HOLY FATHER DENOUNCES HUMAN TRAFFICKING FOR SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND ORGAN HARVESTING

Vatican City, 23 April 2012 (VIS) - The Holy Father has written a message for the seventh world congress on the pastoral care of tourism, which begins today in the Mexican city of Cancun. The message is addressed to Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, and to Bishop Pedro Pablo Elizondo Cardenas L.C., prelate of Cancun-Chetumanl.

"Tourism", the Pope writes in the English-language version of his message, "like other human realities, is called to be enlightened and transformed by the Word of God. ... Tourism, together with vacations and free time, is a privileged occasion for physical and spiritual renewal; it facilitates the coming together of people from different cultural backgrounds and offers the opportunity of drawing close to nature and hence opening the way to listening and contemplation, tolerance and peace, dialogue and harmony in the midst of diversity.

"Travelling reflects our being as 'homo viator'; at the same time it evokes that other deeper and more meaningful journey that we are called to follow and which leads to our encounter with God. Travelling, which offers us the possibility of admiring the beauty of peoples, cultures and nature, can lead to God and be the occasion of an experience of faith, “for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator”.

"On the other hand tourism, like every human reality, is not exempt from dangers or negative dimensions. We refer to evils that must be dealt with urgently since they trample upon the rights of millions of men and women, especially among the poor, minors and handicapped. Sexual tourism is one of the most abject of these deviations that devastate morally, psychologically and physically the life of so many persons and families, and sometimes whole communities. The trafficking of human beings for sexual exploitation or organ harvesting as well as the exploitation of minors, abandoned into the hands of individuals without scruples and undergoing abuse and torture, sadly happen often in the context of tourism. This should bring all who are engaged for pastoral reasons or who work in the field of tourism, and the whole international community, to increase their vigilance and to foresee and oppose such aberrations".

"I would like to highlight three areas which should receive full attention from the pastoral care of tourism. Firstly, we need shed light on this reality using the social teaching of the Church and promote a culture of ethical and responsible tourism, in such a way that it will respect the dignity of persons and of peoples, be open to all, be just, sustainable and ecological. The enjoyment of free time and regular vacations are an opportunity as well as a right. The Church, within its own sphere of competence, is committed to continue offering its cooperation, so that this right will become a reality for all people, especially for less fortunate communities.

"Secondly, our pastoral action should never loose sight of the 'via pulchritudinis', “the way of beauty”. Many of the manifestations of the historical and cultural religious patrimony are “authentic ways to God, Supreme Beauty. ... It is important to welcome tourists and offer them well-organised visits, with due respect for sacred places and the liturgical action, for which many of these works came into being and which continues to be their main purpose.

"Thirdly, pastoral activity in the area of tourism should care for Christians as they enjoy their vacations and free time in such a way that these will contribute to their human and spiritual growth. Truly this is “an appropriate moment to let the body relax ... in order to grow in personal relationship with Christ”".

"The new evangelisation, to which all are called, requires us to keep in mind and to make good use of the many occasions that tourism offers us to put forward Christ as the supreme response to modern man’s fundamental questions".

For more information on Human Trafficking, visit http://www.usccb.org/about/human-trafficking/

Pope Benedict XVI Speaks of Economic Justice, Solidarity and Cooperatives

In a world that has been battered by the global economic downturn Pope Benedict on Saturday stressed the duty the Church has at this time to proclaim with renewed vigor the message of Christ which is hope. The Holy Father was speaking to members of the Confederation of Italian Cooperatives and the Federation of Italian Co-operative Banks in the Clementine Hall in the Vatican.

The Pope recalled how the Church down through the years has encouraged the prolific presence of Catholics in Italian society through the promotion of cooperative institutions, the development of social enterprises and many other works of public interest, characterized by forms of participation and self-management. 

What has prompted members to join in a co-operative-type organizations, said Pope Benedict was not only for economic reasons, but also the desire to live an experience of unity and solidarity.
The Pope also noted the fact that these institutions had a valuable role to play in promoting evangelical ideals and the culture of life and family.

Taking inspiration from his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, the Holy Father said that even in the field of economics and finance "right intention, transparency and the search for positive results were mutually compatible and must never be separated.” 

