine anger; renew the sacrifice of your whole self and do so without any reserve." And Padre Pio writes: "I have renewed the sacrifice of my life" (Letters I).

Padre Agostino encourages him like this:

"I know that you once offered yourself as a victim for sinners. Jesus accepted your offering and He has given you the grace to bear the sacrifice entailed. So have courage a little longer, for the reward is not far off" (Letters I).

He receives encouragement even from Heaven. Here are his words:

"Jesus, his beloved Mother... continue to encourage me and they keep on repeating that a victim properly so-called must lose all his blood" (Letters I).

"Did I not tell you that Jesus wants me to suffer without any consolation? Has He not asked me and chosen me to be one of his victims? Our most sweet Jesus has really made me understand the full significance of being a victim.

"It is necessary to reach the 'Consummatum est' (it is finished) and 'In manus tuas' (into your hands)" (Letters I).

After he had received the stigmata he always appeared as someone bent under a heavy weight. There was someone who pointed it out to him saying: "Padre, you suffer so much, why did you have the imprudence to offer yourself as a victim for all humanity. You, Padre, carry the Church on one shoulder and on the other the corrupt world convulsed by evil." He replied: "Pray that I will not be squashed."

And on another day to someone who asked him how much he suffered, he replied: "As much as one can suffer who has taken the burden of all humanity. Pray for the one who carries the weight of everyone! Everyone's cross!"

Padre Mondrone of La Civiltà Cattolica commented: "Like Jesus he went about stooped and with great difficulty, from one fall to another, under the weight of the cross, of course, also because of his physical condition horribly tortured and bleeding. But tired above all because 'supra dorsum meum fabricaverunt peccatores' (the sinners ploughed my back)".

That back was loaded with the sins of the whole world from the first to the last, because they all had to be atoned for as everyone had offended God's Majesty. This was the real and most unbearable weight carried by Jesus' victim. In this way he lived his mission of Cyrenean for everyone, crushed by the sins of the world, in the confessional, crushed by the sins of the world at the altar. An abundance of grace flowed from Padre Pio's bleeding hands: from the hand that absolved in the confessional from the hand that offered bread and wine at the altar.

Victim in his lifetime, Padre Pio accepted death as a victim in complete clearness of mind, gently repeating the Names of Jesus and Mary. He died in the middle of the night, at 2.30 on 23 September 1968.

"Consummatum est!" It is finished!

CONCLUSION

Padre Pio has therefore written luminous pages in the story of the Church of the Civilization of Love with his love for our Lord and his love for his neighbour.

And to his spiritual children and whoever visits his tomb, he repeats with his example, the message, the invitation, the exhortation to be in the world witnesses and carriers of the Civilization of Love that has for foundation the evangelical command of charity, for source the Heart of Christ, for scene of action the whole world, for conclusion the triumph of love in unending centuries in Paradise. You also must receive this message of holy love with open hearts. Keep it in your heart as the spiritual fruit of your pilgrimage to Padre Pio's tomb. Spread it around you, in your families, in the world of work, in the schools, in social life and together with me address him this supplication with all your hearts.

Dearest Padre, we are happy to have come here on a visit with a spirit of faith and love.

We were moved at your tomb, we have admired this stupendous shrine built by you to the glory of Our Lady of Grace, we have devoutly followed the Way of the Cross placed on the mountain and we have rejoiced in contemplating the Home for the Relief of Suffering.

In a little while we will be leaving. But a part of our heart remains here with you. For the rest of our lives we will remember the days we spent here with you as days of grace, of blessings, of holy joy. We will speak of you to those we meet and we will exhort them also to come to you. We will carry your message of love to everyone.

But you, dear Padre Pio, pray for each one of us, for our personal sanctification, for our eternal salvation, for our families, for the sick, the children, the youth and the elderly.

Pray for our country so that hatred is extinguished, violence ends, fraternal love flourishes, the fruitful collaboration between social classes comes about and days of prosperity and serenity arise especially for the poor.

Pray above all for the Church, so that it accomplishes its mission of evangelization and promotes humanity for the advent of the Civilization of Love!

South African Matyrs

2010-11-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

2007/10/06, Fr. Allard Msheyene, 'Mako', a South African Oblate Missionary of Mary Immaculate (OMI), Sudafricano, died after being attacked an shot and killed by roadside carjackers on October 5. OMI sources reported that, Associate Novice Master, Fr. Allard had gone to lend weekend help at St. Peter’s parish in Nelspruit 330 km east of Johannesburg. After celebrating a Friday evening liturgy at 18:00 in Ka Nyamazane, he took a young man home and then was returning to the parish. A short time later, he was found lying by the road at Msogwaba township, and was taken at 19:30 by ambulance to Themba Hospital, Kabokweni. He was soon transferred to a larger hospital in Nelspruit, where he underwent emergency surgery but died in the early hours of the morning of October 6. Car-jacking in South Africa is widespread with more than 12,000 cases every year, although in recent years since a peak 16,000 in 1998 they have diminished slightly in number.

2007/09/26, Rev. Nicholaspillai Packiyaranjith, diocesan priest and coordinator of the Jesuit Refugee Service in the Mannar district of Sri Lanka, was killed when a bomb exploded on the road he was travelling to offer assistance at a camp for refugees and an orphanage at Vidathalvu. The local Catholic community, which held Fr. Nicholas in high esteem, was deeply shocked by the news of the deadly explosion on the Poonery Road, near Kalvi’laan. In a message of condolence Archbishop Oswald Gomis of Colombo, said: “ We are all deeply shocked by the tragic death of Fr. Nicholas. We condemn these acts of violence which inflict suffering and grief on innocent civilians. We express sincere sympathy to Bishop Rayappu Joseph of Mannar diocese, the clergy, the faithful and to Fr. Packiyaranjith's family”.

2007/08/27, Rev. Florante Rigonan, aged 48, from the Philippines, parish priest at St Isidore parish in Pinili (Llocos Norte Province, in the northern Philippines), was attacked and shot dead just before midnight as he returned home after saying evening Mass and having supper with some friends. The police said as the priest got into his van he was shot in the back several times. The van was founded completely empty of all its contents. Fr Rigonan entered the seminary after studying medicine, ordained in 1997, since 2000 he had been parish priest at Pinili.

2007/07/29, Rev. Ricardo Junious, OMI, aged 70, born in the United States, was found dead in the priests' house of the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the San Rafael district of Mexico City. A confrere found the body of the priest on the dormitory floor with hands and feet tied, the priest had been strangled and there were evident signs of torture. Highly esteemed for his missionary work and pastoral zeal and assistance for the poor, in recent times Fr. Ricardo had been fighting drug trafficking and selling of alcohol to minors which was happening around his parish.

2007/07/22, Rev. Fernando Sanchez Duran, parish priest at Santiago Tlaltepoxco parish, at Tepeji del Rio, a northern district of Mexico City, was taken hostage and killed. His brother reported his disappearance a few hours earlier, adding that the parish car, television set and computer were also missing. The police found the priest's body in a pond, the death was said to be caused by suffocation. For the parishioners Fr. Fernando was an exemplary priest, known for his tireless efforts to help young people caught in the trap of drug abuse.

2007/07/16, The dead body of Rev. Tomas Perez, aged 75, parish priest at Villafranca de Cordoba (Spain), was found with evident signs of violence in the priest's apartment in the morning by a housekeeper. The local community of about 4,000 people is very peaceful and the priest had ministered here for over 30 years. A statement issued by the Bishop of Cordoba's Office said the priest was “of an open and affable character, a person well known and loved by the local people among whom he exercised his priestly ministry ”.

2007/06/09, Brother Enrique Alberto Olano Merino, from San Salvador, aged 29, of the Little Brothers of Mary, was killed during the night in Guatemala City, probably by criminals. While returning to his residence with a few confreres, Brother Enrique was attacked by two thieves. At the same time two men in a car drove up and shot at the group from a close range killing the Brother. In Guatemala for seven years, besides teaching at a local high school, Brother Enrique was involved in pastoral care for young people.

