Preparing for the Synod: Reception of the Sacraments by Divorced and Remarried Persons

Upcoming Synod to Address Challenging Issues Pertaining to Marriage, Family, Sexual Morality

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One of the more complex issues expected to be addressed during the forthcoming Synod on the family is the question of reception of the Sacraments by those who are divorced and remarried and have not obtained an annulment.

This topic was included in a Preparatory Document questionnaire, sent out the end of last year, which assessed where Catholics stand on issues pertaining to family issues and sexual morality.

As part of the lead up to the Extraordinary Synod on the Family – which will focus on the Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization– the responses to the questionnaire have been summarized in an Instrumentum Laboris (working document), which was presented at a Vatican Press Office.

Pope says communists stole Christianity’s concern for poor

In a new interview about moral and material poverty, Pope Francis has stressed that care for the poor is ultimately Christian, suggesting that communists have “stolen” this from Christianity.

“I must say that communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian,” he said.

“Poverty is the center of the Gospel. The poor are at the center of the Gospel. Let’s take a look at Matthew 25, the protocol through which we will be finally judged: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I have been imprisoned, I was sick, naked…Let’s take a look at the Beatitudes, another flag.”

“Communists say that all of this is communist. Yes, 20 centuries after… So, when they speak, we could respond them: you are Christians,” the Pope told the Roman daily Il Messaggero June 24.

Pope Francis’ comments responded to the accusation that he is close to communist ideas. His comment comes in the fourth interview that he has granted to a newspaper. The interview was published June 29, on the occasion of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the city of Rome.

Pope Francis underscored his fears of both moral and material poverty, condemning political corruption and encouraging lawmakers to govern their country well.

“Always safeguarding the common good: this is the vocation for any lawmaker. It is a broad issue, which includes, for instance, the safeguarding of human life (and) its dignity.”

According to the Pope, “the real problem is that policies have been undervalued, ruined by corruption, by kickbacks.”

The many labours of the Pope who never rests

12 thousand personal interviews after his morning masses in St. Martha’s House and not one day off. The Pope’s alarm clock goes off at 4:45 am and he only has one half hour nap a day. No wonder his body rebels now and again and he has to cancel certain events

When priests told him to take a break and go on holiday, Milan’s Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster smiled and answered that there would be all the time in the world to do that once he was in heaven. Francis – the Jesuit Pope whose hectic schedule would put even a 40 year old man to shame – seems to be following in his footsteps despite his age (he is 77) which sometimes leads him to have to call off a meeting or two. This was the case with his visit to the “Agostino Gemelli” hospital in Rome, Friday.

“Speaking to Italian newspaper La Stampa and Vatican Insider, the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi explained that the Pope “decides his own agenda and leads a very intense life because he feels he is called to serve the Lord with all his strength. He never took time off even when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.” Francis doesn’t even stop on a Tuesday, the traditional day of papal rest when his predecessors usually had no audiences or other important commitments. Instead of making the most of this morning to rest, he uses it to catch up on meetings that have been put on hold. “Francis follows the lifestyle of St. Ignatius, who in the order’s constitutions defined the Jesuits as “labourers in the Lord’s vineyard” so he dedicates himself entirely to his mission, even going beyond the limits of his own strength,” Fr. Lombardi said.

Council of Cardinals to weigh consolidation of pontifical councils

The Council of Cardinals have began four days of meetings on July 1, with the focus expected to be on reorganization of the Roman Curia.

After the last meeting of the Council of Cardinals, in April, the Vatican announced that the group had completed its study of the nine congregations that compose the most important offices of the Roman Curia, and would now move on a study of pontifical councils and commissions.

Vatican observers expect that some of these bodies will be eliminated, or merged into other offices, as the Pope streamlines the Vatican bureaucracy.

Vatican grieves deaths of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi released a statement voicing Pope Francis’ condolences over three kidnapped Israeli teenagers found dead on Monday outside a Palestinian town.

“The news of the death of three young Israelis that had disappeared is terrible and tragic,” the June 30 statement read.

“The murder of innocent people is always and abominable and unacceptable crime, and an important obstacle in the way of peace, for which we must continue to work restlessly and for which we need to pray.”

“Violence only begets more violence and feeds the deadly circle of hate,” it added.

Three Israeli teenagers, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel – both 16 – and Eyal Yifrah, 19, disappeared on June 12 while hitchhiking near the West Bank city of Hebron.

Their disappearance sparked one of Israel’s biggest manhunts in recent years.

Education: A way up for Cambodian women escaping the sex-trade

Maryknoll Sr. Helene O’Sullivan has seen a lot. Drug-wasted women sleeping under bridges and in public bathrooms in Hong Kong. A 25 year-old left dead in the gutter after an overdose. “Why do you bother with this trash?” the director of the funeral parlour had scolded when the Maryknoll sisters arranged a burial for the woman that no one attended.

But the worst case, by far, was the woman from Poipet. Every time, she had tried to leave the Cambodian brothel where she was imprisoned, the owner beat her and pulled out a tooth with pliers. One extraction per attempted escape beginning with the molars. By the time the woman reached the shelter in the Cambodian capital of Phnomh Penh where O’Sullivan worked, she was toothless.

The 70-year-old nun from Manhattan has devoted much of her life to empowering poor women through education. Since 1991, she has focused on women and girls trafficked in the sex trade. “No man is going to grow old with his prostitute,” she says. The demand for prostitution requires trafficking, and it is poor, young women, lacking economic opportunity, who are “fed into the prostitution machine.”

Last fall, O’Sullivan launched a program in Phnomh Penh that provides basic education and intensive job training for formerly trafficked women and girls. O’Sullivan wants “none of this pink-collar stuff” for her graduates. No hawking vegetables in the market or shampooing hair in male-owned barber shops or working in factories where the higher wages always go to the men.

Cambodia’s tourism industry is booming, and her students, regarded as “trash” in their own communities, are aiming to get a piece of the economic pie earning reliably good wages as front desk receptionists and housekeepers in the international hotels that are cropping up all over the capital.

Christians Returning to Homes in Northern Iraq After Attack

Thousands of Iraqi Christians have been returning to their homes in the north of the country, days after they fled villages under attack by Sunni Muslim extremists.

They chose to return to the largely autonomous Kurdish-held Nineveh region after Kurdish forces told them it was safe to do so, the AP reported. The area, near the northern city of Mosul, came under attack Wednesday by forces led by the al-Qaida inspired Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

More than 40,000 inhabitants of the Christian towns and villages of the Nineveh Plain, Karakosh, Baghdeda, Karamless and Bartella were forced to flee after the clashes between Sunni armed groups and Kurdish troops. The Syriac Catholic bishop and clergy remained in the churches, according to ‘Save the Monasteries’, a group promoting Christian heritage in countries of persecution.