Pope Francis has named 17 new cardinals including an Albanian priest who spent decades in communist labour camps.
The list also includes three Americans: Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago; Bishop Kevin Farrell, prefect of the new Vatican office for laity, family and life; and Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis.
Announcing the names, Pope Francis said: “Their coming from 11 nations expresses the universality of the church that proclaims and witnesses the good news of God’s mercy in every corner of the earth.”
The new cardinals will be inducted into the College of Cardinals on November 19, the eve of the close of the Year of Mercy.
The next day they will join Pope Francis and other cardinals in celebrating the feast of Christ the King and closing the Year of Mercy, the Pope said.
Among the new cardinals are Archbishop Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to Syria, and Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui, Central African Republic. The last of the cardinals the Pope named was Albanian Fr Ernest Simoni, of the Archdiocese of Shkodër-Pult, who will turn 88 next week. He had moved Pope Francis to tears in 2014 when he spoke about his 30 years in prison or enduring forced labour.
Ordained in 1956, he was arrested and sentenced to death in 1963. He was beaten, placed for three months in solitary confinement, and then tortured because he refused to denounce the Church. He was eventually freed, but later arrested again and sent to a camp where he was forced to work in a mine for 18 years and then 10 more years in sewage canals.
Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland has written a pastoral letter seeking to correct what he calls “troublesome” misuse of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on the family and family life.
The letter, released last week, said the text had rightly been lauded by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but that the media in particular had drawn false conclusions about the document. “While the exhortation does not contain any change in Church teaching regarding marriage and family life, some have used Amoris Laetitia in ways that do not correspond with the Church’s teaching tradition,” Archbishop Sample wrote.
The archbishop cited three ways readers had misread the exhortation. First, he said, was the idea that conscience legitimised actions that contravene divine commandments. Second was the idea that under certain conditions there could be exceptions to absolute divine prohibitions. The third was that human frailty exempts people from divine commands.
“Encouraging or silently accepting an erroneous judgment of conscience is neither mercy nor charity,” he wrote.
Haitians packed into churches on Sunday despite a devastating hurricane ripping off the buildings’ roofs and even walls.
One church, according to Associated Press, was so badly damaged that faithful set up an altar outside. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed by Hurricane Matthew last week, and as the Catholic Herald went to press it was reported that at least 1,000 people had died.
Cardinal Robert Sarah has said “hateful divisions” over liturgy must end, and that liturgical debates have become an occasion for “public humiliation”.
In an interview with the French publication Le Nef, translated by Catholic World Report, the cardinal, who heads the Vatican’s liturgy department, reportedly said: “Without a contemplative spirit, the liturgy will remain an occasion for hateful divisions and ideological clashes, for the public humiliation of the weak by those who claim to hold some authority, whereas it ought to be the place of our unity and our communion in the Lord. Why should we confront and detest each other?”
The cardinal also said fierce debates over the liturgy were the work of the Devil. “Yes, the Devil wants us to be opposed to each other at the very heart of the sacrament of unity and fraternal communion. It is time for this mistrust, contempt and suspicion to cease,” he said.
He said he regretted that ad orientem worship had been contested in an “ideological clash of factions”.
In July the cardinal gave a speech in which he asked priests to begin celebrating Mass ad orientem – that is, facing east. It provoked a debate, in which the Vatican appeared to reject Cardinal Sarah’s remarks. Last week the cardinal said he told the Pope at the time that he wanted to help the faithful, not spark conflict. His comments, he said, were “the heartfelt suggestions of a pastor who is concerned about the good of the faithful”.
The cardinal was speaking on the publication of his book The Strength of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. The book reflects on the encounter with God. In the interview, Cardinal Sarah described prayer as “a moment of silent, intimate encounter in which a human being stands face to face with God to adore Him and to express his filial love for Him”.
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