2007/06/07, Justin Daniel Bataclan, aged 20, Philippines, a seminarian of the Society of St Paul, was murdered during the evening by a robber who broke into the family home where the student was on vacation, a Cubao, Quezon City (Metro Manila). Hearing noises, Justin went to find out what was happening, in the kitchen he was attacked by a thief and died of numerous injuries received. He was due to end his holidays the next day and return St Paul's Vocation Centre at Silang to start his fourth year of formation.

2007/06/03, Just after noon on Sunday, in front of the Chaldean Catholic church of the Holy Spirit in a Mosul (Iraq), following the celebration of Mass, the parish priest, Rev. Raghiid Ganni and three deacons: Basman Yousef Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid and Wahid Hanna were attacked by a gunman. The four were about to get into a car when a man drew near and opened fire killing all four of the clerics. Fr. Ganni was the first Catholic priest to be killed in Iraq. The Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans Mar Emmanuel III Delly and the Bishops of the Patriarchal Synod affirmed in a statement after the tragedy: “This was a shameful crime which must be rejected by every person of conscience. The perpetrators committed a horrible action against God and against humanity, against their brothers who were faithful and peace loving citizens as well as being men of religion who faithfully offered prayers to Almighty God to restore peace, security and stability to all Iraq”.

2007/05/01, Rev. Humberto Macias Rosales, from Mexico, aged 52, was shot three times at Aguascalientes (Mexico) not far from his home by an unidentified gunman. Immediately rushed to hospital, he died shortly afterwards. Parish priest of Our Lady of the Light at Aguascalientes, the priest was admired and respected by the local community and by his brother priests for his spirit of service and intense work of evangelisation.

2007/04/20, Rev. Richard Bimeriki, Congolese, from the parish of Jomba, north Kivu (D. R. Congo) died of his injuries in a Rwandan hospital on 7 April 2007, following an attack in his parish in Congo on 12 March. Eyewitnesses say the aggressors wearing military uniforms broke into the parish demanding a drink, and then opened fire on the priest.

2007/04/11, Spanish born Rev Salvador Herandez Seller, aged 75, found dead in his home in Murcia, Spain, reportedly died of blows to the head. A happy, generous and peace-loving and tolerant person the priest came from Cehegin. Ordained a priest in 1959, he went in 1962 on mission to Ecuador, as a member of the Organisation of Hispanic-American Priestly Cooperation OCSHA. He returned to Spain 19 years ago to serve as parish priest and chaplain for immigrants.

2007/04/10, Rev. Wolfgang Hermann (aged 46), from the Germany diocese of Trier, was murdered by a young man who broke into his home probably to commit a robbery at Belém in the north of Brazil. Fr Herrmann was born in Bad Kreuznach (Germany), and was ordained a priest in 1985 for the diocese of Trier. In 1995 he as sent as a Fidei donum missionary to work in the diocese of Parnaiba in Brazil. He returned in 2000 to the diocese of Trier, where he served as parish priest in a number of parishes until September 2006 when he returned to Brazil.

2007/04/01, Sr Anne Thole, aged 35, was born in Swaziland and raised in South Africa, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Family (known as the Nardini Sisters). Sr Anne Thole died on Palm Sunday trying to save patients from a fire at Duduza Hospice for people with AIDS at the Santa Maria Ratschitz Catholic mission near Wasbank in the north of KwaZulu-Natal, 30 km from Dundee, South Africa. The straw roof of the hospice caught fire, perhaps because of a cigarette lit by one of the patients, and the flames spread immediately. The nursing staff saved five of the eight patients at the hospice and then Sr Anne returned to fetch the remaining three but the ceiling collapsed and she and the three patients died. Sr Anne had been working for two years at the hospice as well as being in charge of the novitiate of her Order.

2007/04/01, Fr. Fransiskus Madhu, aged 30, Divine Word Missionary (SVD) born in Flores (Indonesia), was killed on Palm Sunday, in the village of Mabungtot, diocese of Tabuk, in the north of the Philippines (Luzon Island ), while on his way to say the evening mass at the chapel of the village where he was parish priest. He was shot by a group of men carrying army weapons. Hit in vital body organs by five bullets, the priest was dead by the time local people got him to hospital. For the local people Fr. Madhu, who had been a missionary in that area since 2005, will be remembered as a “very caring person, active and straightforward.

2007/03/11, Fr. José Luis Camacho Cepeda, aged 54, Peruvian, was stabbed to death during the night in his home in Bogota (Colombia). He had lived in Colombia for about 20 years. When he failed to appear to say Mass for two consecutive days at the church of St Charles Borromeo in Bogota the concerned parish priest went to look for him at his home. The priest was found dead in his apartment.

2007/03/10, Fr. Martin Addai, Ghanaian age 46, a member of the Missionaries of Africa, (or White Fathers) was killed in a Nairobi Kenya. He was on his way to visit friends not far from the local seminary of which he was rector, when he was attacked by a gang of criminals who shot him dead and stole the car. His body was found abandoned on the edge of the road. At the seminary, his confreres and the seminarians were not worried knowing he was with friends. The search for the missionary was started only late the next evening.

2007/02/15, Fr. Mario Bianco, a ninety year old Italian Consolata missionary, died in Manizales, Colombia after being attacked by thieves ten days earlier on 4 February. In the early evening on 4 February a gang of bandits broke into the house, beat and tied up Fr. Mario and one of the housekeepers and attacked the other priest who arrived home soon afterwards. The criminals searched for money and valuables for several hours and in the end made away with the community car, found two days later, taking with them objects for a value of a few thousand Euro. Fr. Mario was taken immediately to hospital as soon as the attackers had gone, however despite treatment he died of heart failure ten days later on 15 February.

2006/12/08, Johnny Morales, aged 34, Salesian Cooperator in Guatemala was killed in an ambush. The vehicle in which he was travelling was sprayed with bullets and Mr Morales died instantly. Johnny Morales and his wife, also a Salesian Cooperator, helped at the Fr. Sergio Checchi Salesian Centre. They had been married for a year. Mr Morales was employed by the local Tax office and two days earlier had accepted to work at the Tecún Umám border with Mexico where there is a problem of drug trafficking and smuggling. It seems the man was killed because of his honesty. He refused to be involved in illegal activity and was a fervent upholder of honesty and justice.

2006/11/26, Jacob Fernandez, a lay Catholic, who worked in a Religious Bookshop at the Shrine of Mount St Thomas in Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu was murdered. He was attacked and killed for no reason in front of a crowd of terrified eyewitnesses present in the bookshop. Reportedly the assailant, in a state of violent excitement, demanded to see the parish priest and loudly claimed the Shrine area as Hindu property. The police said the suspect arrested was “mentally instable”, but local Catholics know the man as a fanatical extremist in contact with anti-social groups. Mr Fernandez was known as a devout Catholic who attended daily Mass at the Shrine and lived his life as a mission.

2006/11/06, Fr Waldyr dos Santos, Brazilian Jesuit, aged 69, and lay volunteer Ms Idalina Neto Gomes, aged 30, were killed and other persons were wounded in an attack on Angone Residence in Tete Province in Mozambique on Monday 6 November. The bandits escaped with the community vehicle. Idalina Neto Gomes a lawyer and a member of the Portuguese association Laity for Development, was staying other members of the Association at the Jesuit community. Tete province which borders with Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, is a zone of bandits and attacks on Catholic missions and religious community houses are frequent. The Jesuits have a long history of service in this area in the fields of evangelisation, education, healthcare and development programmes.

2006/10/31, Rev Pascal Koné Naougnon, aged 51, of the diocese of Callao, Peru, was killed at Divo, Cote d’Ivoire, where he had been on mission since 2003. He was attacked by robbers at Holy Family Parish, Divo. The priest was about to go to bed when he heard some noise in the living room and went to investigate. He found himself face to face with the thieves who did not hesitate to open fire. Taken by his confreres to hospital, the priest died of his wounds. Born in Bouake Cote d’Ivoire to Animist parents, at the age of twelve he asked to be baptised. At 25 he joined the New Catechumen Way and discovered his calling to the priesthood. In 1990, he was sent to Peru to study for the priesthood at Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Callao. In 1999 he was ordained for the diocese of Callao and served in various parishes distinguishing himself for his generous spirit of service. In 2003, at the request of the Bishop of Gagnoa, Rev Pascal was sent to minister at Holy Family parish Divo, in Cote d’Ivoire. He was esteemed by all for his simple manner and commitment for human promotion. He spent much time helping school drop outs to specialise in a trade and find a job.