Drawing his address to a close the Holy Father urged those present to remain faithful to the Gospel and the teaching of the Church which encourages “social development, experiences of microcredit and an economy driven by a logic of communion and fraternity.”

Even in the world economy, said Pope Benedict, it is necessary to draw on our relationship with God, in order to live in love and solidarity. 

Christmas Gifts Anyone? Fair Trade Coffee, Teas and Other Goods

Please consider purchasing Fair Traded goods for gifts for family, friends, neighbors and
colleagues. Consider giving yourself Fair Traded coffee or tea for your daily routine. Your investing in
Fair Traded goods helps to promote international and local economic justice by paying fair wages to
many persons throughout the world that live on less than $2 a day.  Visit http://www.crsfairtrade.org/ for access to fair traded products sponsored or related to Catholic Relief Services.

In the local Youngstown area, economic justice can also be done by utilizing the services of locally cooperatively owned businesses for your needs, like the Beatitude House Green Clean Cooperative, which recently obtained a national grant from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).  This cooperative provides residential and commercial cleaning services.

One Act a Time, Charity Transforms the World

Carl Anderson Addresses Rimini Meeting

RIMINI, Italy, AUG. 31, 2009 ( Zenit.org ).- As this week's installment of Civilization of Love, we offer an excerpt of the address Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, gave last week at the Meeting of Friendship Among Peoples held in Rimini, Italy.

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[...]

I believe that Catholics -- and Catholic organizations and movements -- have an excellent opportunity to reach out both to other Catholics, and to the world at large, through charity. As Christians, Christ has called us to be known by the "way we love one another," and the leadership we can exert can be a great force for good. At the Knights of Columbus we have built great and lasting relationships and have been able to exponentially multiply the good that we do by working together with other groups -- at our summit -- and long before that with Special Olympics, the American Wheelchair Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Catholic Charities, and many others. We have also worked closely, since our founding, with the Catholic Church at every level: within our parishes, our dioceses and with the Holy Father. By putting ourselves at the service of Church and community -- and by working in and with both, we are better able to answer Christ's call to love our neighbor, and by our example to teach all nations.

Such cooperation -- communion if you will -- with the Church and with other organizations striving to do good, is, I believe, an excellent model for Catholic movements as they seek to transform the world by encouraging people to say "yes" to Jesus Christ. And nowhere is the face of our Church more attractive than in our open embrace of our neighbor. Each encounter with those in need is actually an opportunity to create a civilization of love, one person, one act at a time.

But sometimes statistics and the sheer volume of good works can make the practical effect hard to visualize. What makes an organization like ours work -- and keep on working for more than 127 years -- is the effect of each event, each encounter between a member and his neighbor. Both are changed, but the change for the one giving help is often the more profound.

In my role as Supreme Knight, I must admit that what moves me most are those moments when I can see first-hand the effect of our work.

It's not the millions of dollars and hours donated. It's not the number of projects. As Pope Benedict reminds us often, it's not about numbers at all. It's about saying "yes" to Jesus Christ in service to our neighbor -- It's seeing the face of Christ in the face of each person who needs our help.

Every so often this point is driven home for me very clearly. A couple of years ago, I was in Mexico City to help with a distribution of wheelchairs to the handicapped of that city, who were too poor to buy their own.

The experience of giving mobility to a person who previously had to drag him or herself across concrete and dirt is indescribable. And the contribution to the dignity of the person that you have helped support is inescapable.

One of the people I gave a wheelchair to was a young girl named Funy. She wrote a letter in which she called the Knights her "precious treasures," and her "Angels." As my wife Dorian and I lifted her into her chair, our gift in support of her dignity was clear. She was from Mexico City, we were from Connecticut, but we were neighbors.

This is the sort of experience that our members have millions of times each year as they serve their neighbor in councils, drawn into communion with their brother knights, and also with their own community, in prayerful service to God and neighbor. Our members -- through their faith and work together for their neighbor -- actively underscore Pope Benedict's words that "Communion always and inseparably has both a vertical and a horizontal sense: it is communion with God and communion with our brothers and sisters" (Sacramentum Caritatis, 76).

For this reason, the Knights root charity in devotion to the Eucharist and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. For Christ's summation of the commandments was that we love God first, then our neighbor as ourselves.

