Sunday, November 30, 2014

Pope Francis: Muslim leaders should condemn terrorism


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4YflGTr9irk



Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I signed a pledge to support Christians in the Middle East


Pope Francis has urged Muslim leaders around the world to condemn terrorism carried out in the name of Islam.
Speaking on board a flight back to Rome, the Pope said that he understood the harm caused by the stereotype that linked Islam with terrorism.
He said a “global condemnation” of the violence would help the majority of Muslims dispel this stereotype.
Pope Francis was returning from a three-day visit to Turkey, where he discussed divisions between faiths.
The pontiff denounced people who say that “all Muslims are terrorists”.
“As we cannot say that all Christians are fundamentalists,” he said.
In Istanbul, Pope Francis called for an end to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.
In a joint declaration, the Pope and Patriarch Bartholomew I said they could not resign themselves to a “Middle East without Christians”.
Patriarch Bartholomew is the spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians, whose Church broke with Rome in 1054 in a schism that divided the Christian world.
Constantinople, as the modern Turkish city of Istanbul was once known, was the centre of Orthodox Christianity until the Ottoman conquest in 1453.
Only around 120,000 Christians remain in Turkey, where the vast majority of the 80 million citizens are Muslims.
Pope Francis also called for dialogue with Muslims to counter fanaticism and fundamentalism when he visited the Turkish capital, Ankara.
‘Indifference of many’
Pope Francis flanked by Vatican spokesman father Federico Lombardi talks to journalists during a press conference aboard the flight towards Rome Pope Francis was returning to Rome after his three-day visit to Turkey when he made his latest comments

Christians have been targeted by Muslim hardliners in Iraq and Syria in recent years, with a violent campaign of persecution by Islamic State militants this summer when they captured the Iraqi city of Mosul.
In their joint declaration, the two Church leaders said: “We express our common concern for the current situation in Iraq, Syria and the whole Middle East.
“Many of our brothers and sisters are being persecuted and have been forced violently from their homes. It even seems that the value of human life has been lost, that the human person no longer matters and may be sacrificed to other interests. And, tragically, all this is met by the indifference of many.”
The pontiff and the patriarch also called for peace in Ukraine.
The violent conflict in Ukraine this year has accentuated differences between its large Orthodox and Catholic communities.
The Pope and the patriarch said: “We pray for peace in Ukraine, a country of ancient Christian tradition, while we call upon all parties involved to pursue the path of dialogue and of respect for international law in order to bring an end to the conflict and allow all Ukrainians to live in harmony.”
As his visit drew to a close, Pope Francis met Turkey’s chief rabbi, whose flock has diminished to just 17,000 people.
At the Blue Mosque on Saturday, one of the greatest masterpieces of Ottoman architecture, the Pope turned east towards Mecca, clasped his hands and paused for two minutes as the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran, delivered a Muslim prayer.
The Pope then visited Hagia Sofia – which for almost 1,000 years was the most important Orthodox cathedral, then for nearly five centuries a mosque under the Ottomans, and is currently a museum.
For Istanbul, a city that passed from the Byzantines to the Ottomans, a place where religions, empires and cultures collided, the Pope’s message of interfaith dialogue has profound resonance, says the BBC’s Mark Lowen in Istanbul.


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Thursday, November 27, 2014

Pope Francis to visit Turkey in most challenging mission of papacy so far







Pontiff to try to tackle relations with Islam, Christian persecution in the Muslim world and the Catholic-Orthodox schism




