The superior general of the Society of Jesus said on August 21 that the devil is a symbol, but not a person.

The devil, “exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because is not a person, is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life,” Fr Arturo Sosa, SJ, said on August 21 in an interview with Italian magazine Tempi.

“Good and evil are in a permanent war in the human conscience and we have ways to point them out. We recognize God as good, fully good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality,” he added.

Sosa’s remarks came after he participated in a panel discussion at a Catholic gathering in Rimini, Italy, organized by the Commu-nion and Liberation ecclesial movement.

The Catechism of the Catholic teaches that ”Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing. ’”

Angels, the Catechism says, are “spiritual, non-corporeal beings.”

“They are personal and immortal creatures,” it adds, who “have intelligence and will.”

Pope Francis has called for a joint effort by the international community to stop the fires raging in the Amazon rainforest and protect a region he describes as a “vital lung” of the world.

Speaking after praying the Angelus in St Peter’s Square, the 82-year-old Latin American Pope pointed to the global concern for the “vast fires” in the Amazon praying that through a cross-national commitment they “might be contained as soon as possible.”

Leaders of the world’s major democracies are discussing how to contain the wildfires during their G7 gathering in Biarritz, France. Ireland and France have both threatened to block a free trade agreement between the EU and Latin American Countries if Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro does not change his Amazon policy. Experts believe that the populist leader’s removal of rainforest protections, allowing for deforestation, have fuelled the fires.

For his part, the Pope will host a landmark Synod of bishops gathering on the Amazon in Rome from 6-27 October 2019, which will focus on how the Church can help protect region’s environment and indigenous peoples.

The Pope’s Amazon appeal came after one by the Latin American Bishops.

Responding to criticism of notes he published about the roots of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, retired Pope Benedict XVI said the fact that the critiques barely mentioned God proved his point.

“As far as I can see, in most reactions to my contribution, God does not appear at all,” which is “exactly what I wanted to emphasize” as the central problem, he wrote in a brief note to Herder Korrespondenz, according to KNA, the German Catholic news agency.

In April, the retired Pope sent a compilation of what he described as “some notes” on the crisis to Klerusblatt, a German-language Catholic monthly journal for clergy in Bavaria.

Seeing the crisis as rooted in the “egregious event” of the cultural and sexual revolution in the Western world in the 1960s and a collapse of belief in the existence and authority of absolute truth and God, the retired Pope said the primary task at hand is to reassert the joyful truth of God’s existence and of the Church as holding the true deposit of faith.

Most of the criticism, though, focused on Benedict seeming to blame the cultural and sexual revolution of the ’60s, especially when many cases of priests sexually abusing children occurred before that time even if the public found out only recently.

Do Catholics believe that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ? A Pew Research Centre survey released on Aug. 5 found that nearly 70% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine used for Communion during Mass are “symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ,” while about 30% believe that the bread and wine “actually become” Christ’s body and blood.

The findings clearly touched a nerve as commentators jumped to analyse the data, questioning the language that Pew had used in its survey questions.

Mark Gray from the centre for the Applied Research in the Apostolate wrote in a blog post that replacing the word “actually” with “really” might have led to different results. In previous surveys on the Real Presence, CARA used “Jesus is really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist” vs. “Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus, but Jesus is not really present.” Others found the results an affirmation of their belief that catechesis in the Church is in a sorry state.

“It represents a massive failure – and I include myself in this, we’re all guilty – a massive failure on the part of Catholic educators and catechists, evangelists, teachers,” said Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron in a “Word on Fire” YouTube video. “If on this central matter of our belief and practice there is this much deep misunderstanding, something has gone substantially wrong.”

Pew’s finding “certainly shows a failure in catechetics, but I think the Church faces a greater problem,” Jesuit Father Thomas Reese wrote in a column for Religion News Service. “Catholics have an impoverished idea of what the Eucharist is really about.”

Five years on from the conquering of Christian communities in Iraq by the so-called Islamic State, Christians in the country remain at the “point of extinction,” Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil said.

“The ISIS attack led to the displacement of more than 125,000 Christians from historical homelands and rendered us, in a single night, without shelter and refuge, without work or properties, without churches and monasteries, without the ability to participate in any of the normal things of life that give dignity; family visits, celebration of weddings and births, the sharing of sorrows,” Warda told papal charity Aid to the Church in Need.