Take two of our principles. Unity -- that communion we have with each other, the parish, the community and the Church -- and in these ways with God himself, and charity -- where we encounter Christ and by giving of ourselves together with our brother Knights.

Not only do we encounter Christ in those we help, we also further strengthen our unity, and in this way provide our members with a strong "formation" through works of charity.

The experience of our charitable work makes clear to us what Pope Benedict wrote when he said: "There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable."

Our members -- seeing Christ in their neighbor, and seeking communion with him -- are thus active in what the Pope has emphasized in his most recent encyclical as charity in truth -- "an authentic gift of self" that goes beyond the mere social work that can be done by a state.

Fortified by the Eucharist, and in communion with the Church and our fellow Knights, our charity brings us into communion with Christ in his various distressing disguises. It is faith in action -- concretely, not abstractly -- and through this action we encounter Christ himself in the form of those seen as the "least" of our neighbors by society. Our understanding of the Christian event is thus contextualized through charity.

Charity is as indispensible for those of us giving, as it is for those who receive, for each charitable act speaks the very language of faith and hope, and each time that language is spoken, it builds up a civilization of love.

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On ZENIT's Web page:

Full text: http://www.zenit.org/article-26735?l=english

THEME FOR THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE 2010

VATICAN CITY, 29 JUL 2009 (VIS) - "If you want to cultivate peace, protect the creation" is the theme chosen by Benedict XVI for his Message for the 43rd World Day of Peace, which will be celebrated on 1 January 2010.



"The theme", says a communique made public today, "aims to raise awareness about the strong bond that exists in our globalised and interconnected world between protecting the creation and cultivating peace.



"This close and intimate tie", the communique adds, "is further accentuated by the many problems concerning man's natural environment, such as the use of resources, climate change, the application and use of biotechnology, and demographic growth. If the human family is unable to face these new challenges with a renewed sense of social justice and equity, and of international solidarity, we run the risk of sowing seeds of violence among peoples, and between current generations and those to come".



The communique goes on: "Following the precious guidelines contained in paragraphs 48 to 51 of the Encyclical 'Caritas in veritate', the papal Massage will make it clear that the protection of the environment is a challenge for all humankind. It is shared and universal duty to respect a collective asset destined for everyone".



The communique concludes by noting that "ecological questions must be faced, not just because of the dreadful prospects that environmental degradation presages; they must be translated, above all, into a strong motivation to cultivate peace".

.../MESSAGE WORLD PEACE DAY/... VIS 090729 (250)

POPE'S LENTEN MESSAGE FOR 2009

ZE09020303 - 2009-02-03
Permalink: http://zenit.org/article-24990?l=english

"Fasting Is a Great Help to Avoid Sin and All That Leads to It"


VATICAN CITY, FEB. 3, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is Benedict XVI's Lenten message for 2009, dated Dec. 11 and released today. The theme of the letter is "He Fasted for Forty Days and Forty Nights, and Afterward He Was Hungry."

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Dear Brothers and Sisters!

At the beginning of Lent, which constitutes an itinerary of more intense spiritual training, the Liturgy sets before us again three penitential practices that are very dear to the biblical and Christian tradition -- prayer, almsgiving, fasting -- to prepare us to better celebrate Easter and thus experience God's power that, as we shall hear in the Paschal Vigil, "dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy, casts out hatred, brings us peace and humbles earthly pride" (Paschal Præconium). For this year's Lenten Message, I wish to focus my reflections especially on the value and meaning of fasting. Indeed, Lent recalls the forty days of our Lord's fasting in the desert, which He undertook before entering into His public ministry. We read in the Gospel: "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry" (Mt 4,1-2). Like Moses, who fasted before receiving the tablets of the Law (cf. Ex 34,28) and Elijah's fast before meeting the Lord on Mount Horeb (cf. 1 Kings 19,8), Jesus, too, through prayer and fasting, prepared Himself for the mission that lay before Him, marked at the start by a serious battle with the tempter.