Pope Francis embarks on one of the most delicate missions of his 18-month-old papacy on Friday, when he is expected to wrestle with the problems of Christian persecution in the Muslim world and tackle relations with Islam in a time of spreading jihadism during his visit to Turkey.
As if that were not enough, he is also expected to deal with the millenium-old schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy that centred on the city that is now Istanbul.
The fourth pope to visit Turkey, Francis will seek to emphasise his commitment to dialogue with Muslims and other Christians at a time of increased violence against Christian minorities in the region.
He is to make what his spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, described as a very important speech on Muslim-Christian relations on Friday.
While in Ankara, the 77-year-old Argentinian pontiff is also due to visit Turkey’s directorate for religious affairs, or Diyanet, and meet Mehmet Görmez, the country’s most senior cleric. Görmez said he wanted to raise the problem of Islamophobia in his talks with the pope.
“Horrible things are happening everywhere in the Islamic world,” he told Deutsche Welle radio.
“These incidents have negatively affected Muslims not only [in the region], but also in Europe. While all these painful events are unfolding, there are those that argue that the source of these problems is Islam, which leads to injustices being committed against Islam
“We will have to work closely together with the pope on this,” he said.
Francis will also walk straight into another controversy when he visits the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s new palace built on once-protected farm and and forest in Ankara. He will the first foreign dignitary to be hosted at the lavish, 1,000-room complex.
The palace, which dwarfs the White House and other European government palaces, cost of £394m. It has drawn the ire of opposition parties, environmentalists, human rights activists and architects who say it is too extravagant, has damaged the environment and was built despite a court injunction against it.
Erdoğan brazenly dismissed the court ruling. “Let them knock it down if they have the power,” he said.
The Ankara branch of the Turkish Chamber of Architects sent a letter to the pope this month, urging him not to attend his welcoming ceremony on Friday at the “illegal” palace.
A spokesman for the pope brushed off the request. The Turkish government had invited Francis to visit and he would go where the Turkish government wished to receive him, he said.
Among the questions hanging over the trip is whether Francis will pray alongside his Muslim hosts when he visits Istanbul’s Sultan Ahmet mosque in Istanbul also known as the Blue Mosque on Saturday.
His predecessor, Pope Benedict, appalled many traditional Catholics when he appeared to do so on his visit to Turkey eight years ago. The Vatican put out a statement saying Benedict had merely been in meditation, though he conceded that he “certainly turned his thoughts to God”.
Francis will be the fourth reigning pope to visit Turkey, and his comes at an intensely sensitive moment for the dwindling Christian communities of the Middle East. Many of the Iraqi and Syrian Christians who have fled their homes to escape the spread of Islamic State (Isis)are currently living as refugees in Turkey.
On Tuesday, Francis appeared to reach out for dialogue with Isis. “I never count anything as lost. Never. Never close the door. It’s difficult, you could say almost impossible, but the door is always open,” he said.
From the Vatican’s standpoint, another important aspect of the visit will be the opportunity to consolidate the papacy’s good relations with the ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I, the pre-eminent spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. Francis’s stay in Turkey will coincide with the feast of St Andrew, whose significance for the Orthodox church is similar to that of St Peter for Catholics.
More than five centuries after Greek Christian Constantinople fell to Muslim Turks, the ecumenical patriarch and his aides still live in the city that is now Istanbul. Bartholomew attended Francis’s investiture last year, the first ecumenical patriarch to attend such a ceremony in Rome since the two churches split almost 1,000 years ago.
The pope shares close personal ties with Bartholomew I, who is to receive him at the patriarchate, also known as the Phanar, on Saturday. The following day, which is the feast of St Andrew, the pope is due to attend an Orthodox liturgy before the two men have lunch together.
“We are eagerly awaiting the visit of our brother, Pope Francis,” Bartholomew I said in a press release. “It will be yet another significant step in our positive relations as sister churches.”
Bartholomew I may generally be seen as conciliatory towards the Vatican, but the de facto leaders of the Orthodox church in Moscow are much warier and more hostile.
Interfaith dialogue has not always been easy in Turkey, a country with a 99% Muslim population, but many Christians say things have improved under the government of the Islamic Justice and Development party (AKP).
Erdoğan’s administration has shown partial support for the country’s Christian minorities. A law was passed last year to return property confiscated by the Turkish state to its owners and allow Christian religious classes in schools.
Dr Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, the metropolitan of Bursa and abbot of the Holy Trinity monastery on Halki, the second largest of the nine Princes’ Islands off the coast of Istanbul, is the former main secretary of the patriarchate. He said the last papal visit was overshadowed by the reluctance of his Turkish hosts.
“The Turks tried to put obstacles in our way wherever they could,” he said. “The AKP government still had to face the power of the secularists and the military then, and they were not pleased with the visit of the pope. This time there are no problems at all.”
His main grievance, and that of Orthodox Christians everywhere, is that the theological seminary housed in the monastery grounds since 1844 remains closed after the Turkish government banned all private higher education institutions in 1971. Erdoğan has previously said that no legal obstacles remain to the reopening of the school.
“Can there be a better place to educate true ecumenical staff open to interfaith dialogue than this school?” asked Lambriniadis, who is the first head of the school unable to graduate from it. “This is a theological school in a Muslim country from where high church officials graduate to be sent everywhere in the world. We can educate the kind of religious scholars that we so desperately need today.”