2006/09/25, Rev. Ricardo Antonio Romero, aged 53, Salvadorian, beaten and stoned to death and abandoned in the early hours on the road which goes from Acajutia to Sonsonate, El Salvador. The priest’s lifeless body was found close to his jeep. The police suspect one of the many youth gangs in the area. Rev. Romero, parish priest at Santa Catarina Masahuat, diocese of Sonsonate, was known for his tireless work to evangelise and to assist the poor.

2006/09/17, Sr. Leonella Sgorbati, Italian Consolata Missionary, aged 66, was murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia, by two gunmen hidden behind a car waiting for her as she made her way to the hospital where she worked. Sr. Sgorbati first went on mission to Kenya where she served between 1970 and 1983 at three Consolata Hospitals in Mathari, Nyeri and Nazareth outer districts of Nairobi. In 1985 she became head teacher at the nursing school at Consolata Hospital in Meru, Nkubu. On 26 November 1993 she was elected regional superior of the Consolata Missionary Sisters in Kenya, a position which she held for 6 years. In 2001 Sr Leonella spent several months in Mogadishu in view of opening a School for Nurses at a local hospital run by an NGO. The first course started on 18 April 2002 and the first nurses received their diplomas in 2006. In August after struggling with endless red tape, Sr Lonella succeeded in obtaining World Health Organisation recognition for her courses and new nurses.

2006/08/28, Brother Augustine Taiwa, aged 40, a member of the St John of God Brothers Hospitaller Brothers, was murdered during the evening near Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. He was attacked near the Xavier Institute at Bomana, where he had been attached as co-ordinator for pastoral courses at the institute for the past three years. Brother Taiwa, originally from New East Britain was known and loved by the local people and was probably driving at low speed to avoid the many street vendors. Three apparently drunken youths were throwing stones and other objects at passing cars and one threw a spear at Brother Taiwa’s car. The spear went through the head of the Religious killing him instantly. The police intervened immediately rushing the Brother to hospital, but all the doctors there could do was to confirm his death.

2006/08/04, Rev. Chidi Okorie, a Nigerian priest, aged 31, killed during the night in his room at the priests house adjacent to St. Mary’s Catholic parish church at Afikpo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The priest, stabbed by the aggressors, probably robbers since money and other objects were taken, died of his wounds in hospital. Father Okorie had only been a priest for two years, having been ordained in 2004.

2006/07/31, Rev. John Mutiso Kivaya, 35, Kenyan priest assistant at Masinga Catholic parish, Kenya, was murdered at Tala, diocese of Machakos, during the night by bandits who assaulted a restaurant where Fr Kivaya and two other priests were eating a meal. The priest was in his home two Tala to visit his family. The bandits took money and mobile telephones before killing the priest and two other persons and wounding three.

2006/06/28, Friar Luis Alfonso Herrera Moreno, Franciscan (OFM) Colombian, aged 46, stoned to death in a place called Bonda, Colombia. Friar Moreno was bursar at San Luis Beltran College, run by the Franciscan community of Santa Marta. On 28 June he went by car to do some errands. The next day he was found dead. The police suspect he was killed by robbers.

2006/05/11, Rev. Jude Kimeli Kibor, Kenyan priest, aged 57, was active in prison pastoral care. He was found dead near Eldoret, probably killed by thieves while on his way to say Mass. The priest’s car was found ten kilometres away from his body and his briefcase was missing. Fr. Kibor studied in Springfield (USA) while ministering in various parishes. Aware of the risks and dangers, he had returned to Kenya to help his own people.

2006/05/09, Rev. Josè Carlos Cearense, Brazilian diocesan priest aged 44, was found dead in his room in the parish house next to Santa Maria dos Anjos church in Delta, Minas Gerais state, Brazil where he was parish priest. The priest had died of stab wounds and his hands were tied behind his back. His body was discovered by the cleaning woman. The murder reportedly took place around 10pm on 8 May. Some days later the police arrested a man on charges of several murders in late April and early May.

2006/04/24, Rev. Jorge Piñango Mascareño, under secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Venezuela, was found dead on Monday 24 April 2006 in Caracas. A Conference statement said: “The human and priestly life of Fr Piñango was marked by over 20 years of priestly ministry, a spirit of the Beatitudes and a clear vocation to serve. The competent authorities will investigate the cause of his death which happened under strange circumstances. For our part we are ready to cooperate if necessary and to guarantee that truth and justice are respected”. Fr. Jorge Piñango Mascareño was born in 1959 in Barquisimeto and ordained a priest on 10 August 1985. He studied for the priesthood at the Javeriana University Colombia and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He had been a docent at a number of universities and Seminaries. He was appointed under secretary of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference in 2002.

2006/04/??, Rev. Galgalo Boru, A Kenyan priest from the parish of Bulesa, apostolic Vicariate of Isolo, Kenya, killed during the month in Lososia, Samburu district by bandits who attacked his car opening fire on both sides of the road. A passenger in the car was also killed.

2006/04/14, Sr. Karen Klimczak, 62, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph (SSJ), was killed Buffalo, state of New York (USA), on Good Friday. The nun had dedicated her life to helping the poor. Sr Klimczak was a member of the staff at Bissonette House for the rehabilitation of former prisoners. One of the inmates wanted to rob her and killed her and hid her body in an empty house a few miles from Bissonette House, where it was found on Easter Sunday. Sister Klimczak was known in Buffalo for her work to help the poor and promote peace.

2006/04/12, Rev. Luis Montenegro, aged 77, more than 30 years as parish priest at Nuestra Senora del Rosario a La Calera, near Cordoba, Argentina, found dead early in the morning. He had been stabbed to death in his sleep. Police charged and arrested a young man a previous offender.

2006/03/30, Mgr. Bruno Baldacci, Fidei Revum priest from the diocese of La Spezia Italy, aged 63, was found dead in his room at the parish of Nossa Senhora das Candeias where he served as parish priest, at Vitória da Conquista, Bahia State, Brazil. His secretary and housekeeper found him on his bed with evident signs of beating and the room was in a shambles. Mgr Baldacci spent 42 years on mission in Brazil, where he came following a missionary bishop and where he was ordained a priest in 1968. In recent years he dedicated himself to caring for the poor and rehabilitating young drug addicts.

2006/03/17, Fr. Eusebio Ferrao, aged 61, parish priest at St Francis, Macasana, southern Goa, India, was killed during the night. When the priest failed to appear for morning Mass, a few of the parishioners went to look for him and found him dead in his room, apparently suffocated with a pillow. According to the people Fr. Ferrao was a man of peace and had no enemies. He was a member of the diocesan Commission for liturgy and served his parish community of about 3,200 faithful with zeal and humility.

2006/03/10, Sr. Maria Yermine Yamlean, aged 33, a member of the congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred (DNDSC), born in Arui Das-Ambon (InRevesia) and living at a convent in Jalan Pattimura, Ambon, capital of the Moluccas Islands, was killed. The nun caught an intruder in the convent who reacted violently stabbing her with a knife. When the other Sisters found her she was in a serious condition. She was rushed to hospital where she died. Sr Yermine Yamlean was very active in pastoral care and the local Catholic Charismatic Renewal group, she was a member of the Provincial Council of her Congregation, Vice superior of the DNDSC Community in Ambon and guide for the formation of aspirants.

2006/02/18, Rev. Michael Gajere, Nigerian priest, killed by a gang of armed men in Maiduguri, capital of the Nigerian state of Borno during violence which erupted following a peaceful demonstration. At least 15 people were killed in the violence, 4 Catholic churches were torched, the Bishops’ residence, homes and structures belonging to other Christian denominations. Only last month the priest, ordained 14 years ago, had been appointed parish priest at Santa Rita parish in the Bulunkutu district of Maiduguri. Before being shot Fr Michael helped the leaders of the parish youth group to reach safety.