We might wonder what value and meaning there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it. For this reason, the history of salvation is replete with occasions that invite fasting. In the very first pages of Sacred Scripture, the Lord commands man to abstain from partaking of the prohibited fruit: "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Gn 2, 16-17). Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil observes that "fasting was ordained in Paradise," and "the first commandment in this sense was delivered to Adam." He thus concludes: "'You shall not eat' is a law of fasting and abstinence" (cf. Sermo de jejunio: PG 31, 163, 98). Since all of us are weighed down by sin and its consequences, fasting is proposed to us as an instrument to restore friendship with God. Such was the case with Ezra, who, in preparation for the journey from exile back to the Promised Land, calls upon the assembled people to fast so that "we might humble ourselves before our God" (8,21). The Almighty heard their prayer and assured them of His favor and protection. In the same way, the people of Nineveh, responding to Jonah's call to repentance, proclaimed a fast, as a sign of their sincerity, saying: "Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?" (3,9). In this instance, too, God saw their works and spared them.

In the New Testament, Jesus brings to light the profound motive for fasting, condemning the attitude of the Pharisees, who scrupulously observed the prescriptions of the law, but whose hearts were far from God. True fasting, as the divine Master repeats elsewhere, is rather to do the will of the Heavenly Father, who "sees in secret, and will reward you" (Mt 6,18). He Himself sets the example, answering Satan, at the end of the forty days spent in the desert that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Mt 4,4). The true fast is thus directed to eating the "true food," which is to do the Father's will (cf. Jn 4,34). If, therefore, Adam disobeyed the Lord's command "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat," the believer, through fasting, intends to submit himself humbly to God, trusting in His goodness and mercy.

The practice of fasting is very present in the first Christian community (cf. Acts 13,3; 14,22; 27,21; 2 Cor 6,5). The Church Fathers, too, speak of the force of fasting to bridle sin, especially the lusts of the "old Adam," and open in the heart of the believer a path to God. Moreover, fasting is a practice that is encountered frequently and recommended by the saints of every age. Saint Peter Chrysologus writes: "Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God's ear to yourself" (Sermo 43: PL 52, 320. 322).

In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one's body. Fasting certainly bring benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a "therapy" to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God. In the Apostolic Constitution Pænitemini of 1966, the Servant of God Paul VI saw the need to present fasting within the call of every Christian to "no longer live for himself, but for Him who loves him and gave himself for him, he will also have to live for his brethren" (cf. Ch. I). Lent could be a propitious time to present again the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution, so that the authentic and perennial significance of this long held practice may be rediscovered, and thus assist us to mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbor, the first and greatest Commandment of the new Law and compendium of the entire Gospel (cf. Mt 22, 34-40).

The faithful practice of fasting contributes, moreover, to conferring unity to the whole person, body and soul, helping to avoid sin and grow in intimacy with the Lord. Saint Augustine, who knew all too well his own negative impulses, defining them as "twisted and tangled knottiness" (Confessions, II, 10.18), writes: "I will certainly impose privation, but it is so that he will forgive me, to be pleasing in his eyes, that I may enjoy his delightfulness" (Sermo 400, 3, 3: PL 40, 708). Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.

At the same time, fasting is an aid to open our eyes to the situation in which so many of our brothers and sisters live. In his First Letter, Saint John admonishes: "If anyone has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, yet shuts up his bowels of compassion from him -- how does the love of God abide in him?" (3,17). Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger. It is precisely to keep alive this welcoming and attentive attitude towards our brothers and sisters that I encourage the parishes and every other community to intensify in Lent the custom of private and communal fasts, joined to the reading of the Word of God, prayer and almsgiving. From the beginning, this has been the hallmark of the Christian community, in which special collections were taken up (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27), the faithful being invited to give to the poor what had been set aside from their fast (Didascalia Ap., V, 20,18). This practice needs to be rediscovered and encouraged again in our day, especially during the liturgical season of Lent.

From what I have said thus far, it seems abundantly clear that fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person. Quite opportunely, an ancient hymn of the Lenten liturgy exhorts: "Utamur ergo parcius, / verbis cibis et potibus, / somno, iocis et arctius / perstemus in custodia" (Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses).

Dear brothers and sisters, it is good to see how the ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us, as the Servant of God Pope John Paul II wrote, to make the complete gift of self to God (cf. Encyclical "Veritatis splendor," 21). May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Causa nostrae laetitiae," accompany and support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a "living tabernacle of God." With these wishes, while assuring every believer and ecclesial community of my prayer for a fruitful Lenten journey, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 11 December 2008

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

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