CATHOLIC WORLD NEWS: TUES. JUNE 15, 2010: HEADLINES-
VATICAN: ORDINATION OF FOURTEEN DEACONS OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME
AMERICA: CUBA: GENERAL MENDIETA FREED BY GUERRILLAS THROUGH PRAYER-
AFRICA: NIGERIA: FR. GODWIN TERU DIES IN CAR ACCIDENT-
ASIA: AFGHANISTAN: PRAY FOR CHRISTIANS SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR FAITH-
EUROPE: AUSTRIA: LISTEN TO THE CISTERCIAN MONKS CHANTING ON YOUTUBE-
AUSTRALIA: FR. HOLDCROFT APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF REFUGEE SERVICES S. AFRICA-
ORDINATION OF FOURTEEN DEACONS OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME
VATICAN CITY, 15 JUN 2010 (VIS report) - In the Vatican Basilica at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday 20 June Benedict XVI will preside at a Mass during which he will confer priestly ordination on fourteen deacons of the diocese of Rome.
OP/ VIS 20100615 (50)
IN MEMORIAM
VATICAN CITY, 15 JUN 2010 (VIS) - The following prelates died in recent months:
- Archbishop Lajos Balint, emeritus of Alba Iulia, Romania, on 4 April at the age of 80.
- Bishop Andre Bedoglouyan, auxiliary emeritus of Cilicia of the Armenians, Lebanon, on 13 April at the age of 90.
- Archbishop Andrea Cassone, emeritus of Rossano-Cariati, Italy, on 12 April at the age of 80.
- Bishop Miguel C. Cinches S.V.D., emeritus of Surigao, Philippines, on 12 April at the age of 78.
- Bishop Vito De Grisantis of Ugento-Santa Maria di Leuca, Italy, on 1 April at the age of 68.
- Bishop Tadeusz Ploski, military ordinary for Poland, on 10 April at the age of 54.
- Archbishop William Donald Borders, emeritus of Baltimore, U.S.A., on 19 April at the age of 96.
- Bishop Edmund Joseph Fitzgibbon S.P.S., emeritus of Warri, Nigeria, on 17 April at the age of 85.
- Bishop Norman Francis McFarland, emeritus of Orange in California, U.S.A., on 16 April at the age of 88.
- Archbishop Luigi Amaducci, emeritus of Ravenna-Cervia, Italy, on 3 May at the age of 86.
- Bishop Siluvaimathu Teresanathan Amalnather, emeritus of Tuticorin, India, on 14 February at the age of 84.
- Archbishop Raymond Bouchex, emeritus of Avignon, France, on 9 May at the age of 83.
- Archbishop Marcello Costalunga, former pontifical administrator of the papal basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls and former pontifical delegate of the basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy, on 5 May at the age of 85.
- Archbishop Antoine Hayek B.C., emeritus of Baniyas of the Greek-Melkites, Lebanon, on 1 May at the age of 81.
- Archbishop Zygmunt Kaminski, emeritus of Szczecin-Kamien, Poland, on 1 May at the age of 77.
- Bishop Onofre Candido Rosa S.D.B., emeritus of Jardim, Brazil, on 9 December 2009 at the age of 85.
- Bishop Rafael Sanus Abad, former auxiliary of Valencia, Spain, on 13 May at the age of 78.
- Bishop Victor Selvino Arenhardt of Obera, Argentina, on 17 May at the age of 61.
- Bishop Josef Koukl, emeritus of Litomerice, Czech Republic, on 22 May at the age of 84.
- Bishop Jose Joaquin Matte Varas, military ordinary emeritus for Chile, on 12 May at the age of 87.
AMERICA
CUBA: GENERAL MENDIETA FREED BY GUERRILLA GROUP THROUGH PRAYER
CNA report: Commenting on the news that General Luis Mendieta was freed last weekend by the Colombian army after 12 years of captivity by a leftist guerrilla group, his wife asserted that “God heard” her prayers for his release.
Speaking on Colombian radio, she said, “I am the happiest woman in the world. I’m so happy, I don’t know what to do. Now is the time to hug him and I am going to celebrate his birthday with him. God heard my prayers. Thank God for this moment.”
In his first statements after being liberated, General Mendieta thanked President Alvaro Uribe for the rescue operation, the military and the media for supporting the liberation of hostages in Colombia. “May God repay you for this outcome,” he said.