2006/02/09, Fr. José Alfonso Moreira, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans), of Portuguese nationality, killed at his home in Bailundo, Angola. The 80 year old missionary, (40 years spent on mission in Bailundo), died of 7 gun wounds shot at close range. The missionary had just gone to bed when about 15 armed men broke into his room and shot him dead without even giving him time to get out of bed and then sacked the modest dwelling. Fr. Moreira was loved by all for his witness of service and love for mission even in times of difficulty. During the long years of civil war 1975-2002. Bailundo was occupied by the UNITA rebel forces (National Union for Total Independence of Angola) and then by the regular army. Nevertheless Fr. Moreira remained neutral, refusing any comprise so he could continue to announce the Gospel and serve others in the freedom of the children of God.

2006/02/05, Fr. Andrea Santoro, Fidei Revum priest from the diocese of Rome, killed in Trabzon, Turkey while praying after Mass in Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Kilisesi. Rev Santoro was born in Priverno, 7 September 1945 and ordained on 18 October 1970. After serving in various parishes in Rome in 2000 he went to Turkey to serve as a Fidei Revum missionary, in Trabzon, on the coast of the Black Sea, where he was entrusted with St Mary’s Catholic Church, Kilisesi. In 2003 he started an association “Finestra per il Medio Oriente”: a group for study, prayer and dialogue between the western world and the Middle East. Rev Andrea was killed only days after returning to Turkey having made his usual annual week’s visit to Italy to lead days of study and prayer.

2006/02/04, Fr. Elie Koma, Society of Jesus (SJ), a Burundian aged 59, killed in the capital Bujumbura, during the Saturday evening. The priest was shot dead while driving in his car in central Bujumbura, after a group of armed men opened fire on Major Ruguraguza of the Burundian army and his wife. It appears that Fr Koma was eliminated because he was a potential witness of the crime. The bandits shot the tires of his car and then shot him five times in the back. He was ordained in 1980, and for the past 3 years in charge of the Jesuit church in Kamengem one of Bujumbura’s poorest districts.

2005/12/28, Sr. Margaret Branchen, Swiss born, aged 74, a member of the Society of Saint Ursula of Brigue (Canton Valais), was hot dead in the small town of Ngqeleni, East Cape, South Africa, on the premises of St. Mary’s Clinic where she served as a nurse and midwife. Sr. Margaret had worked for many years in South Africa where the Ursuline Sisters of Brigue have six communities. According to the authorities the nun was killed during a burglary.

2005/12/25, Fr. Philip Valayam, 46, Salesian priest (SDB), was killed in the early hours as he was returning to his community at Don Bosco Youth Educational Services, Nairobi, Kenya, after celebrating midnight mass. Reportedly the priest was attacked by robbers and shot in a struggle to defend himself. Fr Valayam was well known and appreciated.

2005/11/11, Sr. Margarita Vásquez Sandino, 87, a Good Shepherd Sister, was killed while caring for sick Sister at the community home in Medellin, Colombia. She was attacked by a young man who had done some painting work for the Sisters and who probably intended to steal. Sr Margarita organised a regular Christmas campaign in aid of children mutilated by antipersonnel mines.

2005/10/27, Brother Suresh Barwa, 31, and Brother Marco Candelario Lasbuna, 22, were murdered in Kingston, Jamaica. The Brothers were Missionaries of the Poor MOP, a congregation of diocesan right whose members work among the poor and excluded people in Jamaica, and also in India, Uganda and the Philippines. The Brothers were with other people in the kitchen of Corpus Christi MOP House in central Kingston. The Brothers were shot dead by the same bullet as they washed up after a party for one of the confreres. Brother Marco from the Philippines had been in Kingston for 5 months and Brother Suresh from India had been there for two years.

2005/10/25, Rev. Luis Velasquez Romero, 51, a Mexican priest from the diocese of Tijuana, was found in a car at a shopping centre in the morning, shot dead with his hands tied. The priest who ministered in a parish in the Colinas district of Agua Caliente de Tijuana was a judge of the Diocesan Court and was much loved by the people. Tijuana a town on the border with the United States is known as a centre of urban violence and clashes between gangs of drug traffickers.

2005/09/12, Fr. Angelo Redaelli, 40, of the Lombardy province of Friars minor was killed by a mob after accidentally killing a little child with his car who ran unexpectedly into the road as he drove through a village 30 km from Owando in central north Congo Brazzaville. He was killed while on his way to a local School for Catechists.

2005/09/02, Rev. Giuseppe Bessone, fidei donum priest from the Italian diocese of Pinerolo, was stabbed to death during the night in his lodgings at St Antonio parish at Blumenau (Brazil) where he was parish priest. The murderer, a 16 year old boy who had been taken in by the priest was arrested. He told the police that he attacked the priest because he wanted money.

2005/08/??, Rev. Francois Djikulo, was a Congolese priest of the diocese of Manono (Democratic Congo). In August, on his own initiative, he went on a peace mission to try to convince the feared rebel leader Kyungu Kyungu, alias Gedeon, to disarm and stop terrorising the local people. For months nothing was heard of his whereabouts. Only in November was it known that Fr. Djikulo and his companion Simon Kayimbi had been savagely mutilated and then burned alive in Mutendele, district of Pweto, about 75 km from the parish of Dubie diocese of Kilwa Kasenga.

2005/08/18, Rev. Jesus Adrian Sanchez, 32, Colombian from the diocese of Espinal (Tolima), parish priest at El Limon, was killed while giving a class of religious instruction at Camacho Angarita school in the rural area of Chaparral (Tolima). Around 10 in the morning, a man broke into the classroom, ordered the priest to go outside and shot him dead. The priest was involved in the pastoral care of local youths whom he tried to persuade not to join the ranks of the guerrillas and criminals but to continue studies.

2005/08/15, Rev. Vicente Rozo Bayona, 50, and Fr. Jesus Emilio Mora, 65, Colombian priests of the diocese of Ocaña, parish priests of the only two parishes in Convencion, were killed in the morning on the way to a celebration. The car in which they were travelling was attacked by guerrillas on the Teorema-Convencion road, El Diviso area, in Colombia. The priests and two passengers, surveyors charged with building an army barracks in the area, were shot dead by machine gun fire. The following day the ELN guerrillas issued a statement claiming responsibility for the murder but stating that it was a tragic mistake due to the conflict in the area.

2005/08/02, Rev. Godwin Okwesili, 42, Nigerian, was killed at St. Dominic Catholic Church in Yaba, Lagos (Nigeria). In the afternoon three young men appeared at the priests’ house under the pretence of delivering a parcel to one of the priests and started an argument. When Fr Okwesili came out of his room to see what was happening he was shot dead in the doorway.

2005/07/25, Rev. Paulo Henrique Machado, 36, Brazilian, assistant co-ordinator for pastoral in Nova Iguacu district, was killed by a commando. His body was found in his automobile under a railway bridge in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Although the priest’s wristwatch, mobile and wallet were missing, he was probably murdered by local criminals for his activity to promote respect for human rights. He was known as a happy and committed priest who instilled peace among the poor people he served. He was part of a support-group for families of the victims of a massacre in the Nova Iguacu district one of the most violent in the capital and had repeatedly denounced drug traffickers for abuse.

2005/04/14, Bishop Luigi Locati, vicar apostolic of Isolo, North East Kenya, was shot dead in front of the local Pastoral centre. Bishop Locati, aged 77 was from the Italian diocese of Vercelli and had been on mission in Kenya for forty years where he was sent as a Fidei Donum priest. He was about to retire having reached the age limit. Even as a bishop he continued to live very simply. He was known as a man of honesty and a champion of justice. Having received several death threats Bishop Locati had to be accompanied by two body guards when he went out in the evening.

2005/06/04, Rev. Robert De Leener, 54 from Brussels in (Belgium), was murdered during the night by an immigrant who had been staying at the parish house while waiting for a residence permit. Fr. De Leener was parish priest at Holy Cross parish Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels and helped at other parishes. The immigrant had been sent away from the parish house the day before for bad conduct. He returned the next day and stabbed the priest to death in front of the victim’s elderly mother. Parishioners said the priest was too good and opened to door to anyone who asked for help.

