TODAY'S GOSPEL: JUNE. 2: JOHN 16: 16- 20
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RADIO VATICANA REPORT: This weekend Benedict XVI goes on an Apostolic visit to Croatia. Tracey McClure is currently in the nation's capital Zagreb from where she'll be reporting on this two day event.Before leaving Tracey explained what the focus of this trip is : why the pope is going and what some of the highlights on his agenda are .
THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011
AMERICA: MEXICO: KIDNAPPED PRIEST WAS KILLED
Father Salvador Ruiz Enciso had disappeared last weekend from his parish (see Fides 26/5/2011). On Monday, May 23 the police had found in a neighborhood near Tijuana a body with hands and feet tied, unrecognizable. It was thought that it could be the dead body of the priest, so the DNA test was carried out. On Friday, May 27 Archbishop Romo Muñoz confirmed that it was him, and the statement underlined that the "Father Chava, as he was affectionately called, was a simple person and dedicated to his ministry. " In communities where he exercised his priestly ministry "he is remembered with affection and as a man of God, always correct in his behavior. " He had become popular for promoting the "Mass of the family", during which he used some puppets, which he handled with skill, to explain the Gospel in an understandable way to children.
AFRICA: LIBYA: COPTIC CHURCH BOMBED BY NATO
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Tripoli (AsiaNews) - "NATO has intensified bombings and continues to create victims. The missiles are falling everywhere and, unfortunately, not only affect military zones, but also civilian areas. The people in Tripoli are suffering, even if nobody talks about it. " So says MgrGiovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli. The prelate said that the bombing last night damaged several buildings, including a Coptic church located a few hundred meters from a military barracks.
According to the Libyan Government, the NATO operation against Gaddafi has killed more than 700 people and injured over four thousand, but so far officials from the regime do not allow the verification of that information. Monsignor Martinelli explains that the city lacks fuel and the population is afraid to leave home; psychological damage is also caused by the bombings.
The prelate emphasizes the active presence of more than three thousand migrant Filipino Catholics, working in different hospitals in the city and throughout the country. They attend Mass every week in the cathedral despite the bombings. For the prelate, "they represent the heart of the local Catholic community and are a testimony of love and service to the Libyan people who suffer."
Meanwhile, NATO today announced the extension of the mission to Libya by an additional 90 days."This decision is a clear message to the regime of Gaddafi," said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO. Underlining the humanitarian nature of the mission, the Secretary General appealed to all the Libyan people: "We remain united and we guarantee that the day when you can shape your future is coming."
On 30 May, Professor Angelo Del Boca spoke to AsiaNews about the unusual duration of this war.According to the historian, "the high cost of the operation against Gaddafi has transformed a lightening conflict into a war of nonsense by the media. What NATO hoped to achieve with the No Fly Zone has now been dissolved."
ASIA: VIETNAM: MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY INCREASE IN NUMBERS
An indigenous women’s congregation based in Nghe An province is rapidly increasing in numbers and is expanding its mission work in many dioceses.
At a recent ceremony at Quy Chinh Church near the northern city of Vinh, 17 Missionaries of Charity nuns made their final vows while 30 others made their temporal vows.
Bishop Paul Nguyen Thai Hop of Vinh presided at the ceremony attended by 70 priests, 300 Religious and 2,000 Catholics.
“Despite working quietly and humbly over the past 31 years, the congregation is growing fast and has established 54 communities throughout the country,” Bishop Hop said.
He urged the nuns to establish new communities and serve people with physical disabilities, the poor and abandoned children in four Nghe An provincial districts where no Religious work has been carried out since 1954.
Father Joseph Nguyen Dang Dien said he founded the congregation on May 31, 1980 with only five nuns. Now the Missionaries of Charity congregation has 317 nuns and 300 postulants.
“We receive all girls who want to lead a consecrated life and serve poor people,” Father Dien said. Members come from poor families and are illiterate and in poor health. Some were turned away from other local congregations.
The congregation creates opportunities for nuns who are illiterate to study from elementary through high school level and study catechism, theology, Church history, morality, music and English.
There are currently 20 nuns studying at college and three others studying in Italy and the U.S.
Sister Teresa Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, 35, who took her final vows on May 31, said she entered the congregation when she was 18 years old and a second grader.
She finished her studies at college and heads a three-member community making clothes and looking after 50 orphans in Ho Chi Minh City.
Missionaries of Charity nuns serve orphans, elderly people without relatives, lepers, psychiatric patients and unwed pregnant women in 11 dioceses.
http://www.ucanews.com/2011/06/02/womens-congregation-growing-rapidly/
EUROPE: IRELAND: NEW VOCATION PROGRAM- EXPLORE AWAY
exploreAway will bring a group of ten men and women together over five residential weekends, between September 2011 and April 2012, to discuss, share and explore with each other questions and answers about religious life.
Though the programme is a pilot and therefore taking place for the very first time, a number of men and women have already indicated their interest in participating. Come September, there may even be a waiting list!
The first port of call for those who want to know more should be the programme’s newly launched dedicated website - www.exploreaway.net Here, browsers will find advice outlining what programme participants can expect when they meet at the Sisters of Divine Masters’ retreat centre in Stillorgan, Co Dublin.
According to the other programme co-ordinator, Sr Gabrielle Farrell, OLA, it is “not about pushing vocations in the traditional sense but promoting vocations”. The missionary, who has served in Nigeria and Argentina, underlines that “everyone has a vocation” and that a religious vocation is “one choice in many”. It is “a way of life that we believe in.” She adds, “We’re here to give anyone who feels a religious vocation could be for them a hand in discerning that”.
