Should Pope Francis go to Pyongyang?
Is a papal visit to North Korea a good idea? That was the question asked by Barbie Latza Nadeau and Donald Kirk at the Daily Beast after reports that Kim Jong-un has invited the Pope to the country. On the one hand, they wrote, North Korea’s record on religious freedom is “beyond abysmal”. There are no priests and it is impossible for Catholics to practise their faith openly. A visit risks legitimising the regime and giving the impression its human rights atrocities do not matter.
But some have backed a papal visit. Ji Seong-ho, a prominent defector, is one. “I would like the North Korean people to see the Pope lay his hand on Kim’s head and pray for him. That would be very meaningful,” he said. Greg Scarlatoiu, of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said that while Kim could easily fill up a stadium with 150,000 people, he might have to explain who the Pope is. But, he said, “the photos of the Pope blessing the crowd would be overwhelming”.
David Maxwell, a retired US Army colonel and professor at Georgetown University, was less optimistic. While Francis might “give people hope” and inspire a small number of Catholics, the overall message would be that he “came to kowtow to Kim Jong-un”. Maxwell said he doubted that “any true believing Catholic in the north would get near the Pope”.
The prostitute who became a saint
Thaïs, a 4th-century courtesan in the Roman city of Alexandria, was beautiful, wealthy and unrepentantly immoral, according to Angelo Stagnaro. Accounts of her life, he said, describe how she became fascinated by Christianity after she saw Christians giving away all they had for the poor, including their jewellery and cosmetics.
Belatedly, a monk pretended to be a customer to convert her but discovered, to his surprise, that she already believed Jesus Christ was her Saviour. The monk – accounts differ on his identity – prepared her for baptism and, stricken by a lifetime of sin, Thaïs burned her clothes, later becoming a hermit and then a cloistered nun in the desert.
In the medieval period devotion to St Thaïs was widespread, Stagnaro wrote, but “the modern era hasn’t been as kind”. Starting with a bestselling novel published in 1891 by Anatole France, a series of portrayals have represented the monk as becoming obsessed with Thaïs and losing his faith. St Thaïs deserves better, Stagnaro wrote. “We should pray for her detractors and continually present this amazing saint as a model for our broken world.”
How a cardinal helped a king fall in love
Belgium’s King Baudouin and his wife Fabiola owed their marriage to a cardinal, according to Bernadette Chovelon and Cerith Gardiner at Aleteia. Cardinal Suenens recruited an Irish nun, Sister Veronica O’Brien, to find a match for the young king. She in turn recruited a Spanish nurse as matchmaker – but instead the matchmaker, Fabiola, became his wife. The subsequent marriage was a “beautiful story”, they wrote, “one of devotion to their people, to each other, and to God.”
✣Meanwhile…
✣ The United States is secretly infecting mosquitoes and other creatures to spread disease in the former Soviet Union, an Orthodox archbishop has claimed. Metropolitan Pavlo (Lebid), a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow patriarchate, said the US had set up secret laboratories.
According to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU), he said he had heard that there were “several laboratories in the territory of the former Soviet Union, American ones, that infect mosquitoes, infect other insects, animals, and release them into the world in order to endanger the population”.
The archbishop was rebuked by a former official of the Russian Orthodox Church. Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, RISU reported, said the metropolitan should provide evidence before making such claims.
✣ Two videos of hundreds of nuns dancing have gone viral on Facebook, with more than 80,000 shares between them. One video has the heading: “Let everyone see our joy.” They were filmed at the Third Congress of Young Consecrated People, entitled “Free in the Holy Spirit”, in Kraków in September. Young nuns in a wide variety of traditional habits jumped up and down at a concert on the Saturday evening.
It’s like hiring a hitman Pope Francis on abortion General audience
The ‘new liturgical movement’ … is growing even today Cardinal Robert Sarah Preface to Benedict XVI’s The Spirit of the Liturgy
Another wave of persecution will be the end of Christianity [in Iraq] Archbishop Habib Nafali of Basra CNS
The biggest honour was when Queen Elizabeth of England contacted me St Oscar Romero’s 88-year-old brother Gaspar on being asked to meet the Queen CNS
Statistic of the week
1.6m
Number of visitors to the Met’s Catholic-themed fashion show Heavenly Bodies Source: Bloomberg
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