The 53 year-old general was captured in 1998 by the leftist guerrilla group, FARC – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia – during a siege of the eastern provincial capital of Mitu, reported the Boston Globe on Tuesday.
“Now that I have returned there are many things about Colombia, the world, everything, that I don’t know about, as I’ve spent 12 years with no intellectual stimulus,” the general said with emotion.
“I want to listen to the news, to commentary; I want to hear the voice of the people of the world because we heard no voices in the jungle. I want to hear from you, my beloved wife, from you, by beloved son, from you my beloved daughter. I want to hear from the entire world,” he added.
General Mendieta was liberated with Colonel Enrique Murillo, Sergeant Arbey Delgado Agote and Colonel William Donato, who all arrived in Bogota on a military plane from the province of Guaviare, where the rescue operation took place.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/god-heard-prayers-for-colombian-hostages-says-wife-of-rescued-general/
AFRICA
NIGERIA: FR. GODWIN TERU DIES IN CAR ACCIDENT
All Africa report: REVEREND father Godwin Teru, the chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Yobe State died Sunday in a motor accident close to the Damaturu City Gate, about three kilometres away from his house. Teru, who was also the Parish Priest of St. Mary's Catholic Church, was returning from Azare in Bauchi State where he attended a religious meeting.
Family sources said the accident which occurred Sunday night was discovered early yesterday and the remains of the chairman and another person who was critically injured were taken to the Catholic Cathedral of Maiduguri Diocese and the Sani Abacha Specialists Hospital Damaturu respectively. Yobe State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission Mr S.G Maitizumahs confirmed the accident.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201006150505.html
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN: PRAY FOR CHRISTIANS SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR FAITH
Asia News report:A group of Afghan Christian refugees, who escaped to India to save their lives, describe the hardships they face in their homeland, where Muslim converts to Christianity are put to death. They call on the international community to put pressure on the Afghan government to spare those sentenced to death.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – VijayKumar Singh, from the India Bible Publishers and the Delhi Bible Fellowship, has launched an appeal to the Christians of India and the world to pray and express their support for Afghan Muslim converts to Christianity who were convicted on conversion charges and sentenced to death on 31 May. Speaking to AsiaNews, Sing said, “We need Christians’ help all over the world to stop the Afghan government from arresting Dari-speaking Afghan Christians and condemning them to death by public execution.”
Afghans consider their country to be 100 per cent Muslim. A local TV station, Noorin TV, recently broadcast a documentary showing photos and videos of secret “Afghan Christian Converts”, which revealed names and showed the faces of alleged Afghan Christian converts.
This was enough to spark riots and demonstrations throughout Afghanistan with protesters demanding strong action to enforce the Afghan constitution, based on Sharia, arrest the culprits, and execute anyone who renege his or her religion in favour of another.
A number of prominent public figures also spoke out on the matter, calling for immediate action. One lawmaker even said that killing a Muslim who converts to Christianity was “not a crime”.
Waheed Omar, the spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told reporters that the president was “personally” taking an interest in this case, and had ordered his interior minister and the head of the country’s spy agency to carry out a full investigation and “take immediate and serious action to prevent this phenomenon.”
Reports from inside Afghanistan already tell of many arrests in recent days, as well as allegations of torture of those under arrest in an effort to extract forcibly the names of other Afghan Christian converts.
Singh also slams the “perplexing media silence” and demands a strong stance from Christians around the world.
In a letter, Obaid S. Christ, a member of a small group of about 150 Afghan Christian refugees and asylum seekers in India, writes that he and other Afghan Christians “are currently living in exile from their beloved homeland [. . .] forced to flee their country in order to save their life and the lives of their families, due to orders of execution issued against them by the Afghan government for choosing to convert to Christianity.”
Recently, he writes, “The Afghan Home Minister and the Chairman of Afghan Intelligence told the Afghan Parliament that four Afghan Christians and one family had been arrested and that they were under investigation,” and that “13 NGOs are recognized and suspended,” and that the “names of Afghan Christians are listed and the Afghan Intelligence agency wants to arrest them.” He adds, “Our houses are checked by police and intelligence people in Afghanistan, our families and parents (even though they are Muslim) are under investigation and even arrested, and all Afghan believers are missing”.
For this reason, the Afghan Christian community is calling on every Christian “not to be silent or close his or her eyes whilst thousands of fellow believers are persecuted”.
Afghan Christians are asking their fellow Christians to pray for them, “make their voice heard and get the international community to put pressure on the Afghan government to stop killing, persecuting and executing Afghan Christians,” and give us instead “freedom of religion as well as respect and accept us as Afghan Christians.”
