Month: February 2022

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The time has come to live in a spirit of fraternity and build a culture of peace, sustainable development, tolerance, inclusion, mutual understanding and solidarity, Pope Francis said.

“Now is not a time for indifference: either we are brothers and sisters or everything falls apart,” he said in a video message marking the International Day of Human Fraternity Feb. 4.

The international celebration is a U.N.-declared observation to promote interreligious dialogue and friendship on the anniversary of the document on human fraternity signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019 by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt.

The pope, the sheikh and U.S. President Joe Biden all issued messages for the commemoration.

“Fraternity is one of the fundamental and universal values that ought to undergird relationships between peoples, so that the suffering or disadvantaged do not feel excluded and forgotten but accepted and supported as part of the one human family. We are brothers and sisters,” the pope said in Italian in his video message.

People must walk together, aware that, “while respecting our individual cultures and traditions, we are called to build fraternity as a bulwark against hatred, violence and injustice,” he said.

“All of us must work to promote a culture of peace that encourages sustainable development, tolerance, inclusion, mutual understanding and solidarity,” he said.

People of different faiths all have a role to play, he said, because “in the name of God, we who are his creatures must acknowledge that we are brothers and sisters.”

And all of humanity lives “under the same heaven,” so believers in God and all people of goodwill should journey together, he added.

“Do not leave it to tomorrow or an uncertain future,” he said. “This is a good day to extend a hand, to celebrate our unity in diversity — unity, not uniformity, unity in diversity — in order to say to the communities and societies in which we live that the time of fraternity has arrived.”

“The path of fraternity is long and challenging, it is a difficult path, yet it is the anchor of salvation for humanity,” the pope said. “Let us counter the many threatening signs, times of darkness and mindsets of conflict with the sign of fraternity that, in accepting others and respecting their identity, invites them to a shared journey.”

The pope encouraged everyone to dedicate themselves to “the cause of peace and to respond concretely to the problems and needs of the least, the poor and the defenseless. Our resolve is to walk side by side, ‘brothers and sisters all,’ in order to be effective artisans of peace and justice, in the harmony of differences and with respect for the identity of each.”

In his video message, Sheikh el-Tayeb said, “This celebration means a quest for a better world where the spirit of tolerance, fraternity, solidarity and collaboration prevails. It also indicates a hope for providing effective tools to face the crises and challenges of contemporary humanity.”

“We have embarked on this path in the hope for a new world that is free of wars and conflicts, where the fearful are reassured, the poor sustained, the vulnerable protected and justice administered,” he said.

In Biden’s written statement commemorating the day, he encouraged everyone to work together to overcome the global challenges that no one nation or group of people can solve on their own.

“For too long, the narrowed view that our shared prosperity is a zero-sum game has festered — the view that for one person to succeed, another has to fail,” he wrote. “This cramped idea has been a source of human conflict for centuries.”

Problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and increased violence, “require global cooperation from people of all backgrounds, cultures, faiths and beliefs. They require us to speak with one another in open dialogue to promote tolerance, inclusion and understanding,” and to guarantee that “all people are treated with dignity and as full participants in society,” he wrote.

“On this day, we affirm — in words and in actions — the inherent humanity that unites us all,” the president wrote. “Together, we have a real opportunity to build a better world that upholds universal human rights, lifts every human being and advances peace and security for all.”

Cardinal Miguel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and member of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, said in a statement that the day “is an opportunity to advance the sense of responsibility toward the poor, vulnerable, homeless and oppressed.”

“I hope human fraternity will turn into a global movement of promoting moral values shared by all peoples from all walks of life,” the cardinal said.

SCRANTON – As the 19 Catholic Schools across the Diocese of Scranton continue to celebrate Catholic Schools Week – one event at All Saints Academy was “stickier” than the rest.

On Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, students had the opportunity to duct tape their principal, Brittany Haynos-Krupski, to a cafeteria wall. The event was a fundraiser for the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.

