From The Vatican

Vatican City, May 20, 2012 / 11:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Ascension of Jesus should remind Christians of the promise of Heaven and the power of earthly prayer, Pope Benedict XVI said at the Sunday Angelus.

When he ascended into heaven, Jesus “did not separate himself from our condition, in fact, in his humanity, he took mankind with him in the intimacy of the Father, and so has revealed the final destination of our earthly pilgrimage,” the Pope told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on May 20.

“Just as he came down from heaven for us, and for us suffered and died on the cross, so for us he rose again and ascended to God, who therefore is no longer distant, but ‘Our God,’ ‘Our Father.’”

The Pope spoke to several thousand people who gathered to hear his midday Sunday address, followed by recitation of the Regina Coeli prayer.

He noted that in many countries the feast of the Ascension – which occurs 40 days after the Resurrection – is celebrated today, rather than on Thursday.

“The Ascension of Our Lord marks the fulfillment of salvation which began with the Incarnation,” the Pope explained. It is “the ultimate act of our deliverance from the yoke of sin.”

“Not only is the immortality of the soul proclaimed, but also that of the flesh,” he said, quoting Pope St. Leo the Great. “Today, in fact, not only are we confirmed possessors of paradise, but in Christ we also penetrated the heights of heaven.”

The Ascension also tells us that when we pray, “our humanity is brought to the heights of God, so every time we pray, the earth joins with Heaven.”

“And like burning incense, its fragrant smoke reaches on high,” the Pope said of prayer, adding that “when we raise our fervent and trusting prayer in Christ to the Lord, it crosses the heavens and reaches the Throne of God, it is heard by Him and answered.

“Let us beseech the Virgin Mary to help us contemplate the heavenly things, which the Lord promises us, and become more credible witnesses of divine life.”

After the Marian prayer, Pope Benedict issued a series of greetings and appeals.

The Pope asked people to pray for the Church in China, “that they may announce with humility and joy the Risen Christ, be faithful to his Church and the Successor of Peter and live their daily life in a manner consistent with the faith we profess.”

Also on the pontiff’s mind was a bomb attack that hit at a high school in the southern Italian town of Brindisi on Saturday. The blast seriously injured several students and took the life of a 16-year-old girl named Melissa. Pope Benedict described the attack as “cowardly” and asked everyone to pray for the victims of the “brutal violence,” especially for Melissa and her family.

Finally, he offered his “affectionate thoughts” and said he is “spiritually close” to the victims of a 6.0 earthquake that hit northeastern Italy at around 4:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. The quake killed at least four people and caused millions in damage to historic buildings.

Rome, Italy, May 18, 2012 / 06:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A leading American rabbi and Holocaust refugee says people should trust Pope Benedict’s judgment when it comes to the Church possibly readmitting the Society of St. Pius X, which has a bishop who denied the scale of the Holocaust.

“Let me tell you this, I think that Pope Benedict XVI in many ways really understood the Holocaust because he was in the German Army. He deserted (the army), his family was anti-Nazi, I mean he was completely opposed to Hitler,” Rabbi Jack Bemporad told CNA May 16.

“Now, given the fact that he suffered under Hitler and that his family suffered under Hitler, how could he in any way accept or welcome someone who denies that Hitler did anything wrong?” he asked rhetorically.

The Society of St. Pius X broke with the Catholic Church in 1988 after its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained four bishops without the approval of Pope John Paul II.

One of those ordained, Bishop Richard Williamson, was fined $13,500 in Germany in 2010 after denying the extent of the Holocaust during a television interview. The Society subsequently issued a statement disassociating itself from his views. The conviction was also later quashed by the German appeals court.

Rabbi Bemporad, who currently serves as Professor of Interreligious Studies at the Pontifical Angelicum University, dismissed Bishop Williamson as “one person who is really crazy” and “knows nothing.”

He also believes that Williamson does not speak for the vast majority of Society members.

“The mistake is to take a few people and make them somehow representative of everyone without realizing that that just isn’t true,” he said. “I think it is only a small part of this group that is that radical. I think the vast majority are very happy and would love to be part of the Church.”

