Stigmata in Sonada.mp4

Large crowds watch Stations of the Cross

The last day of the life of Jesus Christ has been re-enacted in front of large crowds in central Sydney as part of World Youth Day.
About 80 performers took part in the re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross.
Billions of people from around the world were expected to tune into to watch the performance, and thousands of pilgrims lined Sydney's streets to see each station.
The first station was at St Mary's Cathedral, where actors performed the Last Supper, and Pope Benedict said a prayer.
"Make us generous and insightful as we try to walk in your footsteps," he said.
The ritual continued at the Opera House, where the actor playing Jesus, 27-year-old Alfio Stuto, received the crown of thorns, before carrying the cross underneath the Harbour Bridge.
Finally, on the edge of the harbour at Barangaroo, he was raised onto the cross and the Bible's description of the moment was read aloud.
"And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit," the reader said.
The performance ended when the body of Jesus was brought down from the Cross and carried through the crowd.
The Stations of the Cross dates back to the early days of the Christian Church, when pilgrims visited Jerusalem to carry out a similar ritual.
Pope Benedict is expected to meet with a group of disadvantaged youths later this evening. (ABC news)

Sharp words from another Jeremiah

By John F. Kavanaugh

B y now, Senator Barack Obama’s talk, “A More Perfect Union,” delivered at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center on March 18, has been analyzed to death. For my part, I thought it a politically astute and important speech that merits reading by everyone, even though it will not save Obama’s candidacy. We have become such a soundbite, libelous culture, using snippets of information to attack our political enemies, stoking latent fears and assaulting by innuendo, that the likelihood of the senator’s nomination and election seems slimmer every day.
I have been preoccupied with the preacher whose words necessitated Obama’s speech. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the senator’s pastor for 20 years, has been known as a religious leader in Chicago and nationwide for the last two decades, but a recent spate of video snippets has now made him infamous. I have not been able to track down the full text of the sermons that dealt with AIDS or “The United States of White America.” (If he says that AIDS was targeted against blacks by the U.S. government, he has quite foolishly and incorrectly formed his judgment from street talk and unsupported conspiracy theories. If he calls our country “White America,” I would like to know the context and his point.)
I do know the context of the “chickens come home to roost” video that the networks, especially Fox News, have played hundreds of times. It is a sermon that I have read in its entirety. You should too.
I started rereading the biblical Book of Jeremiah within days of Wright’s talk, maybe because they shared the name. I love the books of the prophets, splendid testimonies that Judaism in its holy Scripture is unafraid to list God’s indictments against itself. Christians, I suspect, have not been as courageous. We tend to look at the indictments uttered by Jesus as directed against the lords and rulers of his time. But if we were willing to look at Scripture as a living word, we would see that what he said applies to us here and now. And believe me, we would resist much of what he says.
Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet and a rejected one. He spoke truth to power, as they say, not only to his own nation but also to his own religious community. “Your own apostasies are rebuking you” (2:19). Isn’t this a bit like chickens coming home to roost? He called his own people a “degenerate plant and bastard vine,” an adulterer and a whore (2:21, 3:9). He did not exactly damn them, but he promised “disaster from the north, an immense calamity” (4:6), “an end of it once and for all” (4:37). In Chapters 5 and 6, the invasion by enemies was justified. Death will seem preferable to this wicked people (Ch. 8). A country and religion that lies, that is corrupt and incapable of repentance, is fated to become a heap of ruins and an uninhabited wasteland (9:4-11).
I could go on, even through the four “dooms” (what might that word mean?) and disaster of Chapter 15, and especially the “doom” for those who have great possessions but no integrity in Chapter 22.All this, of course, does not apply to us, our nation, our church. But be wary, friends. The greatest indictment against Israel was their claim that they were successful and sinless.
If some blacks think the only terrible sinners in their midst are the white or powerful, they are just plain delusional. If some whites think America is sinless in its impact on the world and its treatment of its poor, they too are delusional.
The problem with much preaching in Christian churches is that we apply the prophetic indignation easily to our enemies, but rarely to ourselves, our church, our nation. But if we think Jeremiah and Jesus are not addressing us, we have nothing to learn from either—at our peril.
Was the Reverend Wright speaking in this tradition when he gave his infamous talk after the evils of 9/11? I think so. His sermon was a commentary on revenge and the violence that returns to those who do violence, especially against the innocent. Wright recounted our national history of killing children, from the Sioux to the Japanese. All just causes, one might sincerely think. But all horrific. And this is where the preacher talked about the “chickens coming home to roost.” As Wright continued, he pointed out that violence and hatred beget violence and hatred.
And then the preacher turned to something that possibly no one is aware of from the YouTube clips. Having been in New Jersey on that September day of “unthinkable acts,” Jeremiah Wright was drawn to examine his own relationship to God, his lack of prayer, his honesty. “Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show?”
The full story has been willfully ignored by commentators. “I deny that he is a Christian,” Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC. His is a “crackpot church,” a pundit on Fox News pontificated. Well.
Jeremiah Wright is not another Jeremiah the prophet, nor is he another Jesus. But we should remember this: Jesus himself, if we bother to read the Gospel from the Saturday before Palm Sunday, was condemned as a threat to his nation and religion because of the words he spoke. For this he was executed.
If we cast out from our midst any criticism of our way of life, any indictment of our cherished ideologies, we may be casting out not only the prophets, but also the Savior.

