Ensure Spiritual Growth Of Masses – Agbaje Tells Catholics

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Staff Reporter

Former governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Mr. Jimi Agbaje, has urged members of the Catholic Church to nurture the spiritual growth of Nigerians so that they can be closer to God.

Agbaje made the call at the tree planting exercise of St. Raphael Catholic Church, Anthony Village, Lagos yesterday.

According to him: “Planting a seed is also a spiritual exercise. A seed that you plant can also touch lives. Catholics are guilty of something, we don’t plant seed, and maybe we feel we don’t want to evangelise, or we don’t need to preach the message.”

Delivering a keynote address, Dr. Newton Jibunoh, said there is the need to replenish the earth as man’s activities have reduced the number of trees, which is a major factor in climate change.

Meanwhile, the former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, has called for genuine spirituality among Nigerians as exemplified by Mother Theresa.

Obi stated this yesterday at the Vatican City after the canonisation of Mother Theresa.

He said the life of St. Theresa of Calcutta was an illumination of service to God through service to the people.

Thousands Attend Slain Priest’s Funeral

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Staff Reporter

Thousands have attended the funeral in Rouen cathedral in Normandy of French priest Father Jacques Hamel, who was murdered in his church by Islamist extremists last week.

A public ceremony was led by the city’s archbishop, after which Father Hamel was to be interred in a private burial.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and senior Roman Catholic clerics attended the service.

Father Hamel had his throat cut when two men stormed his church during Mass days ago. May his soul rest in peace.

SHOCKING!! [Video] Pope Francis Falls Over During Mass In Front Of Worshippers

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Staff Reporter

This is the moment Pope Francis fell over during Mass in front of a television audience of millions while visiting Poland’s holiest site.

The 79-year-old Pontiff stumbled at the altar and had to be helped to his feet as he celebrated a Mass at the at the Jasna Gora Monastery in the southern city of Czestochowa.

He was at the monastery, home to an ancient Catholic icon believed to work miracles, ahead of a trip by tram to meet young pilgrims from the world over.

Pictures captured the moment Pope Francis fell over during Mass in front of a television audience of millions while visiting Poland’s holiest site

The 79-year-old pontiff stumbled at the altar and had to be helped to his feet as he celebrated a mass in the souther city of Czestochowa

Pictures show him tumbling to the floor next to steps leading to the altar and being helped to his feet by Vatican Master of Ceremonies, Guido Marini.

Francis suffers from sciatica, a medical condition in which pain sometimes shoots down the leg from the lower back. He was uninjured and finished the Mass in front of a television audience of millions.

The Pontiff, in Krakow to headline an international Catholic youth extravaganza, travelled to the southern city to pray before the legendary Black Madonna and say mass.

Security was tight at the hill-top shrine following a series of attacks in Europe, with a highly visible police and army presence on the roads leading into the city, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were gathered.

Francis hopped in an open-topped pope mobile for a tour through the cheering crowds.

‘We slept so little, but it’s worth it, what an atmosphere!’ said pilgrim Kate Tor, whose young sons were among the thousands of children who had camped out on the sweeping avenue leading to the monastery.

Teenagers still wrapped in sleeping bags, elderly couples perched on folding chairs outside tents and families with Francis-themed balloons were serenaded by the Argentine pope’s favourite tango music before his arrival.

Pictures show him tumbling to the floor next to steps leading to the altar and being helped to his feet by Vatican Master of Ceremonies, Guido Marini

The pontiff, in Krakow to headline an international Catholic youth extravaganza, travelled to the southern city to pray before the legendary Black Madonna and say mass

Ambulances and fire-engines were on standby with Polish officials taking no chances with security following the jihadist murder of a priest in a French church on the eve of the five-day trip to celebrate the 2016 World Youth Day.

Arriving on Wednesday, the Argentine said the world was at war but argued that religion was not the cause, insisting the way for people to ‘overcome fear’ was to provide asylum to those fleeing war and persecution.

He was set to lead a mass to mark the 1050th anniversary of Poland’s Catholic faith at the monastery.

The Black Madonna has been venerated since 1711, when the bubonic plague decimated Warsaw’s population but stopped dead when it reached the Jasna Gora monastery in the south of the country.

Since then the figure, which legend has it was painted by Saint Luke the apostle, has been hailed as miraculous.

The Pope was helped to his feet and was uninjured despite the tumble. He went on the finish Mass, which was aired to millions on television

Francis fell onto his back on to the carpeted floor and had to be quickly helped to his feet by those around him this morning

Two scars on the Madonna’s face were reportedly inflicted during an attempted robbery in 1430, with the petrified thieves turning tail and fleeing when blood poured from the torn painting.