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Friday, November 21, 2014

Doomsday pope warns man's greed will destroy world






Pope Francis says man's greed will destroy world, urges world leaders to help the hungry

Posted


Pope Francis has warned that planet Earth will not forgive the abuse of its resources for profit, urging the world's leaders to rein in their greed and help the hungry.
He said if action was not taken the world risked a doomsday scenario in which nature would exact revenge.
"God always forgives, but the earth does not," the Argentine Pope told representatives from 190 countries gathered for the Second International Conference on Nutrition in Rome.
"Take care of the earth so it does not respond with destruction."    
 

Pope Francis has warned that planet Earth will not forgive the abuse of its resources for profit, urging the world's leaders to rein in their greed and help the hungry.
He said if action was not taken the world risked a doomsday scenario in which nature would exact revenge.
"God always forgives, but the earth does not," the Argentine Pope told representatives from 190 countries gathered for the Second International Conference on Nutrition in Rome.
"Take care of the earth so it does not respond with destruction."

Pope Francis, a staunch defender of the poor, said the world "paid too little heed to those who are hungry".
While the number of undernourished people dropped by over half in the past 20 years, some 805 million people were still affected in 2014.
"It is also painful to see the struggle against hunger and malnutrition hindered by market priorities, the primacy of profit, which reduce foodstuffs to a commodity like any other, subject to speculation and financial speculation in particular," Pope Francis said.
"The hungry remain at the street corner... and ask for a healthy diet.
"We ask for dignity, not for charity."
The Pope has in the past launched several scathing attacks on those who get rich through market speculation, particularly the practice of betting on the price of food commodities which can inflate prices and see poor families go hungry.
He urged the world's population to have "mutual respect, instead of fighting between themselves, damaging and impoverishing the planet".
Pope Francis praised the work of the UN food agency and the World Health Organisation for getting delegates at the conference to adopt a "Rome Declaration on Nutrition" and "Framework for Action".
But he called on those drawing up "rules and technical measures" not to lose sight of the hungry man "fighting for survival".
"Feed the hungry, save life on the planet," Pope Francis said at the end of his speech which was met with a standing ovation.
The declaration focused on improving access to healthy food but also the growing problem of inactive over-eaters.
Two billion people suffer from deficiencies in nutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc - a condition known as "hidden hunger" by experts - while 42 million children and 500 million adults are overweight or obese.

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Thursday, November 20, 2014

Conservatives defend Pope Francis

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent November 20, 2014

ROME — So far, Pope Francis’ most significant internal opposition has come from conservative Catholics alarmed over what they see as playing fast-and-loose with Catholic doctrine. This week, however, an all-star lineup of conservatives gathered in Rome has come to the pope’s defense.
“I am a conservative politically,” said Princeton University law professor Robert P. George, considered one of America’s most prominent Catholic commentators. “But I’m a Pope Francis Catholic, which is simply to say that I’m a Catholic.”
Harvard law professor and former US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon echoed the point.
Saying she dislikes ideological labels, Glendon nonetheless acknowledged that she fits the spectrum of “conservative,” yet said she’s never doubted for a minute Pope Francis and where he’s leading the Church.
“He’s said from the beginning, ‘I’m a son of the Church’. I believe he’s a very honest man who speaks from the heart,” Glendon said. “And his heart is in the right place. What you see is what you get.”
Glendon was named to a supervisory board for the Vatican bank by Pope Francis.
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, usually recognized as a strong conservative leader who also attended the Rome conference, told Crux that the problem isn’t the pope, but those interpreting him.
 
“It’s misinterpretation, but there’s also baiting by people on the other side,” he said.

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According to Chaput, who will host the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia next September with Pope Francis in attendance, one side of the ideological spectrum is accusing the other of not loving the pope enough.
“They want to make it a problem,” he said.
Chaput said the only political perspective that ought to matter is “the ideology Pope Francis has spoken about, the ideology of the Gospel.”