Earlier this week the Vatican announced that negotiations with the Society about reconciling the 1988 breach will now happen “separately and singularly” with three of the Society’s four bishops, including Williamson.

For his part, Williamson has made it increasingly clear that he is opposed to reconciliation with Rome. In a letter written earlier this month to his superior, Bishop Williamson suggested that reunion would cause the Society to cease opposing “the universal apostasy of our time.” He also accused Pope Benedict of being “a subjectivist.”

“Now I don’t think that in trying to find a way of incorporating this group that they are going to accept in any way any of the extreme positions that Williamson stands for,” predicted Rabbi Bemporad.

The Catholic Church’s view of Judaism was most recently set out in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on relations with non-Christian religions, “Nostra Aetate.” It rejected both anti-Semitism and the belief that present-day Jews are responsible for Christ’s death.

In recent negotiations with the Society, the Vatican has insisted that it accept all the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Vatican City, May 18, 2012 / 04:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI says he is praying that a renewal of female religious life in the United States will “recapture a sense of the sublime dignity and beauty of the consecrated life.”

“I wish to reaffirm my deep gratitude for the example of fidelity and self-sacrifice given by many consecrated women in your country, and to join them in praying that this moment of discernment will bear abundant spiritual fruit for the revitalization and strengthening of their communities in fidelity to Christ and the Church, as well as to their founding charisms,” the Pope said on May 18.

He made his comments to a delegation of U.S. bishops from the Eastern Catholic churches that is currently in Rome on a May 15-19 “ad limina” pilgrimage.

Last month the Vatican called for a reform of the Maryland-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), after concluding there was a “crisis” of belief throughout its ranks. It also appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the renewal efforts.
 
During his May 18 address, Pope Benedict asked the bishops to promote and pray for new religious vocations, since there is an “urgent need in our own time for credible and attractive witnesses to the redemptive and transformative power of the Gospel.”

He also called for a “strengthening of the existing channels for communication and cooperation” between dioceses and the individual religious communities within their territory.

The Vatican’s decision to reform the LCWR followed a four-year audit of the group by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Among its key findings, the assessment documented serious theological and doctrinal errors in presentations at the conference’s annual assemblies in recent years.

Several speakers depicted a vision of religious life that is incompatible with the Catholic faith, the assessment said, with some attempting to justify dissent from Church teaching and showing “scant regard for the role of the Magisterium.”
 
Pope Benedict’s audience with the leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches marks the conclusion of several months of “ad limina” visits by U.S. bishops.

The Pope said he hoped that the forthcoming Year of Faith, which begins in October, will “awaken a desire on the part of the entire Catholic community in America to re-appropriate with joy and gratitude the priceless treasure of our faith.”
 
“With the progressive weakening of traditional Christian values, and the threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly,” he warned, “the truth of Christ needs not only to be understood, articulated and defended, but to be proposed joyfully and confidently as the key to authentic human fulfillment and to the welfare of society as a whole.”

Vatican City, May 18, 2012 / 02:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI says that Catholic immigrants to the United States could play a crucial role in the renewal of the Church and society.

“The immense promise and the vibrant energies of a new generation of Catholics are waiting to be tapped for the renewal of the Church’s life and the rebuilding of the fabric of American society,” said the Pope at a May 18 audience.

Pope Benedict made his remarks to a delegation of U.S. Eastern rite Catholic bishops who are at the Vatican for a May 15-19 “ad limina” visit – the first one specifically created for non-Roman rite bishops.

He told the bishops that the apostolic opportunities provided by immigration require more than “simply respecting linguistic diversity, promoting sound traditions, and providing much-needed social programs and services.”
 
Instead, there also has to be a commitment to “ongoing preaching, catechesis and pastoral activity aimed at inspiring in all the faithful a deeper sense of their communion in the apostolic faith and their responsibility for the Church’s mission in the United States.”
 
With many Eastern Catholics hailing from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the Pope noted how the Church in the United States has historically “struggled to recognize and incorporate this diversity, and has succeeded, not without difficulty, in forging a communion in Christ.”
 
