Pope Francis told Slovakia’s Catholics on September 13 that the Church should respond to secularization with the “creativity of the Gospel,” not “a defensive Catholicism.”
Speaking to clergy and lay people in St. Martin’s Cathedral in the capital, Bratislava, on Sept. 13, the Pope encouraged Catholics to draw inspiration from Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who translated the Bible into the Slavonic language.
“Isn’t this what Slovakia also needs today? I wonder. Isn’t this perhaps the most urgent task facing the Church before the peoples of Europe: finding new ‘alphabets’ to proclaim the faith?” he asked.
“We are heirs to a rich Christian tradition, yet for many people today, that tradition is a relic from the past; it no longer speaks to them or affects the way they live their lives.”
“Faced with the loss of the sense of God and of the joy of faith, it is useless to complain, to hide behind a defensive Catho-licism, to judge and blame the bad world. No, we need the creativity of the Gospel.”
The 84-year-old Pope, who is making his first international trip since undergoing surgery in July, looked at ease as he deli-vered his live-streamed address in the capital’s largest church, located beneath the imposing Bratislava Castle.

Barnabite priest Fr. Giovanni Scalese, ecclesiastical superior of the Catholic mission Sui Iuris in Afghanistan, told la Repu-bblica in late August how he helped 14 disabled children and 5 nuns escape from the embattled city of Kabul.
Father Scalese spoke to the newspaper the day after landing in Rome on Aug. 25, saying, ”I would have never returned to Italy without these children. We couldn’t leave them there.”
The 14 children had been cared for by a group of nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. These nuns have been keeping orphans off the streets of Kabul for the last 20 years. The 14 children were between the ages of 6 and 20, with some confined to wheelchairs.
Scalese updated his followers on social media upon reaching Rome. “We thank the Lord for the success of the operation,” wrote the priest in a Facebook post. A missionary in Afghani-stan for seven years, Scalese told SIR, the media arm for Italian bishops, that he was concerned after the Taliban takeover but felt safe in the Italian embassy.

A prominent Church of England bishop has announced that he is stepping down in five days to become a Catholic. The Bishop of Ebbsfleet Jonathan Goodall, a suffragan in the Canterbury diocese, is resigning after what he described today as “one of the most testing periods of my life.”
His decision after eight years as Bishop of Ebbsfleet – one of the Anglican church’s provincial episcopal visitors, dubbed “fly-ing bishops”, whose role was pastoral care of certain groups of traditionalist parishes – was announced in a statement by Lambeth Palace this morning. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said he had accepted his resignation “with regret.”

Spending time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament can heal Christians from a self-absorbed religiosity that is ostentatious and triumphalist, Pope Francis said.
Presiding over the closing Mass of the International Eu-charistic Congress September 12, the Pope urged people to make time for Eucharistic adoration.
“Let us allow Jesus, the living bread, to heal us of our self-absorption, open our hearts to self-giving, liberate us from our rigidity and self-concern, free us from the paralyzing slavery of defending our image, and inspire us to follow him wherever he would lead us,” he said.
After departing from Rome’s Fiumicino in the early morning, the pope told journalists aboard the flight that the papal trip had “a bit of a farewell feeling” due to it being the last time that Bishop-designate Guido Marini would serve as papal master of ceremonies. The Pope named the bishop-designate to lead the Diocese of Tortona, Italy.
Pope Francis also noted that it was the final papal flight aboard Alitalia, which will shutter operations in October after serving 75 years as Italy’s national airline.
Landing in Budapest, the pope was welcomed by Hun-garian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén. He then made his way to the Museum of Fine Arts near the site of the closing Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress.
The Vatican said Pope Francis met privately with Hungarian President János Áder, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Semjén for roughly 40 minutes “in a cordial atmosphere.”
“Among the various topics discussed were the role of the church in the country, the commitment to the protection of the environment, the protection and promotion of the family,” the Vatican said.
In a statement on his Facebook page, Orbán, who views migration as a threat to Europe’s Christian identity, said, “I asked Pope Francis not to let Christian Hungary perish.”
Pope Francis, arriving in his pope mobile, was greeted warmly by thousands who lined the street leading toward the Mass site in Heroes’ Square.
In the homily, Pope Francis reflected on the Sunday Gospel reading, in which Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

Pope Francis has received dozens of soccer jerseys and game balls during his eight-year pontificate but he got a new football-themed toy on Wednesday: his very own foosball table. Francis played a round on the table that was presented to him at the end of his general audience by representatives of a Tuscany-based table football association, Sport Toscana Calcio Balilla in Altopascio. The mayor of Altopascio, Sara D’Ambrosio, wrote on Facebook that the table was designed to be inclusive and work well for people with physical disabilities to encourage their participation in sport.

