Numerous Pakistani citizens of Christian religion served the nation with honour and pride in the armed forces, giving the nation the gift of their life. Re- calling their precious contribution, the Archdiocese of Karachi in collaboration with the Pakistan American Cultural Centre (PACC) has organized in recent days a day dedicated to “Christian martyrs” to pay them their well-deserved honour and to thank their families for their sacrifice in favour of their country of origin.

As Fides learns, Cardinal Joseph Coutts, said: “In our Saint Anthony school in Lahore, when I was a student, army instructors came to train and encourage many Muslim and Christian friends to join the Pakistani army. At the time there was unity and mutual acceptance in society, without any discrimination of caste, creed, ethnicity.” Cardinal Coutts mentioned, among others, Captain Cecil Chaudhry, a Catholic, who served in the Aviation of Pakistan and fought bravely in the wars of 1965 and 1971 and was engaged in a very risky air mission towards India, where he survived miraculously.

After his retirement he was the head master of St Anthony’s High School in Lahore.

Pope Francis’ social teaching offers a dire and needed warning about the twin calamities of economic inequality and climate change, said Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs at a Sept. 5 seminar at Fordham University’s Lincoln Centre campus here.

“The system’s gangrene cannot be whitewashed forever,” said Tobin, quoting the Pope’s candid remarks via video to the 2017 World Meeting of Popular Movementsheld in Modesto, California. Support independent Catholic journalism. Become an NCR Forward member for $5 a month.

Sachs agreed that the Pope’s sometimes-scathing statements on capitalism are a needed counterweight to American overconfidence that unfettered capitalism can provide a pathway out of the dual crises of climate change and economic inequality.

Sachs, director of Columbia’s Centre for Sustainable Development, described Francis’ encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,’ on Care for Our Common Home,”as“oneofthegreat messages of our time” that “tells us things we will not hear from any other place.” But before the critique of capitalism and church social teaching could be discussed, the metaphorical elephant in the room — the continued onslaught of sex abuse issues afflicting the church — was addressed.

Jesus himself showed that the best way to respond to scandal and divisiveness is to stay silent and pray, Pope Francis said Sept. 3 as he resumed his early morning

Masses with invited guests. “With people lacking good- will, with people who seek only scandal, with those who look only for division, who want only destruction,” he said, the best response is “silence. And prayer.”

The Pope’s Mass and homily came after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former papal nuncio to the United States, called on Pope Francis to resign for allegedly ignoring sanctions Pope Benedict XVI had placed on then- Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for sexual misconduct.

Asked about the archbishop’s 11-page document, which included allegations of a “homosexual current” at the highest levels of the church, Pope Francis told reporters Aug. 26 to read the document for themselves and make their own judgments. The Vatican press office and most officials named in the arch- bishop’s document also refused to comment.

The Gospel for September 3 re-counted Jesus’ return to Nazareth and the fury of the townspeople when he refused to perform miracles for them.