Francis will return to Krakow after the mass, where he will be presented with the keys to the city by the mayor, before jumping on to a tram which will whisk him to the sprawling Blonia meadow for his first big WYD event.

Some 15 disabled youngsters and their families will take the tram with the pontiff to the welcome ceremony, where hundreds of thousands of people will have spent the day being entertained by singers and dancers.

The pontiff had called for a minute’s silence Wednesday evening for a Polish volunteer, Maciej Szymon Cieslam, who was to have travelled with him on the tram, but had died at the start of the month after a battle with cancer.

At his first evening appearance at the window of the archbishop’s palace in Krakow, he told the thousands of youngsters gathered below that Ciesla was getting ready to party with them at the WYD in spirit.

‘Now go and do your duty, make noise all night long!’ he finished with a grin.

Watch video below:

Source – dailymail.co.uk

Pope Francis Approves Sainthood For Mother Teresa

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Staff Reporter

Pope Francis today approved sainthood for Mother Teresa, the missionary nun who became a global if controversial symbol of compassion for her care of the sick and destitute.

The pontiff set September 4 as the date for her canonisation, elevating her to an official icon for the Catholic faith.

The move comes 19 years after the death of the Albanian nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata, India.

There was no immediate word from the Vatican on the location of the canonisation ceremony, which is expected to take place in Rome with a thanksgiving ceremony held at a later date in the Indian city where Teresa is buried.

Teresa, who was 87 when she died in 1997, was revered by Catholics and and many others around the world. She won the 1979 Nobel peace prize for her work with the poor.

But she was also a controversial and divisive figure with critics branding her a religious imperialist whose fervent opposition to birth control and abortion ran contrary to the interests of the communities she claimed to serve.

Despite posthumously published letters revealing that she suffered crises of faith throughout her life, Teresa has been fast-tracked to canonisation in unusually quick time, underlining her status as a modern-day icon of Catholicism.

Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a critically-ill Bengali tribal woman.

Last year she was credited by Vatican experts with inspiring the 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours, thus meeting the Church’s standard requirement for sainthood of having been involved in two certifiable miracles.

Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia.

She started her life as a nun as a teenager with a missionary order in Ireland and arrived in India in 1929.

After more than two decades of missionary and charity work, she founded her own Missionaries of Charity order in 1950. She was granted Indian citizenship a year later.

Francis, who regards Teresa as the incarnation of the kind of Church he wants to lead, met the by-then internationally famous nun three years before her death, when he was still a bishop in Argentina.

He later joked that she had seemed so formidable he “would have been scared if she had been my mother superior”.

Others were much harsher in their judgement, with the likes of Australian-born feminist writer Germaine Greer and British polemicist Christopher Hitchens accusing her of contributing to the misery of the poor with what they saw as her dogmatic views.

In her Nobel acceptance speech Teresa described terminations of pregnancies as “direct murder by the mother herself”.

Critics also raised questions about the Missionaries of Charity’s finances and conditions in the order’s hospices.

The late Italian film director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini was among those who fell under her spell, in his case when he met her during a trip to India in the early 1960s.

“She has an almost virile jaw and a gentle eye that in its gaze ‘sees’, he wrote, describing Teresa as a a combination of “goodness without sentimentality, someone with no expectations who is both calm and calming, powerfully practical.”

India granted her a state funeral after her death and her grave in the order’s headquarters has since become a pilgrimage site.

AFP

Hollywood Actress Alleges That Pope Francis Will Be Assassinated This Week

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Staff Reporter

Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon has alleged that Pope Francis will be assassinated this week during his upcoming visit to the U.S. if the security operative do not act fast to avert the murder.

The head of the Catholic Church is set to make his first official trip to the country later this week, starting his tour in Washington, D.C. before heading to New York and Philadelphia.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has already promised to step up security in the Big Apple to make sure the pontiff is kept safe during his visit, but Sarandon fears the Pope may still come to harm.

She tells the New York Daily News, “I think they’re going to assassinate him. I think he’s done some
major, major cleansing of the whole system … I love this pope. He’s humble … He doesn’t live in the palatial whatever. I think he’s a pope of the people.”

De Blasio previously said of the security arrangements for Pope Francis’ visit, “[There is] a great partnership between the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI. We’re ready. We have the personnel, we have the equipment, we have the planning.”

Pope Francis Makes Divorce Easier For Catholics

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Staff Reporter

Pope Francis announced new procedures on Tuesday to make it easier for Roman Catholics to obtain marriage annulments, a change intended to streamline a process long criticized by many Catholics as too cumbersome, complicated and expensive, The New York Times reports.