John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., is a professor of philosophy at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Mo. (America Magazine)

The Meeting With Abuse Victims

By Father James Martin
I had a prayer answered today.
Since 2002, in my prayers, meditations and discussions about the sex abuse crisis, I’ve often returned to thoughts about the healing power of ritual. Besides the necessary concrete remedies (making financial restitution to the victims, removing and disciplining abusive priests and the bishops who moved around those priests, and setting up guidelines for safer environments for children, for example), I’ve often wondered if symbolic gestures could help encourage the process of healing victims and their families.
Perhaps I am naïve, but I’ve always imagined three actions, undertaken by ministers of the church, which might help to bind up the wounds of those who have been harmed by ministers of the church.
The first would be this: bishops responsible for moving around abusive priests would wash the feet of a group of victims during the Mass at Holy Thursday, the traditional time when priests wash the feet of parishioners, in direct imitation of Jesus at the Last Supper. The second symbolic gesture would be for a bishop to prostrate himself, at the foot of the altar of his cathedral, and publicly ask his diocese for forgiveness.
Of course, without concrete steps (as described above), these rituals would be largely meaningless. But if accompanied by those steps, such gestures might possibly serve as powerful symbols of penitence, by physically embodying the intent of the church.
There is another symbolic gesture that I’ve always dreamed about: the pope himself might come to this country and meet with victims — from Boston, if possible.
That happened this afternoon, meeting with victims of clergy sexual abuse when Pope Benedict XVI met privately with “five or six victims.” “They prayed together,” said Federico Lombardi, S.J., the official Vatican spokesman. “Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father,” Lombardi said. “Some were in tears.” The encounter took place in the chapel of the office of the Vatican ambassador to the United States, in Washington, shortly after the Papal Mass at Nationals Stadium.
At the meeting, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, ground zero of the clergy abuse crisis, presented the pope with a notebook containing the names of abuse victims. There were over 1,000 names.
I don’t want to overstate anything, or paint this encounter as a panacea. The sex abuse crisis is not over. Many people are still suffering, many parishes are still damaged, and much trust in the church is still lost. It takes more than a single meeting to heal a lifetime of pain. And it was a brief meeting.
But I do want to state something clearly: Pope Benedict XVI has done what many people, including me, have long prayed for. It is not the end of the crisis. It is not the cure for the crisis. But it is a profound symbol, and in the Catholic tradition a symbol is not “just a symbol.” It is something that points to a reality greater than itself, and in pointing to that reality helps to make it real.
I pray that today’s extraordinary meeting might indeed point to something greater for the victims and their families, as well as for the entire church: true and lasting healing, reconciliation and peace.

After Mass, Pope Meets Privately With Abuse Victims

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI came face to face with a scandal that has left lasting wounds on the American church Thursday, holding a surprise meeting with several victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston area.

The handful of victims, now adults, gave the pope a notebook listing some 1,000 boys and girls who were abused in the Boston archdiocese alone going back several decades, a Vatican official said.
The pope himself had requested the meeting, said the official, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, which took place at the papal nuncio’s residence. The pope prayed and spoke personally with each of them, in a meeting that lasted about 25 minutes. Some wept, Father Lombardi said.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” the pope said in his homily. “It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.”