“We were researching and found this idea on Pinterest and she (Haynos-Krupski) was like, ‘Sure, I’ll do it,’ and the rest is history,” JoAnn Lameo, All Saints Academy PTO President, said.

For a two-dollar donation, students got a two-foot strip of duct tape to help hold their principal in place.

“It was something interesting. It was an out-of-the-box idea, not something I was expecting but the school is always about new things. I think the kids really enjoyed it,” eighth grader Jacob Roberts said.

Offering students the unique opportunity to tape their principal to the wall is just one of the many activities that students at All Saints Academy took part in this week.

“Catholic Schools Week is when we really have fun and everyone enjoys it,” eighth grader Allie Romanchick explained.

“There have been a lot of fun activities like duct taping our principal, we painted earlier today, last year we tie-died t-shirts and had movie days,” eighth grader Ariana Cabelly added.

Since 1974, Catholic Schools Week nationwide have been celebrating the importance of Catholic education. This year’s theme is, “Catholic Schools: Faith. Excellence. Service.”

Each one of the Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Scranton have a series of week-long activities planned, which include Masses, open houses in many cases and other activities for students, families, parishioners and community members. Through these events, schools focus on the value Catholic education provides to young people and its contributions to our church, our communities and our nation.

As he prepares to go to transition to a Catholic high school, Roberts said he would not trade his Catholic school experience for anything.

“It’s definitely a lot more focused. It’s a lot more hands on. It is definitely something that parents should be considering when sending their kids to school. Personally, I think Catholic Schools are one of the best experiences you could have,” he explained.

Cabelly just started at All Saints Academy last year during the COVID-19 pandemic and said she couldn’t have felt more welcome.

“All the students and teachers are nice and welcoming. For me, I went to a public school for almost all my life and when switching I was very nervous, but it was a nice and welcoming community,” she said.

Through its duct tape fundraiser, the students raised $670 for the All Saints Academy Parent Teacher Organization. The group has many other fundraisers planned to help support its annual Fun Day and Teacher Appreciation Week.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis said that when he was little, he thought the phrase “the communion of saints” in the Creed meant that the saints in heaven were receiving Communion.

Instead, the communion of saints expresses how “every member of the church is bound to me in a profound way and this bond is so strong that it cannot be broken even by death,” he said Feb. 2 during his weekly general audience.

Concluding his series of audience talks about St. Joseph, Pope Francis recited a prayer he said he has recited every day for more than 40 years.

But while he was reading it, a man in the back of the audience hall began shouting, including about wearing masks. Vatican police escorted him out of the building.

As soon as he finished his prayer, Pope Francis told the people in the hall that the man had a problem; “I don’t know if it is physical, psychological or spiritual, but he is our brother with a problem. I would like to finish by praying for him, our brother who is suffering, poor man. If he’s yelling it is because he is suffering, has some problem. Don’t be deaf to the needs of this man.”

The pope then led the crowd in praying a Hail Mary for him.

In his main audience talk, Pope Francis said he wanted to be clear about the difference between devotion to a saint, even to St. Joseph or Mary, and superstition or idolatry.

“Sometimes even Christianity can fall into forms of devotion that seem to reflect a mentality that is more pagan than Christian,” he said. But “the fundamental difference is that our prayer and the devotion of the faithful people is not based on trust in a human being, or in an image or an object, even when we know that they are sacred.”

“It is not the saints who work miracles, but only the grace of God that acts through them,” he said.

The saints, whether canonized or not, he said, are part of the community of the church, a gathering not of the perfect but of “saved sinners.”

And just as a person can have a friendship with another parishioner, he or she can have a relationship “with a brother or sister in heaven,” the pope said. “The saints are friends” and devotion “is actually a way of expressing the love that comes from this bond that unites us.”

“In Christ no one can ever truly separate us from those we love,” he said. “Only the manner of being with them changes, but nothing and no one can break this bond. The communion of saints holds together the community of believers on earth and in heaven.”