Under the new rules, the process will be much faster for cases in which a couple is not contesting the annulment.

Such cases had required two separate judgments from a diocesan tribunal. Now, the process, overseen by local bishops, will require only one judgment. Moreover, the new rules require that the hearing process be held within 30 days of application, eliminating a longer waiting period.

Francis is also instructing Catholic bishops to be more welcoming to divorced or separated Catholics “who have abandoned the church.” Local dioceses will be asked to establish commissions to reach

out to couples seeking annulments.

Francis outlined the new rules in two papal letters, known in Latin as Motu Proprio, or personal administrative decrees. In speeding up the annulment process, Francis is trying to make the church more merciful and responsive to the needs of Catholics, yet he does not want to appear to be encouraging divorce.

Francis wrote that his new rules “do not favor the nullity of marriages, but the expedition of trials, as well as a just simplification.”

The Catholic Church is a misogynist tribe that officially defines women as inferior. This new supposedly forward-thinking chieftain has no…

Divorce is a topic that has long splintered many of the Catholic faithful from the church. Under church law, marriage is indissoluble, and divorce is not recognized. Yet many Catholics are divorced, especially in the Western world, and the divide between reality on the ground and church dogma has alienated many.

Many Catholics had been watching closely to see how Francis would address the issue of annulments as part of a broader debate about whether the church should allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments such as communion.

The church has long offered an annulment process in which a marriage can be declared invalid if the husband or wife can prove the union failed to meet certain requirements. In August 2014, Francis appointed a commission to study the best way to overhaul the annulment process.

The new rules allow local bishops to establish tribunals to hear annulment cases. The tribunals should consist of three members, ideally clerics, although the rules allow a bishop to appoint up to two lay members of the diocese to a tribunal.

We Maintain Our Stand On Homosexuality, It Is Wrong – Catholic Archbishop

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Staff Reporter

The Catholic Archbishop of Abuja Diocese, Cardinal John Onaiyekan today said the position of the Catholic Church in Nigeria against homosexuality remains the same. Onaiyekan made this statement to journalists in Makurdi during his official visit to the Diocese of Makurdi today.

“Unfortunately, we are living in a world where these things have now become quite acceptable but for the fact that they are acceptable doesn’t mean that they are right. The Catholic Church considers itself as carrying the banner of the truth in the World that has allowed itself to be so badly deceived.

“Even if people don’t like us for it, our church has always said homosexuality is unnatural and marriage is between a man and a woman. There is no such thing as marriage between two men or marriage between two women, whatever they do among themselves should not be called marriage. There is no question of the Catholic Church changing its positions on this matter,” he said.

Gigantic Statue Of Satan Erected Amid Protests (PHOTOS)

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Staff Reporter

Hundreds of people attended Mass at a Detroit Catholic Church in protest of an 8.5-foot bronze statue of goat-headed Satan that hundreds came to see. A group called the Satanic Temple unveiled the Baphomet statue during a private event on in a Detroit industrial building on Saturday, which people could attend starting at $25 dollars a ticket.

https://twitter.com/_Beard_Life/status/625165391690661888/photo/1

Its location was kept secret by the group until the last minute to avoid public demonstrations planned for its unveiling. Leading up to the statue’s unveiling, the group also received messages from people threatening to burn the venue of the event down and blow up the statue. In response, around 250 people attended mass Saturday morning at St. Joseph’s Church in prayer for the city and in protest of the statue’s unveiling.

The Satanic Temple originally intended to unveil the statue in public, but the owner of the venue, Bert’s Marketplace, returned the rental feel to the group after finding out about the statue unveiling.

The group unsuccessfully attempted to have the statue displayed near a monument of the Ten Commandments, which was located on state grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol. But in June, the state Supreme Court ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments — or any religious statues on state grounds — violated the state’s constitution. The Satanic Temple claimed the move as a victory, according to the New York Times.

Following the unveiling of the satanic statue, the group intends to place it outside the Arkansas Statehouse in Little Rock, the same location where another Ten Commandments monument is planned.

Credit: ibtimes

Pope Francis Begins South America Trip In Ecuador

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Staff Reporter

Pope Francis has arrived in Ecuador, in his first visit since becoming pope to the Spanish-speaking part of South America, bringing a message of solidarity with the poor in the region, while trying to rally his church amid dwindling numbers.

Francis, history’s first South American leader of the Catholic church, arrived in the capital Quito at 19:40 GMT on Sunday for a week-long tour of the continent, which also includes stops in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Crowds had begun gathering on Sunday morning along the route from the airport to the papal nuncio’s residence, where Francis will be staying.

More than a million Roman Catholics are expected at mass in Quito on Tuesday.