2005/05/07, Fr. René de Haes, 72, a Belgian Jesuit, was shot dead by two armed men during the late evening while he was driving back to the college where he was living in the Kimwenza district in northern Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Congo. In Africa, since 1959, he was known for his activity as a teacher and as the author of various theological works, Traditional African religions and pseudo religious sects. He was also very active in the social field.

2005/05/01, Rev. Mathew Uzhuthal, Vicar general of the diocese of Patna, Bihar state, died of stab wounds suffered on 11 April in his parish office. The assassin was a local youth in search of money. He was at first rushed to the small local Nazareth Hospital, and then later moved to the more specialised Kurji Holy Family Hospital. He died after an agony of 19 days and will be remembered as a passionate and tireless missionary. He was ordained a priest in 1964 by Pope Paul VI during an International Eucharistic Congress in Bombay.

2005/02/12, Sr Dorothy Stang, 73, was born in the United States of America, naturalised Brazilian a Sister of Notre Dame. She was shot dead in the town of Anapu, in the western Brazilian state of Parà. For over twenty years, she had been a member of the local diocesan Pastoral Commission for Land Rights in support of peasant labourers in the Trans Amazon region of Para state. Because she courageously denounced fazendeiros and grileiros for violence, she received many threats to her life since 1999. She had in fact filed a report of the threats received on February 9, only a few days before she was assassinated.

2005/02/06, Rev. Manuel Delgado, OFM, 42, was found dead in the town of Bufalo, Ciudad Jiménez, Chihuahua state in Mexico following an anonymous phone call. According to the post mortem the priest died on 5 February of numerous stab wounds and the body showed signs of torture. The priest, who was wearing civilian clothes when he was killed, was from Tampico, Tamaulipas, north Mexico. He was parish priest of the church of Santo Cristo de Burgos. According to the investigators the attackers were thieves.

2005/01/20, Rev. Jan Hermanovsky, 70, Slovakian, was killed by two young thieves who broke into the parish house in the town of Brjansk (Russia). Rev. Jan was committed to promoting Christian unity and totally dedicated to helping the poor and the outcasts.

2005/01/14, Rev. Thomas Harsidiyono, 50, Indonesian, was found dead in his parish at Purworejo (central Java). He was probably murdered by thieves. He died of serious head injuries. People who knew the priest, said he had no enemies and had not received threats of any kind.

2005/01/13, Fr. Thomas Richard Heath, Dominican, from the USA, aged 85, on mission for 13 years in Kenya after 10 in South Africa and Lesotho, he died of gun shot wounds suffered on January 4 during a robbery in the Community House in Kisumu where he was living. A deeply appreciated preacher and teacher, he formed whole generations of Kenyan priests. In his Community he was admired for his fidelity to the religious life and his genuine concern for others.

2004/12/26, Sr. Christiane Philippon, French, aged 58, regional Superior of the Congregation of Notre Dame des Apôtres, killed about 3 in the morning in Chad, on the road from Ba Hilli to N’Djamena. Sr. Christiane was travelling with three other Sisters to the capital to attend in a meeting of her Congregation. The car was assaulted by bandits who opened fire and shot Christiane dead and wounded the other three nuns. Sr Christiane had been in Chad for 20 years and for the last 5 had been involved in family pastoral in the diocese of Sahr. A year ago she was elected president of the diocesan association of women religious.

2004/11/25, Father John Hannon, Irish aged 65, Missionary of the Society of African Missions was found dead at a social Centre still under construction at the parish of Saint Barnaba at Matasia (diocese of Ngong, Kenya), twenty kilometres from Nairobi. According to the police a gang of men entered the parish complex around midnight after tying up the watchman probably to steal and attacked and murdered the priest.

2004/11/17, Rev. Kazimir Viseticki, aged 66, was killed during the night. His body was found the next day bound and covered in blood in the house next to the parish where he was parish priest, Saint Roko in Bosanska Gradiska, northern Bosnia Herzegovina, close to the border with Croatia, diocese of Banja Luka. The priest was probably killed by thieves who reacted violently striking him with an iron rod when they were discovered.

2004/10/19, Rev. Gerard Nzeyimana, Burundian aged 65, Episcopal Vicar of the diocese of Bururi, was killed while travelling with other people in a car from Bururi to Bujumbura. A group of armed men stopped the car and told the occupants to hand over money and valuables. After carefully examining the priest’s identity papers they killed him in cold blood with a few shots in the head, leaving the other passengers beaten and bleeding on the roadside. Father Gerard was known for promoting peace and denouncing violence on civilians.

2004/10/18, Rev. Macrino Nájera Cisneros, Mexican, aged 42, parish priest at Jilotlan (Mexico), was assassinated during a reception following a First Communion Mass for defending a girl of 15 from a molester who insisted on dancing with her. The molester left the reception and returned with a gun. He shot the priest and two other people dead and wounded another girl.

2004/10/02, Rev. Gerard Fitzsimons, British, aged 63, was found dead at his home next to the church of St Mary and St Joseph in Colesberg, South Africa (diocese of De Aar). Father Gerard had been on mission in South Africa for 7 years and was involved in assisting the poor and people with HIV/AIDS.

2004/08/28, Rev. Job Chittilappilly, Indian, aged 71, was found dead with numerous stab wounds in his home next to the parish church of “Our Lady of Grace” in the village of Thuruthiparambu, Kerala (India). Father Job was attacked and murdered while reciting the rosary in preparation for the celebration of Mass. Nothing was stolen or misplaced in the house where he had lived for 45 years ministering to the Catholic community of Syro-Malabar rite. The priest had received threats and warnings to stop “proselytising”. Although during his home visits to the needy, the priest used to visit Hindu families, he never proselytised.

2004/08/16, Nasir Masih, a Pakistani Catholic, aged 26, was abducted from his home in the district of Baldia Siekhupoura, 45 km from Lahore, by a group of fundamentalist Muslims who accused him of stealing. A few hours later the police informed the family that the boy was under arrest. Three days later the police said Nasir Masih had died in prison. His body showed numerous wounds and bruises.

2004/08/03, Samuel Masih, a Catholic Pakistani youth arrested for blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed in August 2003. He died in hospital after some months of treatment for serious injuries from beating and torture in prison by Islamic fundamentalist prison guards. The boy, already suffering from tuberculosis, was charged with blasphemy after the owner of bookshop told the police that he saw him depositing garbage near the walls of a mosque in Lahore.

2004/07/31, Rev. Eusebio Manuel Sazo Urbina, Guatemalan, aged 45, was parish priest at the “Divine Saviour of the World” church in the suburbs of Guatemala City. The priest, involved in promoting programmes for development and social assistance, had been called to assist an invalid. On the way from the parish to the sick person’s home he was attacked by a man who shot the priest in the neck and stomach apparently in an attempt to steal his mobile telephone. Taken to hospital the priest died of his wounds. His predecessor at the parish had been forced to leave after receiving threats to his life.

2004/07/24, Father Faustino Gazziero, Italian, aged 69, a member of the Servi di Maria, was stabbed to death at the end of evening Mass in the Cathedral of Santiago del Chile. As he was returning to the sacristy the priest was attacked and mortally stabbed several times by a young man of robust stature. Father Gazziero went on mission to Chile in 1960 immediately after his ordination. He held various responsibilities and for some years had been President of the Santa Teresa Foundation which ran several schools in Chile.

2004/07/06, Rev. Ramon Navarrete Islas, Mexican diocesan priest aged 56, found dead in the house next to the parish church where he was serving at Ciudad Juarez, near the Mexico-United States border. The body was found on the floor with numerous stab wounds in the chest. According to the police the murderer or murderers were robbers because the apartment was in disorder and the priest’s car was missing.

2004/05/02, Javed Anjum, a Catholic Pakistani student aged 19 from Quetta (Pakistan). He died in hospital from 26 stab wounds inflicted by a Muslim teacher and group of students from the Jamia Hassan bin Almurtaza School of Islam near Islamabad who tried to force him to convert to Islam. On 17 April the students abducted Javed and tortured him for five days until he was half dead. They then took him to the police station and reported that he had been caught stealing. The police took the boy to the hospital where he died ten days later of the wounds inflicted.