Read More http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/us/nationalspecial2/17cnd-pope.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The Church’s Shame, and the Priesthood

By Father James Martin
“I am deeply ashamed,” Pope Benedict XVI said this morning, briefly addressing the sexual abuse crisis in the United States. “We will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future.”
The pope was expressing the same sentiment of every priest I know, not to mention every sister, brother and layperson. American Catholics are ashamed of the crimes of some of their priests — and the actions of too many of their bishops. The reports that began in The Boston Globe in January of 2002 were shaming for the priesthood in particular.
Yet men are still entering seminaries. Why?
Over the last few days I’ve received at least a dozen calls from reporters trying to make sense of that question, and to grasp the parlous state of priestly vocations. In 2007, according to the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate, 3,238 parishes (out of a total of 18,624) went without a “resident priest pastor.” That means over 3,000 “priestless” parishes. Overall, the number of priests stood at 41,449 in 2007, down from 58,632 in 1965. And the number of graduate-level seminarians is down from 8,325 in 1965 to 3,274 last year.
Why would anyone want to be a priest after the abuse crisis? Who would want to join an organization like the Catholic Church, much less represent it publicly? How could someone still hear the “call”? What will the church do without priests? A few observations:
First off, the call has little to do with hearing voices. As long as I’ve been a Jesuit (20 years) and a priest (9 years) I’ve never met anyone who decided to seek ordination because he heard a voice. Or saw a vision. Or seen anything, for that matter.
Second, the call comes from a simple attraction or desire, like any vocation. It’s not all that different from vocations in the life of the layperson. Two people may discover their vocation to the married life by being attracted to one another. A doctor may decide to become a doctor because he finds that life appealing. So in the life of a young man drawn to the priesthood
At the most basic level a “call” manifests itself as a simple attraction. In these ways God, I believe, “calls” people to fulfill their vocations. Those attractions are still operative in the lives of men who see that the vast majority of priests are living healthy and productive lives. Believe me, seminarians, as well as men in religious orders preparing for ordination, are fully aware, and “deeply ashamed” of the clergy abuse scandals. But they are also aware of the great satisfaction that the vast majority of priests report in their working lives.
Third, I’m not as crestfallen as some about “declining vocations.” Sure, I want the Mass to be celebrated in as many places as possible, and for that we need many more priests. (Currently that’s restricted to celibate unmarried men.) But declining seminary rosters may also mean more opportunities for the laity to exercise their roles in leadership, something that the Second Vatican Council championed.
Fourth, there’s not much evidence that the sexual abuse crisis has affected priestly vocations. The number of seminarians is declining, but that decline does not seem to have accelerated much since 2002. Perhaps that will change. But for now God is still “calling” men to seminary life, even after the devastating and deeply shaming sexual abuse crisis. And God will presumably continue to do so, for reasons that are as personal and unique as the men who answer that call.

Benedict Addresses the Bishops on Abuse

“Sometimes very badly handled,” said Pope Benedict XVI to his bishops, referring to the handling of the sexual abuse crisis in this country. In tonight’s landmark speech to the U.S. bishops, following a vespers service at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Benedict offered a lengthy analysis of the clergy abuse crisis that has devastated the Catholic Church. The abuse has caused “deep shame.” Bishops must “attach priority by showing compassion and care to the victims…those so seriously wronged.”
Even veteran Vaticanologists were surprised that Benedict chose to address the problem at such length, and in a public setting — before the assembled bishops and cardinals, and before the television cameras. In essence, before the world. His earlier comments, en route from Rome, indicated that he would address the issue, but few thought he would tackle the question so directly. Or so soon. Or so publicly.
Remember that the pope could easily have chosen two other options: speaking with the bishops privately about the matter, or not at all.
But was it enough?
To answer that question adequately you will have to ask a victim of clergy abuse, or a family member, and many of them will weigh in with their reactions to the pope’s words.
For me, however, his words were a sign that the pope is intent on tackling the subject head on, reminding the bishops not only of the “scale and gravity” of the problem but also of their responsibility to “bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust,” that is, the wounds caused by abusive priests and the bishops who moved them from parish to parish.
Some of Benedict’s message may be vitiated, for some, by his placement of the abuse crisis in a “wider context” of a permissive society. (That is, some may interpret the pope as saying that the abuse was largely the result of a morally lax and sexually permissive society, when most Catholics believe it was more a result of shocking negligence on the part of some bishops.) Some might also believe that tonight’s talk should have focused more on the victims, rather than on the innocent priests (that is, the majority, who were not abusers), who were compared to Christ suffering through his Passion. Whatever innocent priests have suffered pales in comparison to what victims and their families have undergone.
But the pope’s address was notable as much for what it did not say, as for what it said. Think about what he did not say, in contrast to what some officials have said in the past.
He did not blame it on the media, as some have. He did not blame it on homosexuality, as some have. (Earlier, on the plane from Rome he explicitly, and rightly, distinguished between homosexuality and pedophilia.) He did not speak largely in somewhat abstract theological terms, as Pope John Paul II did, who called the crisis a reflection of the mysterium iniquitatis, the mystery of evil. (To be fair, John Paul, who was aged and severely ailing during the crisis, gathered together the American cardinals and spoke out forcefully against keeping abusive priests in ministry.) Finally, Benedict did not simply advert to the crisis in vague terms or speak about the crimes obliquely, but called it by its rightful name: the source of the church’s shame was the “sexual abuse of minors.” In the Gospels, when Jesus exorcised a demon named “Legion,” one of the first things he did was to name the demon. (Father James Martin)

