1. Home
  2. NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS
  3. Pope advances sainthood causes of U.S. priest, Vietnamese cardinal
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Pope advances sainthood causes of U.S. priest, Vietnamese cardinal

Posted on May 13, 2017 at January 21, 2018 by admin
1003 0
Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan is pictured at the Vatican in this 2001 file photo. Pope Francis advanced the sainthood cause of the cardinal, who spent 13 years in solitary confinement during his country’s communist regime. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via EPA)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of Wisconsin-born Capuchin Father Solanus Casey, five religious, four laypeople and two cardinals, including Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan.

The pope approved the decrees during an audience May 4 with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes.

Father Casey (1870-1957) was known for his great faith, humility and compassion and for his ministry as spiritual counselor. He gained a popular following during his lifetime, with healings attributed to his intercession both before and after his death.

He was the sixth of 16 children of Irish immigrant parents. He was born on a farm near Oak Grove, Wisconsin, and as a young man worked as a logger, a hospital orderly, a streetcar operator and a prison guard before entering the Capuchins at age 26.

He was ordained in 1904 as a “simplex priest,” one who is unable to hear confessions or preach dogmatic sermons because he had not performed very well in his studies. He carried out humble tasks in the monastery and, while serving in Yonkers, New York, Father Casey was assigned to be the friary’s porter, or doorkeeper, a ministry he would carry out for the rest of his life.

He was known to be gentle, approachable and genuinely concerned for people as he had unique insight into people’s needs and how they fit into God’s plans.

He was declared venerable in 1995 and Pope Francis’ approval of a miracle attributed to his intercession was the next step needed for his beatification. Another miracle, after his beatification, would be needed for him to advance to sainthood.

Among the other decrees May 4, Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtues of Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, who served as president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 1998 to 2002 — the year he died.

Born in 1928, Vietnam’s communist regime jailed him in 1975 when he was the newly named coadjutor bishop of Saigon, later renamed Ho Chi Minh City. He was never tried or sentenced and spent nine of his 13 years of detention in solitary confinement. His uncle was South Vietnam’s first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who was assassinated in 1963.

Also May 4, the pope recognized miracles that advanced the causes of three religious women toward beatification and the martyrdom of Lucien Botovasoa, a married man with eight children, who was also a Third Order Franciscan, teacher and a catechist at his parish in Vohipeno, Madagascar.

As the African island went from being a colonial outpost to an independent nation, Botovasoa was blacklisted as an enemy of the cause for independence and was killed in 1947 out of hatred of the faith.

Years later a village elder admitted on his deathbed to a local missionary that he ordered the murder of Botovasoa even though Botovasoa had told him he would be by his side to help him whenever he was in need. The elder told the missionary he felt Botovasoa’s presence and asked to be baptized.

Related Post

This traditional-looking ceramic creche appears in a Christmas exhibit at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga., and is part of the personal collection of Marcy Borkowski-Glass of St. Pius X Church in Covington. The exhibit, which was to end Christmas Eve, showcased some 500 Nativity scenes own by Glass and a select few creches from the monastery. (CNS photo/Michael Alexander, Georgia Bulletin)

Woman hopes exhibit of her creches will help all focus on gifts of Jesus

Posted by - December 30, 2018 0
CONYERS, Ga. (CNS) — Nativity scenes on display at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers feature a multitude…
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Poor people from the Amazon have shown that God's creation must be treated "not as a resource to be exploited but as a home to be preserved, with trust in God," Pope Francis said. He celebrated Mass Oct. 27 to mark the end of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, which brought together bishops, priests and religious, and lay men and women, including indigenous people, from the nine Amazonian countries. Synod participants, some wearing their native dress and feathered headdresses, led the procession into St. Peter's Basilica. During the offertory, an indigenous woman presented the pope with a plant. Their presence was a reminder of the pope's rebuke to a bishop who had made a derogatory comment about an indigenous man wearing his headdress at the synod's opening Mass on Oct. 6. Instead of using a crosier made of precious metals, the pope carried a carved wooden crosier that the Vatican said was a gift from the synod. During the assembly, participants described the environmental devastation and social problems caused by mining in the Amazon. Pope Francis' homily about the Gospel parable of the self-righteous Pharisee and the tax collector drew parallels to the situation in the Amazon. It also appeared to address critics who have called the synod heretical. The Pharisee was "the most pious and devout figure of the time, and the tax collector, the public sinner par excellence," Pope Francis said. But in Jesus' eyes, "the one who is good but presumptuous fails; the one who is a disaster but humble is exalted by God." The Pharisee "stands in the temple of God, but he practices another religion, the religion of 'I,' and many popular groups, Christian and Catholic, follow this path," Pope Francis said. "The drama of this man is that he is without love." In contrast, the tax collector's prayer for mercy "is born from the heart," the pope said. "To pray is to stand before God’s eyes, without illusions, excuses or justifications." Everyone is both Pharisee and tax collector, the pope said. "We are a bit tax collectors because we are sinners, and a bit Pharisees because we are … masters of the art of self-justification." The Pharisee's attitude is apparent in "those who are prominent" considering others to be "backward and of little worth, despise their traditions, erase their history, occupy their lands, and usurp their goods," he added. The pope's words echoed the accounts of indigenous observers at the synod, who described a history of plundering of timber, rubber, minerals and other natural resources in the Amazon. That rapaciousness has displaced people from their land and spurred violence, including human trafficking and the murder of people who try to defend their territories. "In this synod we have had the grace of listening to the voices of the poor and reflecting on the precariousness of their lives," Pope Francis said. The "scarred face of the Amazon region," he said, shows that past experience has not been enough "to stop the plundering of other persons and the inflicting of wounds on our brothers and sisters and on our sister earth." The pope's language throughout the synod has echoed the words of his namesake, St. Francis, who praised God through his brothers, wind and air, and his sister, Mother Earth. Nevertheless, the gathering was sharply criticized by some Catholic groups that claimed it was heretical. The critics, who were active on social media during the synod, also claimed that a carved image of a pregnant indigenous woman that was used during some prayer services was a pagan idol. Pope Francis urged his listeners to reflect on "whether we, too, may think that someone is inferior and can be tossed aside, even if only in our words." "Self-worship carries on hypocritically with its rites and 'prayers,'" the pope said, adding that many people who fall into self-worship "profess to be Catholics, but have forgotten to be Christians and human beings, forgetting the true worship of God, which is always expressed in love of one's neighbor." Calling the poor "the gatekeepers of heaven," he said, "they were not considered bosses in this life. They did not put themselves ahead of others. They had their wealth in God alone. These persons are living icons of Christian prophecy." The pope paused during his homily to acknowledge the presence of "the poorest people of our most developed societies, the sick from the L'Arche Community," who were seated in the front rows in the basilica. He encouraged his listeners to "associate with the poor, to remind ourselves that we are poor, to remind ourselves that the salvation of God operates only in an atmosphere of interior poverty." "Let us pray for the grace to be able to listen to the cry of the poor," Pope Francis said. "This is the cry of hope of the church."

Christians must shun self-worship, pope says at synod’s final Mass

Posted by - November 2, 2019 0
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Poor people from the Amazon have shown that God’s creation must be treated “not as a…