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Appeal-for-Afghan-Christians,-sentenced-to-death-for-their-faith-18680.html
EUROPE
AUSTRIA: LISTEN TO THE CISTERCIAN MONKS CHANTING ON YOUTUBE
SOURCE http://stift-heiligenkreuz.org/Chronik-2009-2008-2007.chronik.0.html
AUSTRALIA
FR. HOLDCROFT APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF REFUGEE SERVICES S. AFRICA
Fr Holdcroft, the former Director of JRS Australia, has served as JRS Country Director in South Africa since August 2009. He will retain responsibility for this role until a replacement is found, reports the Province Express.
"We have operations in DRC, Angola, Malawi and, Zimbabwe as well as South Africa", says Fr Holdcroft.
"The main migration flows affecting us at present are the huge and continuing outflow of around two million people from Zimbabwe to the surrounding countries, the outflow from North Kivu province of DRC where there is ongoing conflict and, with lesser impact in our region, the continuing exodus of Somalians from that part of the world."
He will take up his three-year appointment officially on 20 June.
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=21916
TODAY´S SAINT
St. Vitus
MARTYR
Feast: June 15
Information: Feast Day: June 15
Born: 290, Sicily
Died: 303, Lucania, modern-day Basilicata, Italy
Patron of: actors; comedians; Czechoslovakia; dancers; dogs; epilepsy; Mazara del Vallo, Sicily; Forio, Ischia; oversleeping; Prague, Czech Republic; rheumatic chorea (Saint Vitus Dance); snake bites; storms; Vacha, Germany; Zeven, Lower Saxony
According to this legend Vitus was a boy seven years of age (other versions make him twelve years old), the son of a pagan senator of Lucania. During the era of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximilian, his father sought in every way, including various forms of torture, to make him apostatize. But he remained steadfast, and God aided him in a wonderful manner. He fled with his tutor Modestus in a boat to Lucania. From Lucania he was taken to Rome to drive out a demon which had taken possession of a son of the Emperor Diocletian. This he did, and yet, because he remained steadfast in the Christian Faith, he was tortured together with his tutor Modestus and his nurse Crescentia. By a miracle an angel brought back the martyrs to Lucania, where they died from the tortures they had endured. Three days later Vitus appeared to a distinguished matron namedFlorentia, who then found the bodies and buried them in the spot where they were. It is evident that the author of the legend has connected in his invention three saints who apparently suffered death in Lucania, and were first venerated there. The veneration of the martyrs spread rapidly in Southern Italy and Sicily, as is shown by the note in the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum". Pope Gregory the Great mentions a monastery dedicated to Vitus in Sicily ("Epist.", I, xlviii, P.L., LXXXVII, 511). The veneration of Vitus, the chief saint of the group, also appeared very early at Rome. Pope Gelasius (492-496) mentions a shrine dedicated to him (Jaffé, "Reg. Rom. Pont.", 2nd ed., I, 6 79), and at Rome in the seventh century the chapel of a deaconry was dedicated to him ("Liber Pont.", ed. Duchesne, I, 470 sq.). In the eighth century it is said that relics of St. Vitus were brought to the monastery of St-Denis by Abbot Fulrad. They were later presented to Abbot Warin of Corvey in Germany, who solemnly transferred them to this abbey in 836. From Corvey the veneration of St. Vitus spread throughout Westphalia and in the districts of eastern and northern Germany. St. Vitus is appealed to, above all, against epilepsy, which is called St. Vitus's Dance, and he is one of the Fourteen Martyrs who give aid in times of trouble. He is represented near a kettle of boiling oil, because according to the legend he was thrown into such a kettle, but escaped miraculously. The feast of the three saints was adopted in the historical Martyrologies of the early Middle Ages and is also recorded in the present Roman Martyrology on 15 June.