Crowd throngs first papal mass in Washington

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Tens of thousands flocked Thursday for the first Mass by Pope Benedict XVI on his US visit, hours after he chided Americans for a moral breakdown which he said fueled the church's child sex abuse scandal.
Gates opened at Washington's new sports stadium before dawn to allow an expected 48,000 people to trickle through stringent security measures and attend an open-air mass at 10:00 am (1400 GMT).
The pontiff received a rapturous White House welcome Wednesday and met privately with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, before addressing the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the US church in a speech to US Catholic bishops.
In a speech delivered after evening prayer inside the largest Roman Catholic church in North America, the pontiff berated the bishops for their poor handling of a scandal surrounding sexual abuse of children in the church.
But he urged efforts "to address the sin of abuse within the wider context of sexual mores" as well as a reassessment of "the values underpinning society."
"What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" the pontiff said on the first full day of his US visit.
"Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today."
Describing clerics who sexually abuse children as "gravely immoral," the octogenarian pope warned that the scourge of pedophilia "is found not only in your dioceses but in every sector of society."
"It calls for a determined, collective response," he said, but did not outline any firm action that the Vatican intended to take to purge the church of pedophile priests.
The US Catholic church plunged into its worst crisis in 200 years in 2002 when the archbishop of Boston confessed he had protected a priest who had sexually abused young members of his church -- opening a floodgate of thousands of similar abuse cases around the country dating back decades.
Benedict angered victim support groups by praising the bishops' efforts to heal the wounds from the scandal.
"Five years ago, US bishops begrudgingly adopted some minimal promises on paper. There's no evidence to suggest they've had any real impact," Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told AFP.
"The pope continues to stand behind his men -- the bishops who conceal clergy sex crimes," said another SNAP member, Joelle Casteix.
"What the pope should be doing is assuring Catholics worldwide that any bishop who shields a predator will lose his job and the priests will be swiftly defrocked," she said.
SNAP planned to protest Thursday by handing out pamphlets as mass-goers leave metro train stations.
They will be asked to "demand action, not just words and gestures, from top church officials (especially concrete steps that will reduce child molestation and cover ups in the future)," the group said in a statement.
Earlier Wednesday, on the first papal visit to the White House in three decades, the Roman Catholic pontiff urged Bush to prefer diplomacy to war as a way of resolving conflicts.
But aside from mentioning the plight of Iraqi Christians, he skirted mention of the Iraq war, on which the Bush administration and Vatican do not see eye to eye.
Benedict and Bush expressed concern for Christians in war-torn Iraq, agreed on the need to create a Palestinian state, and said Lebanon must be free of undue foreign influence, according to a joint statement.
The pope urged the United States to treat immigrants humanely, and called on Americans to spurn materialism and shun secularism.
On the second day of his US trip -- his 81st birthday -- the pope drew raves more befitting a rock star than the head of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.
Under a cloudless sky, Bush welcomed Benedict with a 21-gun salute, a famed soprano singing a soaring "Lord's Prayer," and an earnest "peace be with you."
Some 13,500 people packed the mansion's South Lawn waving little Vatican and US flags, as cries of "viva il Papa!" (long live the pope) mingled with the two national anthems and two choruses of "happy birthday" for the pontiff.
Thursday, after saying mass at Nationals' Stadium, Benedict plans to meet with Jewish representatives after an inter-faith gathering at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington.
That, and a planned stop at a New York synagogue, appear aimed at quelling Jewish unhappiness over the revival for the Latin Rite mass of the 16th century "Prayer for Jews" in which Catholics pray for the conversion of Jews.