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As for the pontiff’s visit to the United States next year, Chaput said it will be an extraordinary moment of grace.
“We [in the States] always say that we desire to live in the shadow or shade of St. Peter, and the pope is the successor of Peter,” he said. “When he comes, he brings that grace with him.”
The key idea of the three-day colloquium at the Vatican’s Synod Hall was “complementarity,” meaning the distinct roles that men and women have, which complement one another in the family, married life, and the Church.
The term comes up frequently in Catholic circles as part of the intellectual basis for opposing same-sex marriage, on the grounds that the natural differences between men and women reflect the divine plan for marriage as a union between the two sexes.
As a result, the colloquium has been labeled a conservative meeting.
When asked about that label, Glendon called it ridiculous. “This has been a meeting about how marriages and child-raising families are indeed the remedy for the spiritual and moral and material devastation that has afflicted the poor, women, and children,” she said.
Picking up on the pontiffs’ address to the conference on Monday, George said that family isn’t a conservative or liberal problem.
“It’s a force in itself, and it’s something we should come together for,” he said.
For the Princeton scholar, marriage shouldn’t be oriented simply for the satisfaction of the adults, but for the welfare of the children.
“They are the ones who are suffering from the fragmentation of families,” he said.
Paraphrasing Francis, George referred to the crisis of the family and its relationship with the culture of disposability, one of the pontiffs’ recurrent expressions. He believes marriages are being tossed aside as though they were old clothes or tissues.
“The pope is a profound witness of treating marriage as disposable,” George said. “Why? Not because he has an abstract belief in marriage, but because he has a concrete experience as a pastor of what happens to men, women, and especially children, but really the whole of society when marriage is treated as disposable.”
George also underlined the interreligious aspect of the conference, with people of faith coming together “across the historic line of religious divisions to bear witness to the common belief that marriage is the union of man and woman open to life.”
It was a running joke during the gathering that the non-Catholic speakers were the most powerful ones, with speeches from former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, Lord Jonathan Sacks, and the Rev. Richard Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church.
Both received standing ovations.
Anthony Fisher, the newly appointed bishop of Sydney, Australia, who attended the gathering and described it as the best Vatican-organized conference he has attended in the past 15 years, saw truth in the joke.
“The Jews and the Evangelicals were the best, they spoke very inspiringly, but that’s good for us, it’s like an injection of hope,” he said.
“I’d really like for those Jews and Evangelicals to be at the next synod [on the family, scheduled for October 2015],” Fisher said.
ines@cruxnow.comE-mail the author@inesanmaFollow author on twitter
Inés San Martín is the Vatican correspondent for Crux, stationed in Rome. More
 
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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Man who shot John Paul II requests meeting with Pope Francis

 
Mehmet Ali Ağca wrote to the Vatican to welcome the pope to Turkey when he visits the country for the first time later in November
  • AFP in Istanbul
Mehmet Ali Agca
The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II, Mehmet Ali Agca, is surrounded by journalists as he leaves his car in Ankara on 18 January 2010.Photograph: Umit Bektas/Reuters

The Turkish man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II more than three decades ago has asked the Vatican for permission to meet Pope Francis when he visits Turkey next week, local media reported on Wednesday.
The pope is due to visit Turkey for the first time from 28-30 November, during which time he will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
In a statement published by Turkish media, Mehmet Ali Ağca requested a meeting with Pope Francis. “Pope Francis, who seeks to boost peace and brotherhood at a time the world is going through a political, economic and humanitarian crisis, is welcome to Turkey,” Ağca said.
“I am Mehmet Ali Ağca and I would like to meet the pope during this visit,” the statement said, accompanied by a photo of Pope John Paul II visiting Ağca in a Rome prison in 1983 to forgive his attacker.
John Paul II nearly died in the assassination attempt in 1981 when Ağca shot him at close range in St Peter’s Square. One bullet went through his abdomen and another narrowly missed his heart.
The motive for the attack, which landed Ağca in an Italian prison, remains a mystery.
Ağca, believed by many to be mentally disturbed, was released from a Turkish prison in 2010 after serving nearly three decades behind bars.
He was a 23-year-old militant of the notorious far-right Grey Wolves movement, on the run from Turkish justice, when he shot Pope John Paul II.
Extradited to Turkey in 2000 after Italy pardoned him, Ağca was convicted of the murder of prominent journalist Abdi Ipekci, two armed robberies and escaping from prison, crimes all dating back to the 1970s.
 
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Taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/mehmet-ali-agca-shot-john-paul-ii-requests-meeting-with-pope-francis
 
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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Pope Francis writes to Tony Abbott, calls for G20 not to forget poor



 
November 12, 2014 - 2:51PM

Judith Ireland, Tom Allard


Pope Francis has written to Tony Abbott, calling for the G20 to not forget the world's poor.
Pope Francis has written to Tony Abbott, calling for the G20 to not forget the world's poor. Photo: Getty Images
 
Pope Francis has written to Prime Minister Tony Abbott ahead of the G20, calling for the leaders' summit to focus on poor families and inequality as well as economic figures.
In a letter dated November 6, the Pope has asked Mr Abbott and his fellow heads of government "not to forget that many lives are at stake" behind the political and technical discussions of the G20 weekend.
"It would indeed be regrettable if such discussions were to remain purely on the level of declarations of principle," Pope Francis wrote.