Hypocrites are afraid of the truth, fearful of who they really are and incapable of truly loving, Pope Francis said during his weekly general audience.
What hypocrites do “is like putting make-up on your soul, like putting makeup on your behaviour” and hiding the truth, the pope said Aug. 25 to those gathered in the Paul VI audience hall at the Vatican.
All this pretending, he said, “suffocates the courage to openly say what is true and thus the obligation to say the truth at all times, everywhere and in spite of anything can easily be evaded,” he said.
The pope continued his series of talks on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and focused on the dangers of the law by looking at the apostle Peter’s “inconsistency” at Antioch.
Gentile Christians were free from the Jewish law, but there was pressure from people from Jerusalem that caused Sts. Peter and Barnabas to draw back from what the Gospel said.
That is why, in his letter, St Paul condemns St Peter “to his face because he clearly was wrong” by trying to appease critics who still observed Mosaic law and to justify his hypocritical behavior.
“Peter had been eating with the Christians of pagan origin without any difficulty; however, when some circumcised Christians from Jerusalem arrived in the city, he then no longer did so, because he did not want to incur their criticism,” Pope Francis said.
“Watch out. The mistake was paying more attention to the criticism, to make a good impression than the reality of the relationships,” the pope said.
This was serious in St Paul’s eyes, because other disciples imitated St. Peter, and, even though he did not mean to, “Peter was, in fact, creating an unjust division within the community” by not being transparent or clear about what he was doing, Pope Francis said.
In his letter, St. Paul “wanted to remind the Christians of that community that they were absolutely not to listen to those who were preaching that it was necessary to be circumcised, and therefore be ‘under the law’ with all of its prescriptions,” Pope Francis said.

Advocates, political leaders and a Maronite Catholic bishop gathered on Zoom for a virtual seminar to express support for Lebanon’s Maronite patriarch, who came under pressure after calling for the Lebanese army to take control of the southern part of Lebanon, where Hezbollah is engaging in skirmishes with Israel.
Card Bechara Rai, Maronite patriarch, also said Aug. 8 that the Lebanese Armed Forces should enforce a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution that requires the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon. He said Lebanon does not wish to be involved in military actions that elicit destructive Israeli responses. Afterward, an image of the patriarch with a noose super-imposed on his neck circulated on social media.
Rai has “no political agenda,” Maronite Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles told those on the Aug. 12 Zoom call, sponsored by In Defense of Christians, a Washington-based nonprofit advocating for the protection and preservation of Christians and Christianity in the Middle East.
The cardinal’s remarks con-sistently are on behalf of the people of Lebanon, who are saying, “We want to eat. We want to survive,” Zaidan said.

BAL When Theresa Buck was still in high school at Mount de Sales Academy in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville, she took a standardized assessment test meant to give some indication of the kind of career that would best suit her talents, personality and interests. Topping the list of potential careers, according to the assessment? Ministry as a woman religious.
An exercise completed more than two decades ago turned out to be more than prescient. Not only did the former parishioner of St Agnes Parish in Catonsville enter the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in rural Ala-bama, she recently was entrusted with leadership of the inter-nationally known monastery.
Today with the religious name of Mother Mary Paschal of the Lamb of God, she was elected abbess July 29, taking on the same post that was once held by Mother Angelica, founder of both the monastery and the glo-bal Catholic communications net-work known as EWTN.
The Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration are a contemplative community of cloistered nuns whose charism is centered on adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Established in France in 1854, the religious community has monasteries that act autonomously.

After days of increasing dis-belief, America watched on Aug. 16 as President Joe Biden officially abandoned Afghanistan. We listened to his awkward speech as he publicly dismissed a 20-year American investment in blood and treasure while putting at risk untold thousands of Afghan lives.
“America has spent $2trn in Afghanistan; more than 2,000 American lives have been lost, not to mention countless Afghan ones. And yet, even if Afghans are more prosperous now than when America invaded, Afghanistan is back to square one. The Taliban control more of the country than they did when they lost power, they are better armed, having seized the weapons America showered on the Afghan army, and they have now won the ultimate affirmation: defeating a superpower.”
But that “defeat” is not the only result of the U.S. pull-out. More than a few of us walked away from Biden’s broadcast stunned, well-aware of our country’s international disgrace. Even worse, we also knew that for many Afghanis – including a little-known community of Christian converts – the worst is yet to come.

At the end of his weekly public audience – and after unexpectedly taking a phone call in front of the cameras and the thousands of pilgrims who’d gathered in the Paul VI Hall to listen to him – Francis had his usual meet and greet with those who had listened to him preach. Among those waiting were actor Jonathan Roumie and producer Dallas Jenkins, the face and the mind behind The Chosen, the largest crowd-funded media project of all-time, a multi-season series about the life of Christ that went live on Easter 2019 and has captured over 300 million viewers world-wide.
The show’s two seasons are freely available worldwide through a dedicated app, YouTube and the streaming service Peacock. The first eight episodes were funded through the donations of 19,000 people who helped raise the $10 million needed. The “sells” of that first season funded the second, and money is now being raised for a third. “Sales come from licenses, the pay it forward campaign, through which people can help others around the world to watch the show, DVDs, and merchandise related to The Chosen,” said Neal Harmon, the CEO of Angel Studios. “We’ve had people from every corner of the world expressing gratitude, because they somehow know about the show. It takes you by surprise: Most people don’t watch it the first time they hear about it, but once they do, they can’t stop talking about it!” he told a small group of Rome-based news outlets, including Crux.