More recently, the largest waves of immigration into the United States have come from other predominantly Catholic cultures, such as the Dominican Republic and Mexico. A recent study suggested that Latinos now make up 32 percent of the U.S. Catholic population compared with only 10 percent in 1987.

Pope Benedict praised the “unremitting efforts” of Catholic institutions that are responding to the needs of new immigrants and described their endeavors as “in the best traditions of the Church in America.”

“The Catholic community in the United States continues, with great generosity, to welcome waves of new immigrants, to provide them with pastoral care and charitable assistance, and to support ways of regularizing their situation, especially with regard to the unification of families.”

Earlier this month, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York publicly criticized the attitude of some Republican politicians towards immigration. He described laws that separate immigrant families and require identification before giving charitable assistance to the needy as “not Christian” and “not American.” Instead, he urged lawmakers to “come up with a much saner, more civil, more just immigration policy.”
 
In his May 18 remarks, Pope Benedict expressed his “profound concern” over United State’s immigration policy being reformed and called for the “just treatment and the defense of the human dignity of immigrants.”

“In our day too, the Church in America is called to embrace, incorporate and cultivate the rich patrimony of faith and culture present in America’s many immigrant groups.”

The leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches are the last of 15 groups of U.S. bishops to visit Rome on pilgrimage in recent months.

Pope Benedict concluded his meeting with them by imparting his apostolic blessing and entrusting them, along with their flocks to “the loving intercession of Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States.”

Vatican City, May 16, 2012 / 03:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI says Christians should avail themselves to the Holy Spirit in prayer – particularly when they cannot find the words or inspiration to pray.  

“St. Paul teaches us that in our prayer we must open ourselves to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, who prays in us with inexpressible groanings, to bring us to adhere to God with our whole heart and with all our being,” the Pope said May 16. 

“The Spirit of Christ becomes the strength of our ‘weak’ prayer, the light of our ‘dimmed’ prayer, the focus of our ‘dry’ prayer, giving us true inner freedom, teaching us to live by facing our trials, in the certainty we are not alone.”

Continuing his weekly catechesis on Christian prayer, Pope Benedict XVI used this week’s General Audience to explore the theme of prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, in the New Testament.

He told over 11,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square to take on board the advice of St. Paul to turn to the Holy Spirit when “we want to pray, but God is far away, we do not have the words, the language to talk with God, not even the thought.”

It is then, said the Pope, that “we can only open ourselves up, make time available for God” knowing that this mere desire to get in touch with God “is prayer that the Holy Spirit not only understands, but it brings, interprets before God.”

“In prayer we experience, more than in other dimensions of existence, our weakness, our poverty, our being creatures, because we are faced with the omnipotence and transcendence of God,” said Pope Benedict.

It is therefore the Holy Spirit “who helps our inability, enlightens our minds and warms our hearts, guiding our turning to God.”

The Pope concluded his observations by highlighting three consequences of allowing “the Spirit of Christ as an inner principle of all our actions.”

First of all “we are enabled to abandon and overcome every form of fear or slavery, experiencing the
true freedom of the children of God.”

This freedom is not identified by St. Paul as the possibility of choosing evil which, said the Pope, leads to “alienation of human beings” and “the destruction of our freedom.” Instead the freedom espoused by the Apostle is a “true freedom” that allows us “to really follow our desire for good” and “not be overwhelmed by the circumstances that lead us in other directions.”

This freedom manifests itself in the “fruits of the Spirit” which are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

A second consequence is that “our relationship with God becomes so deep that it is not be impacted by any reality or situation.” Therefore we are not freed from trial or suffering in our prayer but “we can live them in union with Christ, his sufferings, with a view to participating in his glory.”

This should encourage us whenever we have the impression of “not being listened to and then we risk losing heart and perseverance,” as in reality “there is no human cry that is not heard by God.”

The third and final outcome of reliance on the Holy Spirit is that “the prayer of the believer is also open to the dimensions of humanity and all of creation.” This sees prayer “open to the sharing the sufferings of our time, of others.”

The Pope then concluded his audience with the recitation of the Eastertide Marian anthem, the Regina Coeli, before imparting his Apostolic Blessing.