2004/03/31, Father Luciano Fulvi, Italian Comboni missionary, aged 76. His body was found in a pool of blood with a stab wound in the neck in his room at the Catholic Mission of Layibi, in the outskirts of Gulu (Uganda). The missionary had been in Uganda from 1956 to 1964 and then since 1990 and was mainly involved in education and more recently in vocation pastoral. He was known as a man of peace and joy with a smile for everyone although fully aware of the risks of missionary life in that region.

SAY NO TO ABORTION

2010-11-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

“And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind” Gen. 9:5-6

Say no to ABORTION! It is evil and deadly, those who commit abortion are placed under a curse. Our LORD Jesus is grieved for everyday souls are aborted in their large numbers. It is a sin against the Holy Spirit & an evil that is more dangerous to the earth than all the weapons that has ever been made or will ever be made. It wrecks havoc beyond measure.

Let us all fight this menace with prayer, with love.

“….give graciously to all the living and withhold not kindness from the dead” Sirach 7:3; “….Breaking off your sins by practising righteousness and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed”.

2010-08-07T10:21:00.003-07:00

Lookup a word or passage in the Bible
Include this form on your page

2010-07-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

1. To rob God of nothing; to refuse Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection.^[1]
2. In the commencement of the spiritual life, our hardest task is to bear with our neighbor; in its progress, with ourselves, and in its end, with God.
3. He that regards self only with horror, is beginning to be the delight of God.
4. The more we learn what humility is, the less we discover of it in ourselves.
5. When we suffer aridity and desolation with equanimity, we testify our love to God; but when He visits us with the sweetness of his presence, He testifies his love to us.
6. He that bears the privations of the gifts of God and the esteem of men, with an even soul, knows how to enjoy his Supreme Good beyond all time and above all means.
7. Let no one ask a stronger mark of an excellent love to God, than that we are insensible to our own reputation.
8. Would you exert all your powers to attain Divine Union? Use all your strength for the destruction of self.
9. Be so much the enemy of self as you desire to be the friend of God.
10. How are we directed in the law to love ourselves? In God with the same love that we bear to God; because as our true selves are in Him, our love must be there also.
11. It is a rare gift to discover an indescribable something, which is above grace and nature; which is not God, but which suffers no intermediate between God and us. It is a pure and unmixed emanation of a created being who is immediately connected with the Uncreated Original, from whom he proceeds. It is a union of essence with essence, in which nothing that is neither can act the part of an intermediate.
12. The ray of the creature is derived from the Sun of the Divinity; it cannot, however, be separated from it; and if its dependence upon its divine principle is essential, its union is not less so. O wonder! The creature which can only be by the power of God, cannot exist without Him, and the root of its being, that nothing can come between or cause the slightest separation. This is the common condition of all creatures; but it is only perceived by those whose purified faculties can trace the grandeur of their centre, and whose interior, freed from the defilement that covered it, begins to return to its origin.
13. Faith and the cross are inseparable: the cross is the shrine of faith, and faith is the light of the cross.
14. It is only by the death of self that the soul can enter into Divine Truth, and understand in part what is the light that shineth in darkness.
15. The more the darkness of self-knowledge deepens about us, the more does the divine truth shine in the midst.
16. Nothing less than a divine operation can empty us of the creature and of self, for whatever is natural tends constantly to fill us with the creature, and occupy us with ourselves. This emptiness without anything distinct, is, then, an excellent sign, though it exist surrounded by the deepest and, I may say, the most importunate temptations.
17. God causes us to promise in time of peace what He exacts from us in time of war; He enables us to make our abandonments in joy, but He requires the fulfilment of them in the midst of much bitterness. It is well for thee, O Love! to exercise thy rights; suffer as we may, we will not return to self, or if we suffer because we have done so, the remedy for the evil is to devote ourselves afresh with an enlarged abandonment. Strange malady, the cure of which is only to be found in a worse! O Lord, cause me to do whatever Thou wilt, provided I do only thy will?^[2]
18. How hidden is the theology of Love! O Love, Thou sulliest to excess what Thou wouldst raise to the heights of purity! Thou profanest thine own sanctuary; there is not left one stone upon another that is not cast into the dirt. And what shall be the end? Thou knowest it from the beginning; it is worthy of so great a Workman that his work should be hidden, and that while He seems to destroy, He should accomplish it the most effectually.
19. Ah Lord! who seest the secrets of the heart, Thou knowest if I yet expect anything from myself, or if there be anything which I would refuse to Thee!
20. How rare is it to behold a soul in an absolute abandonment of selfish interests, that it may devote itself to the interests of God!
21. The creature would willingly cease to be creature if it could become God; but where shall we find one willing that God should resume everything He has bestowed without receiving anything in return? I say everything, and everything without reserve, even to our own righteousness, which is dearer to man than his existence, and to our rest, by which we enjoy self and the gifts of God in self, and in which we place our happiness, without knowing it. Where shall we find an abandonment that is as comprehensive as the will of God, not only when accompanied by delights, illumination, and feeling, but under all circumstances and in fact? O it is a fruit of Paradise that can scarce be found upon the earth!
23. Reason should not undertake to comprehend the last destructions; they are ordained expressly to destroy our reason.
24. God has means more efficient, more conducive to his own glory, and more edifying for souls, but they are less sanctifying. These great and dazzling gifts are very gratifying to nature, even when it seems to give way beneath their weight, and thus nourish its secret life; but distresses, continual dyings, and unprofitableness for any good, crucify the most vital parts of the soul, which are those which prevent the coming of the kingdom of God.
25. In our solemn feasts, some strive to do something for Thee, O my God! and others, that Thou mayest do something for them; but neither of these is permitted to us. Love forbids the one and cannot suffer the other.
26. It is harder to die to our virtues than to our vices; but the one is just as necessary as the other for perfect union. Our attachments are the stronger as they are more spiritual.
27. What is a help to perfection at one time, is a hinderance at another; what formerly helped you in your way to God, will now prevent your reaching Him; the more wants we have, the further we are from God, and the nearer we approach him, the better can we dispense with everything that is not Himself. When we have come there, we use everything indifferently, and have no more need but of Him.
28. Who can say to what extent the divine abandonment will carry the poor soul that is given up to it? or rather, to whom can we describe the extremity of sacrifice which God exacts from his simple victim? He raises him by degrees, and then plunges him into the abyss; he discovers new points to him day by day, and never ceases until he has sacrificed everything God wills, putting no other bounds to his abandonment than God does to his decrees. He even goes further, submitting to everything that God could do, or his sovereign will ordain. Then every selfish interest is given up; all is surrendered to the Author of All, and God reigns supreme over his nothingness.
29. God gives us gifts, graces, and natural talents, not for our own use, but that we may render them to Him. He takes pleasure in giving and in taking them away, or in so disposing of us, that we cannot enjoy them; but their grand use is to be offered in a continual sacrifice to Him; and by this He is most glorified.
30. Naked faith keeps us in ignorance, uncertainty, and oblivion of everything in reference to ourselves; says everything, excepts nothing, neither grace nor nature, virtue nor vice; it is the darkness concealing us wholly from ourselves, but revealing so much the more of the Divinity and the greatness of his works; an obscurity that gives us an admirable discernment of spirits, and dislodges the esteem and love of self from its most secret recesses. Pure love reigns underneath, notwithstanding; for how can a soul go about to consider its own interest, when it cannot so much as look at itself? Or, how could it be pleased to look at what it cannot see? It either sees nothing, or nothing but God, who is All and in all, and the more it is blinded to self, the more it beholds of Him.
31. There are but few men who are led by their reason, most of them are fewer, indeed, who act from an illuminated faith, or from reason enlightened by faith; but shall we find a single one who admits no guide but a blind faith, which, though it leads him straight to God by the short road of abandonment, seems, nevertheless, to precipitate him into abysses from which he has no hope of ever escaping? There are, however, some such souls, who have noble trust enough to be blindfolded, and led they know not whither. Many are called, but few are willing to enter, and they who have most fully surrendered themselves to the sway of their senses, their passions, their reason, and the distinct illuminations of faith, are they who have the greatest difficulty in plunging into the gulf of the blindest and most naked faith; whereas the simple souls enter with ease. It is the same as with the shipwrecked; those who know how to swim, or who have perhaps seized a plank of the ship, struggle and contend for a long while before they drown; but those who cannot swim, and who have nothing to sustain them, are instantly submerged, and, sinking without a struggle beneath the surface, die and are delivered from their suffering.
32. The spirituality of most spiritual persons is nothing but presumption. When the Divine Truth penetrates to their centre, it discovers many a theft from God in their course, and teaches them that the only way to secure themselves is by an abandonment without reserve to God, and submission to his guidance; for, whenever we endeavor to bring about our own perfection, or that of others, by our own efforts, the result is simply imperfection.
33. The soul that is destined to have no other support but God himself, must pass through the strangest trials. How much agony and how many deaths must it suffer before losing the life of self! It will encounter no purgatory in the other world, but it will feel a terrible hell in this; a hell not only of pain--that would be a small matter--but also of temptations its own resistance to which it does not perceive; this is the cross of crosses, of all sufferings the most intolerable, of all deaths the most despairing.
34. All consolation that does not come from God is but desolation; when the soul has learned to receive no comfort but in God only, it has passed beyond the reach of desolation.
35. By the alternations of interior union and desertion, God sometimes makes us feel what He is, and sometimes gives us to perceive what we are. He does the latter to make us hate and die to ourselves, but the former to make us love Him, and to exalt us into union.
36. It is in vain for man to endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit alone can teach.
37. To take and receive all things not in ourselves, but in God, is the true and excellent way of dying to ourselves and living only to God. They who understand the practice of this, are beginning to live purely; but, outside of this, nature is always mingled with grace, and we rest in self instead of permitting ourselves no repose, except in the Supreme Good, who should be the center of every movement of the heart, as He is the final end of all the measures of love.
38. Why should we complain that we have been stripped of the divine virtues, if we had not hidden them away as our own? Why should we complain of a loss, if we had no property in the thing lost? or why does deprivation give us so much pain, except because of the appropriation we had made of that which was taken away?
39. When thou canst not find thyself, nor any good, then rejoice that all things are rendered unto God.
40. O monster justly abhorred of God and man! after being humiliated in so many ways, I cannot become humble, and I am so pampered with pride, that when I most endeavor to be humble, I set about my own praises!
41. Some saints have been sanctified by the easy and determined practice of all the virtues, but there are others who owe their sanctification to having endured with perfect resignation the privation of every virtue.
42. If we do not go so far as to be stopped by nothing short of the power of God, we are not entirely free from presumption; and if our abandonment is bounded by anything short of the possible will of God, we are not yet disengaged from appropriation; and presumption and appropriation are impurities.
43. I have never found any who prayed so well as those who had never been taught how. They who have no master in man, have one in the Holy Spirit.
44. He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray; and he who will be constant in prayer, shall know what it is to have a pure heart.
45. God is so great and so independent, that He can find means to glorify Himself even by sin.
46. While our abandonment blesses or spares us, we shall find many to advise it; but let it bring us into trouble, and the most spiritually-minded will exclaim against it.
47. It is easy enough to understand the course of such as go on from virtue to virtue, but who can comprehend the decrees that send some dashing from one precipice to another, and from abyss to abyss? or who shall bring aid and comfort to these hidden favorites of God, whom He gradually deprives of every stay, and who are reduced to an inability to know or help themselves as utter as their ignorance of what sustains them?
48. Who can comprehend the extent of that supreme homage which is due to the will of God?
49. Those who are abandoned are cast from one precipice to another, and from one abyss to another, as if they were lost.
50. The harmlessness of the dove consists in not judging another; the wisdom of the serpent in distrusting ourselves.
51. Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.
52. Alas! how hard it is to will only the will of God, and yet to believe that we do nothing but what is contrary to that will! to desire nothing so much as to do His will, and not even to know what it is! to be able to show it with great confidence to others, but not to find it for ourselves! When we are full of His will, and everywhere penetrated by it, we no longer know it. This is, indeed, a long and painful martyrdom, but one which will result in an unchangeable peace in this life, and an incomprehensible felicity in the next!
53. He who has learned to seek nothing but the will of God, shall always find what he seeks.
54. Which is the harder lot for a soul that has known and loved God, not to know whether it loves God, or whether God loves it?
55. Which of the two would the perfect soul choose, if the choice were presented, to love God, or to be loved by Him?
56. Tell me, what is that which is neither separated from God nor united to God, but which is inseparable from Him?
57. What is the state of a soul which has neither power nor will? and what can it do, and not do?
58. Who shall measure the extent of the abandonment of a soul that is no longer self-possessed in anything, and which has an absorbing sense of the supremity of the power and will of God?
59. Who can take in the extent of the interior sacrifices of Jesus Christ, except him to whom He shall manifest them?
60. How can they be delivered from the life of self, who are not willing to abandon all their possessions? How can they believe themselves despoiled of all, who possess the greatest treasure under heaven? Do not oblige me to name it, but judge, if you are enlightened; there is one of them which is less than the other, which is lost before it, but which those who must lose everything have the greatest trouble in parting with.