Francis, already seen by many as “the pope of the poor”, chose to visit Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay specifically because they are among the poorest and most marginal nations of a region that claims 40 percent of the world’s Catholics.

He is skipping his homeland of Argentina, at least partly to avoid papal entanglement in this year’s presidential election.

Francis had previously visited Portuguese-speaking Brazil in 2013.

Falling world prices for oil and minerals in Ecuador threaten to fray the social safety net woven by President Rafael Correa, who has been buffeted for nearly a month by the most serious anti-government street protests of his more than eight years in power.

While in Ecuador, Francis will also be forced to confront a sex abuse scandal which has tainted the church, said Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Quito.

Dr James Hamilton, one of the sex abuse victims, told Newman that the church’s punishment of paedophiles is an insult.

Sometimes It Can Be Morally Necessary For Parents To Separate – Pope Francis

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Staff Reporter

Pope Francis says it may be “morally necessary” for some troubled families to split up so that the weaker partner or the children can be protected. He said this today June 24th while addressing Catholic faithfuls ahead of a global meeting on family life in October. He said;

“There are cases in which separation is inevitable. Sometimes, it can even be morally necessary, when it’s about shielding the weaker spouse or young children from the more serious wounds caused by intimidation and violence, humiliation and exploitation”

He went on to say that after separations, it is important that the couple is counseled so that the ‘child does not become daddy or mummy’s hostage”. He noted that there are many families with ‘irregular situations’ in the world.

We don’t need Vatican’s Affirmation, says Gay Catholic Congregation

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Staff Reporter

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After Roman Catholic bishops meeting at the Vatican failed to agree on the issue of homosexuality in the church, Pope Francis appeared barely able to contain his frustration, cautioning the bishops Saturday not to cling to doctrine with “hostile rigidity” and saying the next day that “God is not afraid of new things.”

Back in the U.S., Catholics in one particular congregation were even more vocal.

“I think what we should do is to stop calling the American bishops ‘bishops,’ and start calling them homophobes,” said the Rev. Joe Akus, a priest who ministers to a congregation called Dignity, a network of LGBTQ Catholics with dozens of branches and thousands of members across the country.

The two-week long conference of bishops, known as a synod, was convened to discuss a range of issues facing Catholic families. In a dramatic development midway through the assembly, a draft statement was released supporting almost-revolutionary acceptance of gays, rather than condemnation, acknowledging the “gifts” they had to offer the church.

However, following alarm expressed by conservative bishops, the language was watered down to say that “people with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and sensitivity,” while reaffirming that marriage is only between a man and woman. That revised paragraph failed to garner enough support to be included in the synod’s final document, though there will be another conference of bishops held on the topic a year from now, in which the debate is likely to be rekindled.

“We are paying attention (to the synod) because there is the hope that a change in at least approach will help people who are afraid, and we don’t want people to be afraid–of being gay, of being Catholic, and especially of being gay and Catholic,” said Akus. “But for us here, we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do, and what we’ve been doing here at Dignity New York for the past 42 years.”

Conservative Catholics Kick Against Synod Document Welcoming Gays

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Staff Reporter

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A day after signaling a warmer embrace of gays and lesbians and divorced Catholics, conservative cardinals hit back strongly Tuesday (Oct. 14), with one insisting that an abrupt-face on church teaching is “not what we are saying at all.”

After Monday’s release of a document with a softer tone on issues such as “welcoming homosexuals,” American Cardinal Raymond Burke and German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller complained the media was getting a biased view of the bishops’ debate.

“It seems to me that information is being manipulated in a way that gives comment to only one theory instead of faithfully reporting the various positions expressed,” Burke said in a full-page interview published in Italian by the conservative daily, Il Foglio.

“This worries me very much because a significant number of bishops do not accept the ideas of an opening, but few (people) know that.”

In a separate interview published Tuesday, Burke told the conservative U.S. outlet Catholic World Report that the bishops “cannot accept” any changes because they are not based in Scripture or church teaching.

Monday’s mid-point report was released Monday as the the nearly 200 bishops and lay delegates to the Synod on the Family called by Pope Francis broke into discussion groups.

The summary document, presented to the media by Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, immediately provoked the fury of conservatives about how he and his colleagues were interpreting the spectrum of views aired on the synod floor.

In what looked like strenuous damage control, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, told a packed media conference Tuesday that this was a “working document, not a final document.”

South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier told journalists the document had been misunderstood and that’s why it had caused “such an upset” among participants because the synod had not yet ended.

“The message has gone out, it is not what we are saying at all, ” Napier said of the media coverage. “Once it is out there there’s no way of retrieving it. It is not a true position. Whatever goes out after looks like damage control.”

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