Sr Gabrielle explains that the exploreAway weekends also provide participants with information on vocation, prayer, religious life, its core values and the various ways it is lived. There will also be inputs from contributors with expertise in this field as well as spiritual directors to accompany participants over the duration of the programme.
“At the heart of exploreAway is an invitation to single Catholic men and women to embark on an inner journey to see where God is leading them and to share with others who have similar questions?”, according to Sr Gabrielle.
“It is really about finding where God is calling us with our gifts and talents,” Br Ronan explains. “People continue to struggle to discover what it is they wish to do with their lives. Many are interested in commitment to ‘the God of all things’. exploreAway is an opportunity to explore this in a safe, neutral environment without having to make an immediate commitment to a specific order or congregation.”
Br Ronan and Sr Gabrielle’s advice to those curious about or mulling a vocation is: “If you are thinking about it – do something about it!”
exploreAway is a programme under the auspices of Vocations Ireland - an association of the vocation directors of religious orders, congregations and missionary societies in Ireland. For more information see: www.vocationsireland.com
AUSTRALIA: DOMUS RECEIVES FIRST PILGRIMS IN JULY
Image from www.domusaustralia.org
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CATH NEWS REPORT: The new Australian pilgrim centre in Rome, Domus Australia, has begun taking bookings for July onwards, reports the Catholic News Agency.
"The second purpose is to strengthen the links between the city of Rome - which is the home of the Pope, home of the Successor of Peter - and Australia, which is nearly as far away as you can be," Cardinal Pell told CNA.Sydney's Cardinal George Pell described the newly renovated pilgrim centre as "a house, a community of religious inspiration", the report said.
"The thinking was to create in a very old tradition of pilgrim centres in Rome," the rector of the Domus Australia, Father Anthony Denton, told the news agency.
"That means that Australians can come here and have some sort of orientation when they visit Rome rather than just get stuck on the number 64 bus, getting robbed. They can actually come here and get information and have a nice place to stay."
The centre is situated only five minutes walk from the city's main Termini train station. It's a former Marist Brother's house of studies built in the 19th century. Three years ago, though, it was acquired by the Catholic Church in Australia. It's since been heavily renovated and restored.
TODAY'S SAINTS: ST. MARCELLINUS AND ST. PETER
Sts. Marcellinus & Peter
MARTYRS
Feast: June 2
Marcellinus was a priest, and Peter an exorcist, both of the clergy of Rome, and eminent for their zeal and piety. In the persecution of Dioclesian, about the year 304, they were condemned to die for their faith: and by a secret order of the judge, the executioner led them into a forest, that the holy men being executed privately, no Christians might be acquainted with the place of their sepulchre. When he had brought them into a thicket overgrown with thorns and briers, three; miles from Rome, he declared to them his sanguinary commission. The saints cheerfully fell to work themselves, grubbed up the brambles, and cleared a spot fit for their sepulchre. After they were beheaded, their bodies were buried in the same place. Some time after, Lucilla, a pious lady, being informed by revelation, and assisted by another devout lady named Firmina, took up their bodies and honorably interred them near that of St. Tiburtius on the Lavican road in the Catacombs. Pope Damasus assures us, that, when a child, he learned all these particulars from the mouth of the executioner himself, and he has inserted them in a Latin epitaph with which he adorned their tomb. Anastasius the librarian testifies from ancient registers, that Constantine the Great built here a church in honor of these martyrs, in which he caused his mother St. Helena to be buried under a porphyry tomb, on the Lavican road, three miles from Rome, and that he gave to this church a paten, weighing thirty-five pounds, of pure gold, with many other rich presents; which is also mentioned by Bede, Ado, and Sigebert. The porphyry mausoleum of St. Helena is still shown among other antiquities near the Lateran basilica. Honorius I. and Adrian I. repaired this church and cemetery of St. Tiburtius, and SS. Marcellinus and Peter, as Anastasius mentions. Not long after, the bodies of SS. Marcellinus and Peter were translated into Germany on the following occasion. Eginhard, a German, the favorite secretary of Charlemagne, and his wife Emma, by mutual consent, made a vow of perpetual continency; and becoming a monk, was chosen abbot of Fontenelle, and, in 819, abbot of Ghent. Emma died in 836, to his great affliction, as appears from the letters of Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, to him. This great man, in 827, sent his secretary to Rome, to procure from pope Gregory IV. some relies of martyrs to enrich the monasteries which he had founded or repaired. The pope sent him the bodies of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, which Eginhard translated to Strasburg. But soon after he deposited them first at Michlenstad; and afterwards at Malinheim, since called Selgenstad, three leagues from Frankfort, and two from Achaffenburg; where, in 829, he built to their honor a church and monastery, of which he died the first abbot. Besides the life of Charlemagne, and the annals of France, during the reigns of Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis Debonnaire, he wrote four books in prose, and one in verse, on the translation of SS. Marcellinus and Peter. This translation is also mentioned by Sigebert, Aymoinus, Rabanus Maurus, &c. Pope Gregory the Great preached his twenty homilies on the gospels in the church of SS. Marcellinus and Peter at Rome; as appears from some of them, and from the testimony of John the Deacon.4 See their acts and the history of their translation in Papebroke, t. 1, Junij, p. 170, and Laderchius, Diss. de Basilicis, SS. Marcellini and Petri; Romae, 1705 |
SOURCE: http://www.ewtn.com/saintsHoly/saints/M/stmarcellinus_peter.asp#ixzz1OBJtq7id
TODAY'S GOSPEL: JUNE. 2: JOHN 16: 16- 20
16"A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me."17Some of his disciples said to one another, "What is this that he says to us, `A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me'; and, `because I go to the Father'?"18They said, "What does he mean by `a little while'? We do not know what he means."19Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him; so he said to them, "Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, `A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me'?20Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
