January 16 - 31, 2019
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY
RELIGIOUS
Pope departs for Rome,
ends Panama visit with big
outdoor mass
Pope Francis said an open-air
Mass before a huge crowd on Sunday
to wrap up a jamboree of Catholic
youth, the last big event before he
returns to Rome to prepare for a
historic trip to the Arabian Peninsula
in one week.
Organizers said about 700,000
people attended the closing Mass of
World Youth Day, which takes place
in a different city every three years.
The next jamboree, which has been
dubbed the “Catholic Woodstock,”
will be in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2022.
Many of the young people in the
crowd spent the night on the fields
of a park named after Pope John
Paul, who was the last pontiff to visit
Panama, in 1983.
In his closing homily at the Mass,
which started unusually early at 8 a.m.,
because of the sweltering tropical
heat, Francis urged the young people
to work against “fear and exclusion,
speculation and manipulation.”
After a week at the Vatican,
Francis leaves on Sunday for a three-
day trip to Abu Dhabi in the United
Arab Emirates, where he will become
the first pope to visit the Arabian
Peninsula and say the first Mass in a
public venue there. There are about
one million Roman Catholics in the
UAE, all of them expatriate workers.
The
freedom
to
practice
Christianity — or any religion other
than Islam — is not a given in the Gulf
and varies from country to country.
In the UAE and Kuwait, Christians
may worship in churches or church
compounds and in other places with
special licenses. Saudi Arabia, home
to Islam’s holiest sites, bans the
practice of other religions.
During the Panama trip, the
themes of migration and the Church’s
sexual abuse crisis loomed large.
Francis said at one event that it
was “senseless and irresponsible” to
stigmatize migrants and see all of
them as threats to society, weighing
in again on one of the most divisive
issues in the United States.
He spoke several times of the need
for “bridges, not walls,” again putting
himself at odds with U.S. President
Donald Trump, who on Friday agreed
under mounting pressure to end
a 35-day partial U.S. government
shutdown but without getting the
$5.7 billion he had demanded from
Congress for a wall along the U.S.-
Mexico border.
Trump has repeatedly warned
about the dangers of illegal
immigrants, and said the wall would
help solve the problem.
On Saturday, Francis said the
Roman Catholic Church was weary
and “wounded by her own sin,” in
an apparent reference to the global
sexual abuse crisis.
Later, at a lunch with a delegation
of young people, he told the American
representative that clergy sexual
abuse was a “horrible crime” and
that the Church should be united in
fighting it.
Francis has called a summit of the
heads of national Catholic churches
at the Vatican Feb. 21-24 to discuss
what is now a global sexual abuse
crisis.
The February meeting offers a
chance for him to respond to criticism
from victims of abuse that he has
stumbled in his handling of the crisis
and has not done enough to make
bishops accountable.
(Street Insider by P. Pullella & J.
Benkoe)
Pope Francis seeks prayers
for Jolo bombing victims
Pope Francis called for prayers
for those who perished in the twin
bombings in Jolo, Sulu.
In his official Twitter account, the
pope asked the Catholic faithful to offer
prayers for the victims of the blast that
killed 20 people and wounded about
100 others during Sunday mass.
“Let us pray for the victims of the
terrorist attack on the Cathedral of
Jolo, in the Philippines. May the Lord,
Prince of Peace, convert the hearts of
the violent and grant the inhabitants
of that region a peaceful coexistence,”
Francis said.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishops’
Conference of the Philippines, at the
end of its 118th plenary assembly
issued a statement calling the
bombing “a further evidence to the
cycle of hate that is destroying the
moral fabric of our country.”
“We hope that the bombing of
the cathedral would not sidetrack
us, the majority communities of both
Muslims and Christians, from the
task of a lasting peace through the
Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL),”
Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio
Ledesma said.
Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio
Cardinal Tagle in a statement said
they are one with the victims of the
twin blasts at the Cathedral of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo, Sulu at
around 8 a.m. last Sunday.
“You are in our prayers. Be
assured that you will be given divine
justice. We are one with the families
of the dead and the wounded and the
community of Jolo. You have a family
in us. We are ready to assist you in
your needs,” Tagle added.
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