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"There are far too many women and men suffering severe malnutrition, a rise in the number of the unemployed, an extremely high percentage of young people without work and an increate in social exclusion, which can lead to criminal activity, and even the recruitment of terrorists."
The Pope also warned there were "constant assaults" on the environment as a result of "unbridled consumerism".
In calling for consensus among world leaders, he said he hoped that assessment of the G20's results "will not be restricted to global indicies, but will take into account as well real improvements in the living conditions of poorer families and the reduction of all forms of unacceptable inequality".
The Pope also used his letter to call on all G20 member states to be "examples of generosity" in meeting the needs of victims of conflict, "especially [those] of refugees".
The Prime Minister's office has been contacted for comment.

"Inclusive growth"

The letter comes as the community arm of the G20 calls on world leaders to set a growth target that would boost incomes for the poorest 20 per cent of households around the world.
In a paper released on Wednesday, the C20 argued that G20's two per cent growth target will not address the widening gap between rich and poor.
The current target is projected to boost world GDP by $US2 trillion over the next five years, but the C20 has questioned where the money will go, asking "will it go to those who need it most?"
Instead, the C20 is pushing for a target that would see the bottom 20 per cent of households in each G20 country increase their incomes by at least two per cent. By 2018, this would see around 950 million people with an average increased income of $US800.
C20 chair Tim Costello said the G20 had previously recognised the importance of inclusive growth at the 2013 St Petersburg Summit, but it had slipped off the agenda in 2014.
"Across the world, people are talking about the threat posed to economic stability by poverty and increasing inequality," he said.

New analysis

A new analysis by Oxfam has also revealed that inequality has grown significantly among G20 nations in the past year, with the richest 1 per cent of people enjoying an extraordinary $US6.2 trillion boost to their wealth, or 36 per cent of the total generated
The study by Oxfam found 15 of 19 G20 members (not including the European Union, a G20 member) saw inequality widen, based on assessment of how much wealth has been accrued by the top 1 per cent of people in each country.
Those 15 nations, on average, saw its richest citizens share of wealth increase by 3 per cent, led by rises of 7 per cent and 3.9 per cent in Indonesia and Russia, respectively.
The only nations to experience a decrease were Canada, Japan and the US (all down 0.1 per cent) and Saudi Arabia (down 1.6 per cent).
Overall, the wealthiest 1 per cent living in each G20 country snared $US6.2 trillion of the $US17 trillion created between 2013 and 2014, some 36 per cent of the total increase.
Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke welcomed the aggregate increase in the number of people being lifted out of poverty around the world in recent decades, but said it was disturbing to find that, nonetheless, income disparity is rising.
"It is vital that the G20 doesn't just look at growth but shows it is serious about tackling inequality," she said.
Like Mr Costello, Dr Szoke said it was deeply worrying that the draft final G20 communique that has been circulated does not include a commitment to "inclusive growth", a term that was inserted into the declaration by leaders after the St Petersburg Summit.
Instead, the favoured phrase appears to be "strong, sustainable and balanced" growth.
"This is beyond semantics," said Dr Szoke. "The reason is was included [in St Petersburg] was to show the G20 would address rising inequality and that growth needed to include all people".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pope-francis-writes-to-tony-abbott-calls-for-g20-not-to-forget-poor-20141112-11l00c.html#ixzz3ItkbosDV
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Sunday, November 9, 2014

Pope Francis warns 'lukewarm Christians': The Lord will 'vomit you from [his] mouth'

 
 
Francis cautions against Pagan Christians during a morning Mass, Friday at Vatican City.
 
Pope Francis warned there are too many people who live their lives as Christians in name only, and that such 'false' Christians are merely Pagans and “enemies of the Cross."
 
During a morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City on Friday, the Pontiff went on to cite Revelations 3:16 against mediocre believers, declaring that, “because you are lukewarm (Christians) I vomit you from my mouth."
 
According to Francis, there are only two types of Christians-- those who advance the faith and those who behave as “enemies” of Christ. These “enemies,” are "Pagans with two strokes of Christian paint, in order to appear as Christians."
 
He said true believers must be careful not to fall into the trap of Paganism. Believers must check in on their intentions, and make sure that they are not too focused on material concerns.  Asking oneself questions such as, “Do I like to brag? Do I like money? Do I like my pride, my arrogance? Where are my roots, and where is my citizenship? In heaven or on earth?” can be helpful, according to the Pope. 
 
It is often difficult to distinguish Pagan Christians from true Christians, as both go to church together, praise the Lord and call themselves Christian, the Pontiff stated. The difference, he added, is Pagan Christians are too concerned with worldly desires and hopes and “act like enemies of the Cross of Christ! Christians' enemies of the Cross of Christ.
 
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