The Vatican inaugurated a new website today for Vatican City State, the first update since 2012. The graphics, videos, and photos are wonderful but when I looked for other language versions (es for Espanol, fr for Francais, etc) I could find none. However, I did a little test: in the link, I substituted /en for /it and found English. Here’s the original link: http://www.vaticanstate.va/it Here’s English: http://www.vaticanstate.va/en However, you have to go to the top right of the homepage and click on the 3 lines (the index to content) to actually get the English content. I hope that’s clear!
I posted a link this morning on my Facebook page to the Washington Post interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. The archbishop is clear and very detailed in his answers to the Post’s 40 questions, He did write n/a to several persons questions (such as where he is living) when he deemed it ‘not applicable’ to answer. Here is a link to the full article – an absolutely fascinating read! https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/this-archbishop-called-on-the-pope-to-resign-now-hes-in-an-undisclosed-location/2019/06/09/bb69c346-71b5-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html?utm_term=.b1f061c7b277
“THE CHURCH IS COMMUNION, COMMUNITY, THE PEOPLE OF GOD”
Pope Francis continued his new Wednesday general audience catechesis on the Acts of the Apostles, telling the faithful in St. Peter’s Square today, “we have seen that the Church’s evangelizing mission begins with the resurrection of Christ. As the disciples, together with Mary, waited in the Upper Room for the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit, they were united in prayer. From the beginning, the Church appears as a communion, a community, the People of God. Christ’s choice of twelve Apostles shows the continuity between the Church and the people of Israel.
“After the defection of Judas,” continued the Pope, “the Apostles were conscious that his place in the Twelve had to be taken by another. Guided by Peter, the community as a whole joined in prayer to discern the Lord’s choice of Matthias. Jesus had told his disciples that they would be known by their love for one another (Jn 13:35).
Francis said, “the visible communion of the Apostles was their first form of witness to the Risen Lord and his saving love. May we too bear witness to the reconciling power of that love by our unity, which triumphs over pride and divisiveness, and creates from diversity the one People of God.”
“IT IS NOT PERMISSIBLE TO DESTROY LIFE, OR MAKE IT AN OBJECT OF EXPERIMENTS”
In greetings to Polish pilgrims attending today’s general audience, Pope Francis said “I know that many of you and thousands of your countrymen took part in the life parades last Sunday, bringing the message that life is sacred because it is a gift from God. We are called to defend it and serve it from conception in the womb to age advanced, when it is marked by infirmity and suffering.
“It is not permissible to destroy life,” stated the Holy Father, “to make it the object of experimentation or false conceptions. I ask you to pray that human life will always be respected, thus witnessing to Gospel values especially in the context of the family. From my heart, I bless you and your loved ones.”
VATICAN AFFIRMS HEROIC VIRTUES OF FR. AUGUSTINE TOLTON
The Vatican Wednesday issued a decree that recognized “the heroic virtues of Servant of God Augustine Tolton, diocesan priest, born in Brush Creek, (USA) April 1, 1854 and died in Chicago July 9, 1897.”
Fr. Tolton (Ave Maria Press)
The decree announcing Fr. Tolton’s heroic virtues was one of eight similar decrees announced Wednesday by the Vatican. The Pope authorized their publication in a meeting yesterday with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Icon of Fr. Tolton
The Missouri-born priest was the first African American ordained as a Catholic priest. Born of slaves, and a former slave himself, Augustus was reared as a Catholic and named Augustine when he was baptized. He studied in Rome where he was ordained at St. John Lateran basilica on Easter Sunday, 1886. Fr. Tolton was assigned to the diocese of Alton, today the diocese of Springfield, and actually worked in his home parish of Quincy, Illinois. He was eventually assigned to Chicago where he helped build St. Monica’s Church which became home to black American Catholics.
A site is dedicated to Fr. Tolton in the diocese: https://tolton.archchicago.org/
Joan's Rome 