“This was an exceptional situation, but it’s not an isolated one. It was part of the recurring cycle of violence in the Middle East over more than 1,400 years,” he said.

ISIS captured the Christian communities of the Nineveh plains on August 6, 2014. Christians were not able to return to the area until the fall of 2016, when Iraqi forces and their allies recaptured the area. To date, about 40,000 Christians have returned; many have emigrated.

Christianity has been present in the Nineveh plain in Iraq – between Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan – since the first century. However, since the ousting of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Christians have been fleeing the region.

In Warda’s eyes, the imposition of sharia led to the decline of that Golden Age: “A style of scholastic dialogue had developed, and this could only occur, because a succession of caliphs tolerated minorities. As toleration ended, so did the culture and wealth which flowed from it.”

Warda said Muslim leaders throughout the centuries have decided “according to their own judgement and whim” whether non-Muslims will be tolerated, and if so, to what degree.

“Argue as you will, but extinction is coming, and then what will anyone say?” he continued.

Pope Francis has written a letter to the more than 400,000 Catholic priests worldwide encouraging them during the tribulations from the sexual abuse crisis. The letter is meant to give priests, many of whom feel disheartened because of the horrendous crimes of abuse committed by a small percentage of their fellow priests, hope in these times of tribulation when they are so often blamed or treated with suspicion, distrust, contempt or ridicule.

This year, he speaks directly to all priests because he is well aware and deeply concerned that in many countries, including the United States, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Chile, the morale of priests has suffered greatly because of the abuse scandal.

“I want to say a word to each of you who, often without fanfare and at personal cost, amid weariness, infirmity and sorrow, carry out your mission of service to God and to your people,” he says.

He tells them that “despite the hardships of the journey, you are writing the finest pages of the priestly life.”

An academic war of words has broken out among leading Catholic scholars over the Revi-sed New Jerusalem (RNJB) translation of the Bible. The world-renowned historian, Professor Eamon Duffy, of Magdalene College, Cambridge, criticised the RNJB as guilty of “flaccid” waffle and “casual inaccuracy” after another senior academic proposed it should be used for a revised lectionary.

Parts of the RNJB were released last year but it was published in full last month by Darton Longman and Todd.

According to Neil Xavier O’Donoghue, lecturer in systematic theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, writing in The Tablet, many feel that the current Jerusalem Bible (JB) Lectionary, based on a translation of the Bible originally published in 1966, “is no longer fit for purpose.” He says that on many levels the translation still reads smoothly and for most Catholics in the countries that use this lectionary, this is the version of Scripture, the text they have grown up hearing read in church, at school and at home, and “which resonates in their spiritual lives.”

But he adds that  the JB was produced quite hurriedly in the years after the Second Vatican Council and says the translation contains “quite a number of imprecisions,” compounded by a tendency on the part of many of the original team of translators to base their work on the 1956 French La Bible de Jérusalem rather than on the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.

Dom Henry Wansbrough, translator of the RNJB and of its 1985 predecessor the NJB, him-self wrote in The Tablet last October how the present translations approved for liturgical use in England and Wales – the Revised Standard Version (RSV) (Catholic Edition) and The Jerusalem Bible, the one adopted by most parishes, “both now show their age.”

Ahead of its annual convention, the Knights of Columbus announced on August 1 that it donated more than $185 million to charity in 2018.

“The men who choose to become Knights of Columbus are generous, and their impact is immense. While we are known mainly for our local efforts, our reach is global,” said Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

The Knights of Columbus is a fraternal and charitable organization with over 1.9 million members and more than 16,000 councils worldwide.

It was founded by Fr Michael McGivney in 1882 to provide relief and assistance to members, their families, and widows of members, as well as opportunities for fraternity and service for Catholic members. The “four pillars” of the Knights are charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism.

According to the Knights, the $185 million in charitable giving came from direct fundraising, the efforts of local Knights councils, and its insurance operations; the Knights offer insurance and annuities products to members.

The group also says its members gave over 76 million hours of hands-on service in 2018, worth over $1.9 billion according to a valuation of volunteer work by the Independent Sector.

More than 16,000 Knights councils in nine countries were responsible for the volunteer work and for raising money for charitable causes, which included relief for persecuted Christians, disaster aid, support for crisis pregnancy centres and pro-life initiatives, the Archdiocese of the Military Services, U.S.A., and the Knights’ annual pilgrimage to Lourdes for wounded military veterans.