2010-07-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

To each one of us, Christ says ' I invite you'. Why does He invite us? Because men and women all over the world desire the true liberation and the true realization
The poor seek justice and solidarity; the oppressed ask for freedom and dignity; the blind desire the light and truth.
We are not coming to proclaim an abstract truth.
The Gospel is not a theory or an ideology.
The Gospel is LIFE

Prayer for the Government.

2010-07-05T01:36:00.000-07:00

We pray, Thee O Almighty and Eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast revealed Thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of Thy mercy, that Thy Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of Thy Name.

We pray Thee, who alone art good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal, and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, Pope N., the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, N., all other bishops, prelates, and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise amongst us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct Thy people into the ways of salvation.

We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with Thy Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality. Let the light of Thy divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety, and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

5 signs of a dying church

2010-06-30T07:41:00.001-07:00

* Attendance Loss

People stop attending and inviting others. They don't feel the same passion they felt when they first started attending or the burning desire they had when they were young. Quite frankly, they are not excited about their church or what is happening there.

* Attendance Leveling

I hear a lot of preachers say something like, "We've been running 300 quite regularly lately". They say that like it's a good thing, but in reality that's a bad thing. They've been running 300 for the last five years. That's not momentum...

* Offerings Have Recently Dropped

If people have stopped paying their tithes or regular giving to the church, that means that either they don't trust their minister with the money or they don't share the ministry's vision for their church. As a result, they're not being a supporter financially.

* No hanging around/fellowship after service

Every church I have been a part of, has always had wonderful fellowship of the members and their guests after the worship service had ended. Many are the times that the person locking the building up, had to tell people it's time to leave so he could go home. Have you noticed over the years that some people like to scurry out the door and leave immediately, instead of staying for a while and enjoying fellowship with their brothers and sisters in the Lord?

* Youth Group numbers declining.

Young people have a keen ability to recognize something that is real from something that is false. At least when it comes to faith, and whether or not people really love them or not.

Whether they know it or not, the young people of our generation are seeking after parental figures and role models. If the church is loving, caring, and reaches out to these young people, it will most likely have a Youth group that is growing exponentially.

5 signs ऑफ़ अ द्यिंग church

2010-06-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

* Attendance Loss

* Attendance Leveling

* Offerings Have Recently Dropped

* No hanging around/fellowship after service

* Youth Group numbers declining.

Young people have a keen ability to recognize something that is real from something that is false. At least when it comes to faith, and whether or not people really love them or not.

My Destiny

2010-06-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

वहत इस माय देस्तिन्य?
वहत ऍम इ मदे फॉर इन थिस वर्ल्ड?
वहत पथ हस गोद चोसें फॉर में?
दो इ त्राद ओं ठाट पथ,
और हवे इ वीरेद आवे फ्रॉम आईटी?
दो इ सुब्मित म्य्सेल्फ़ व्होल्ली तो हिम अस अब्राहम दीद,
और दो इ चूसे तो हवे आईटी माय ओवन वे?
थे पथ इ त्राद उपों नो,
इन वहत वे दोएस आईटी इन्फ़्लुएन्के माय वर्ल्ड,
पोसितिवेली?
और पेर्हप्स नेगातिवेली?
तेरे अरे सो मानी क़ुएस्तिओन्स इ ओउघ्त तो आस्क म्य्सेल्फ़,
बुत थें थे लिस्ट इस एन्द्लेस.
थे स्पेशल गरचे ऑफ़ थे अल्मिघ्टी, जेहोवाह शम्मः,
इस वहत इ नीद तो सी में थ्रौघ.
थिस इस अबाउट में,
वहत अबाउट यू?
शालोम.