http://www.ewtn.com/saintsHoly/saints/V/stvitus.asp
St. Germaine Cousin
MYSTIC
Feast: June 15
Information: Feast Day: June 15
Died: 1601, Pibrac, France
Canonized: 29 June 1867 by Pope Pius IX
Patron of: abandoned people; abuse victims; against poverty; bodily ills; child abuse victims; disabled people; girls from rural areas; handicapped people; illness; impoverishment; loss of parents; peasant girls; physically challenged people; poverty; shepherdesses; sick people; sickness; unattractive people; victims of abuse; victims of child abuse; young country girls
Born in 1579 of humble parents at Pibrac, a village about ten miles from Toulouse; died in her native place in 1601. From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease ofscrofula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty. Under pretence of saving the other children from the contagion of scrofula she persuaded the father to keep Germaine away from the homestead, and thus the child was employed almost from infancy as a shepherdess. When she returned at night, her bed was in the stable or on a litter of vine branches in a garret. In this hard school Germaine learned early to practise humility and patience. She was gifted with a marvellous sense of the presence of God and of spiritual things, so that her lonely life became to her a source of light and blessing. To poverty, bodily infirmity, the rigours of the seasons, the lack of affection from those in her own home, she added voluntary mortifications and austerities, making bread and water her daily food. Her love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for His Virgin Mother presaged the saint. She assisted daily at the Holy Sacrifice; when the bell rang, she fixed her sheep-hook or distaff in the ground, and left her flocks to the care of Providence while she heard Mass. Although the pasture was on the border of a forest infested with wolves, no harm ever came to her flocks.
She is said to have practised many austerities as a reparation for the sacrileges perpetrated by heretics in the neighbouring churches. She frequented the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, and it was observed that her piety increased on the approach of every feast of Our Lady. The Rosary was her only book, and her devotion to the Angelus was so great that she used to fall on her knees at the first sound of the bell, even though she heard it when crossing a stream. Whenever she could do so, she assembled the children of the village around her and sought to instil into their minds the love of Jesus and Mary. The villagers were inclined at first to treat her piety with mild derision, until certain signs of God's signal favour made her an object of reverence and awe. In repairing to the village church she had to cross a stream. The ford in winter, after heavy rains or the melting of snow, was at times impassable. On several occasions the swollen waters were seen to open and afford her a passage without wetting her garments.Notwithstanding her poverty she found means to help the poor by sharing with them her allowance of bread. Her father at last came to a sense of his duty, forbade her stepmother henceforth to treat her harshly, and wished to give her a place in the home with the other children, but she begged to be allowed to remain in thehumbler position. At this point, when men were beginning to realize the beauty of her life, God called her to Himself. One morning in the early summer of 1601, her father finding that she had not risen at the usual hour went to call her; he found her dead on her pallet of vine-twigs. She was then twenty-two years of age.
Her remains were buried in the parish church of Pibrac in front of the pulpit. In 1644, when the grave was opened to receive one of her relatives, the body of Germaine was discovered fresh and perfectly preserved, and miraculously raised almost to the level of the floor of the church. It was exposed for public view near the pulpit, until a noble lady, the wife of François de Beauregard, presented as a thanks-offering a casket of lead to hold the remains. She had been cured of a malignant and incurable ulcer in the breast, and her infant son whose life was despaired of was restored to health on her seeking the intercession of Germaine. This was the first of a long series of wonderful cures wrought at her relics. The leaden casket was placed in the sacristy, and in 1661 and 1700 the remains were viewed and found fresh and intact by the vicars-general of Toulouse, who have left testamentary depositions of the fact. Expert medical evidence deposed that the body had not been embalmed, and experimental tests showed that the preservation was not due to any property inherent in the soil. In 1700 a movement was begun to procure the beatification of Germaine, but it fell through owing to accidental causes. In 1793 the casket was desecrated by a revolutionary tinsmith, named Toulza, who with three accomplices took out the remains and buried them in the sacristy, throwing quick-lime and water on them. After the Revolution, her body was found to be still intact save where the quick-lime had done its work.
The private veneration of Germaine had continued from the original finding of the body in 1644, supported and encouraged by numerous cures and miracles. The cause of beatification was resumed in 1850. The documents attested more than 400 miracles or extraordinary graces, and thirty postulatory letters from archbishops and bishops in France besought the beatification from the Holy See. The miracles attested were cures of every kind (of blindness, congenital and resulting from disease, of hip and spinal disease), besides the multiplication of food for the distressed community of the Good Shepherd at Bourges in 1845. On 7 May, 1854, Pius IX proclaimed her beatification, and on 29 June, 1867, placed her on the canon of virgin saints. Her feast is kept in the Diocese of Toulouse on 15 June. She is represented in art with a shepherd's crook or with a distaff; with a watchdog, or a sheep; or with flowers in her apron.
http://www.ewtn.com/saintsHoly/saints/G/stgermainecousin.asp
TODAY´S GOSPEL
Matthew 5: 43 - 48
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43 "You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
47 And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
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