Faithfulness in our calling

2010-06-22T03:50:00.000-07:00

He went out to meet Asa and said to him, 'Listen to me, Asa and all
Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you
seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will
forsake you.'" - 2 Chronicles 15:2

Asa was the king of Judah from 912-872 B.C. He reigned for 41 years and
was known as a good king who served the Lord with great zeal. He
reformed many things. He broke down idol worship to foreign gods; he
put away male prostitutes and even removed his own mother from being
queen because she worshiped an idol. The Scriptures say that as long as
he sought the Lord, the Lord prospered his reign.

However, Asa was not totally faithful in his calling. There came a time in his life when he made a decision to no longer trust in
the God of Israel. He lost his confidence in God as his deliverer. The
prophet Hanani came to Asa to inform him that God's blessing was no
longer on his life because of an ungodly alliance he had made.

Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, He
delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord range
throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully
committed to Him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you
will be at war (2 Chronicles 16:8-9).

There are no guarantees that if we began well we will finish well. The life of Asa tells us this. It is only through God's grace
that we can be faithful to our calling. Each of us is capable of
falling away from God. Pray that God will keep you faithful to the
purposes He has for your life. He strengthens those whose hearts are
fully committed to Him.

2010-06-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

· A leader is one who has the courage to dream, the ability to organize and the strength to execute the action necessary – Bill Newman

· A leader is simple one who knows where he /she want to go, gets up and goes. – Bill Newman

· A leader is one who creates, natures and sees his idea to maturity that others may follow suit- Paschal Onuorah

· Every leader needs to spend time in solitude and reflection – Bill Newman

· A leader is someone who readily accepts idea and utilizes them for beneficial purposes. – Paschal Onuorah

· A leader is he who is ready to serve and not be served - Paschal Onuorah

· A leader must be a visionary - Paschal Onuorah

· Dynamic leadership is always fired by vision – Bill Newman

· A leader is one who has the courage to dream, the ability to organize and the strength to execute the action necessary – Bill Newman

· A leader is simple one who knows where he /she want to go, gets up and goes. – Bill Newman

· A leader is one who creates, natures and sees his idea to maturity that others may follow suit- Paschal Onuorah

· Every leader needs to spend time in solitude and reflection – Bill Newman

· A leader is someone who readily accepts idea and utilizes them for beneficial purposes. – Paschal Onuorah

· A leader is he who is ready to serve and not be served - Paschal Onuorah

· A leader must be a visionary - Paschal Onuorah

· Dynamic leadership is always fired by vision – Bill Newman

Vision Part 1

2010-06-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

· Your vision or dream is simply your view of what life would be like if certain current needs are met. – Bill Newman

· Your vision is that revelation given to you by God which with determination and doggedness, its actualization can be set in motion -Paschal Onuorah

· Vision creates power – Bill Newman

· Vision is that resolution whose actualization will be beneficial to the world around you. Paschal Onuorah

· Vision is a comprehensive sense of where you are, where you are going, how you are going to get there, and what u’ll do after you get there – Bill Newman

· Vision creates an atmosphere for impossible possibilities – Paschal Onuorah

· Vision is about dreaming dreams about the future – Bill Newman

· Vision is seeing the big picture and personally painting apart of it – Bill Newman

· Vision is being challenged by the world around you and bring compelled to make a mark on it though the force of your own ideas, personality, resources and desires. Bill Newman

· Vision is the camp fire around which people will gather – Bill

· Newman

रेसुर्रेक्टेद FAITH

2010-06-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

"थें हे रेअचेद आउट हिस हैण्ड एंड टूक थे क्निफे तो सले हिस सों" (गें २२:१०).

तेरे अरे तिमेस इन ओउर लिवेस व्हेन गोद ब्रिंग्स अ टेस्ट तो सी इफ वे अरे रेअद्य तो पुट तो देअथ थे वैरी थिंग ठाट गोद प्रोमिसेद वे वौल्ड हवे. सुच वास थे केस इन थे लाइफ ऑफ़ अब्राहम विथ इसाक. इसाक वास थे प्रोमिसेद सों. येत, गोद सैद तो रिसे थे क्निफे तो सक्रिफिस हिम इन ओबेदिएन्के तो गोद.

व्हेन गोद ब्रिंग्स सुच अ टेस्ट इन्तो ओउर लिवेस वे उसुअल्ली हवे अ चोइस. निठेर चोइस इस अत्त्रक्टिवे. ओने चोइस विल ओफ्तें सल्वागे सम आस्पेक्ट ऑफ़ थे विसिओं. थे ओथेर चोइस विल तोताल्ली किल थे विसिओं फ्रॉम ओउर पेर्स्पेक्टिवे. होवेवर, ठाट इस थे फैथ देसिसिओं. ठाट इस थे ओनली देसिसिओं फ्रॉम गोद'स पेर्स्पेक्टिवे.

इफ वे चूसे थे फैथ देसिसिओं ठाट किल्स थे विसिओं - वे विल विटनेस थे रेसुर्रेक्तिओन ऑफ़ थे विसिओं सुपेर्नातुराल्ली बी गोद. ओउर ओवन फैथ विल बे लौन्चेद इन्तो अ व्होले न्यू दिमेंसिओं. हे विल रिसे उस उप इन आर्डर तो स्पेअक थ्रौघ ओउर लिवेस इन ठाट एक्ष्पेरिएन्के. गोद ओफ्तें ब्रिंग्स ठाट परसों इन्तो अ वैरी पब्लिक मिनिस्ट्री.

होवेवर, इफ वे चूसे थे लेस्सेर देसिसिओं, वे विल रेसिडे इन अ लेस्सेर वाल्क विथ गोद. गोद विल एक्सेप्ट थे देसिसिओं बुत तेरे विल बे कोन्सेक़ुएन्केस तो ओउर फैथ जौर्नी. हे कान्नोत ट्रस्ट उस विथ अ बिग्गेर विसिओं बेकाउसे हे सीस ओउर ओबेदिएन्के इस मोवे-अबले बसेड ओं ओउर पेर्सिवेद कोन्सेक़ुएन्केस.

इफ वे चूसे थे लेस्सेर देसिसिओं थें गोद विल ओफ्तें ओर्चेस्त्रते ओथेर इवेंट्स इन ओउर लिवेस ठाट अरे देसिग्नेद तो डेवेलोप ओउर फैथ तो अ लेवल ठाट विल अल्लो उस तो मके थे राईट देसिसिओं थे नेक्स्ट टाइम.

पेर्सप्तिओं इस नो reality

2010-06-14T03:44:00.001-07:00

"The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken." - Job 4:१०

In the advertising business we often say that "perception is reality"
for the person who views our advertising message. It does not matter
whether the audience believes the message to be true, only that they
perceive it to be true. Their actions will be the same whether they
believe it or only perceive it.

The enemy of our souls is very good at this game. He may bring on us what we perceive to be true when it is a lie. It may appear that
there is no way around a situation. He may bring great fear on us. When
we buy into his lie, we believe only what we have chosen to perceive to
be true. It usually has no basis of truth. Such was the case when Peter
looked on the waters during a night boat journey with the other
disciples. At first glance, he and the disciples screamed with fear,
thinking that what they saw was a ghost. It was actually Jesus.

Satan's name means "accuser." He travels to and fro to accuse the brethren. He brings an impressive front to all he does, yet behind
that front is a weak, toothless lion with a destination that has
already been prepared in the great abyss. He knows his destination, but
he wants to bring as many with him as possible; so he often has a big
roar, but little bite.
The next time some event comes into your life that creates fear and trembling, first determine the source. Look past the emotions and
evaluate the situation in light of God's Word. Perception is not always
reality.