To be pastoral, look to the Good Shepherd, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christians must develop a pastoral heart to care for those who have not heard the Gospel or who have left the fold, Pope Francis said.

“By being with Jesus, we discover that his pastoral heart always beats for the person who is confused, lost, far away,” the pope said at his weekly general audience Jan. 18. “Jesus never said, ‘Let them sort themselves out,’ he went out to find them.”

Pope Francis encouraged Christians to model themselves on Jesus, the Good Shepherd, longing for those who have left the church just as a shepherd longs for lost sheep, rather than treating them as “adversaries or enemies.”

“When we meet them at school, work or on the streets of our city, why don’t we think instead that we have a beautiful opportunity to witness to them the joy of a Father who loves them and has never forgotten them?” the pope asked.

Pope Francis speaks during his general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican Jan. 18, 2023. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Being a shepherd is not merely a job, but a “true and proper way of life: 24 hours a day,” he said. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, “does not just do something for us, but he gives his life for us.”

The pope encouraged the pilgrims and visitors gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall to reflect on how God seeks out those who distance themselves from him, saying that many Christians may have followed Jesus for a long time but “have never wondered if we share his feelings, if we suffer and we take risks.”

“The Lord suffers when we distance ourselves from his heart,” he said, “but in response to this suffering he does not withdraw, rather he risks. He leaves the 99 sheep who are safe and ventures out for the lost one.”

“Do we feel similar emotions?” the pope asked.

Without a love that suffers and takes risks for others, Pope Francis said, “we risk being pastors only for ourselves.”

At the end of his catechesis, the pope greeted a group of pilgrims from Congo, where he will travel Jan. 31, and asked for prayers for the country.

He also remembered Father Isaac Achi, who was killed Jan. 15 when bandits set fire to his parish rectory in Minna, Nigeria.

“So many Christians continue to be the target of violence, let us remember them in our prayers,” said the pope.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – James Griffin, executive director of the Durandus Institute for Sacred Music & Liturgy, said the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity “was instilled” in him at the parish church of his youth, Our Lady of Atonement Church in San Antonio.

The weeklong Christian ecumenical observance, taking place Jan. 18-25 this year, “is important for all Christians” but has “even greater significance” for Catholics coming from the Anglican tradition, Griffin told OSV News.

Our Lady of Atonement Church in San Antonio was founded in 1983 with the permission of Archbishop Patrick F. Flores. It began with a few converts from the Episcopal Church, a member of the global Anglican Communion. Today Our Lady of the Atonement is part of the Houston-based Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, a Roman Catholic diocese with Anglican traditions established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, which includes 40 other Catholic parishes and communities in North America.

One of those parishes, St. Timothy’s Ordinariate Catholic Church in Sykesville, Maryland, will co-sponsor a solemn choral evensong Jan. 25 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, using the Ordinariate form of the Liturgy of the Hours’ evening prayer that reflects their Anglican tradition in full Catholic communion. Father Armando Alejandro, St. Timothy’s parochial administrator, will officiate and Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori will preach the sermon.

Griffin will be the emcee for the service, which will be dedicated to Pope Benedict XVI, who died Dec. 31 at age 95.

In 2009, Pope Benedict, in response to petitions for Catholic unity from various groups of Anglicans and Episcopalians, created an apostolic constitution, “Anglicanorum coetibus,” which established personal ordinariates – essentially Catholic dioceses where membership is personal rather than territorial – so individuals and parishes could become fully part of the Catholic Church and still live out their Catholic faith through their Anglican patrimony. Pope Francis has confirmed the initiative, by both approving all the ordinariates’ liturgical books, as well as expanding their missionary mandate to include evangelizing the unbaptized, other Christians not yet in full communion, and baptized Catholics who no longer practice the faith.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is a joint effort of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the World Council of Churches. It begins on the Jan. 18 feast of the Confession of Peter (“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God” Matthew 16:18). Its final day, Jan. 25, is the feast of the Conversion of Paul.

The 2023 theme is “Do Good; Seek Justice,” taken from the first chapter of Isaiah.

Other events planned around the United States include an afternoon ecumenical service and concert Jan. 18 at the chapel of the Interchurch Center in New York, hosted by the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute.

In California, for the 17th year, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Gerasimos will lead solemn vespers together Jan. 23 at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Redwood City, California.

The Ecumenical Institute for Ministry in New Mexico has organized a pilgrimage for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity for participants from “diverse Christian traditions” to “heal and build up the body of Christ … as they walk, talk, worship, pray, and sing and listen together.” People also can participate virtually in a self-directed pilgrimage.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began as the Church Unity Octave. It was celebrated for the first time Jan. 18-25, 1908, by Father Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White, Episcopal co-founders of the Society of the Atonement, at Graymoor, the headquarters of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement in Garrison, New York.

A year later, the friars, the sisters and 13 of their lay associates were received into full communion with the Catholic Church. The Atonement priests, sisters and brothers work for reconciliation and healing through the unity of men and women with God and one another, in fulfillment of the mandate from Jesus Christ’s prayer to God the Father in the Gospel of St. John: “that they all may be one.”

Father Wattson, who is a candidate for sainthood, had high hopes that the entire Anglican Communion would be “reincorporated with Rome,” said Griffin, who was raised by an Episcopal father and a Seventh-day Adventist mother. He became a Catholic in 2005 when he was 18.

“Many of those hopes have not been realized, not in our lifetime, but we see other Christian churches pray for Christian unity. … Most Christians realize our divisions between each other are not the way God intended for us to operate,” Griffin told OSV News.

Each year, in advance of the Week of Prayer, an international committee co-sponsored by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches invites a local ecumenical group to propose a scriptural theme.

The year’s theme was selected by the Minnesota Council of Churches in the aftermath of the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody and the trial of the police officer responsible for his death.

“The entire scriptural passage for the theme is Isaiah 1:12-18, lamenting a lack of justice among the people of God. Yet, it also promises redemption by encouraging acts of justice,” said Father James Loughran, a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement, who is director of the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute. He made the comment in a post on the institute’s website.

Father James Gardiner, another Atonement friar who has long been involved in ecumenical and interfaith efforts, told OSV News this year’s theme for the week “couldn’t be more timely.”

“Given the news each day,” he said, “the theme offers enormous possibilities for praying and preaching.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The way individual Catholics and their parishes care for the sick offers a precise measure of just how much they either are part of or are fighting the “throwaway culture” that ignores or discards anyone seen as flawed or weak, Pope Francis said in his message for the World Day of the Sick.

The care of those who are ill shows “whether we are truly companions on the journey or merely individuals on the same path, looking after our own interests and leaving others to ‘make do,'” the pope said in the message, which was released by the Vatican Jan. 10.

The Catholic Church celebrates the world day Feb. 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Pope Francis greets a child as he visits poor, sick people at a center run by the CasAmica Onlus organization on the outskirts of Rome in this Dec. 7, 2018, file photo. In his message for the 2023 World Day of the Sick, the pope said the way we treat those who are ill shows exactly what kind of a community we are. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

“Experiences of bewilderment, sickness and weakness are part of the human journey,” the 86-year-old pope wrote.

But, he said, the Bible makes clear that “far from excluding us from God’s people,” those situations of vulnerability “bring us to the center of the Lord’s attention, for he is our Father and does not want to lose even one of his children along the way.”

Those who profess belief in God, he said, should do likewise, placing the sick at the center of their attention.

To illustrate his point, Pope Francis used the parable of the good Samaritan, a story he often cites to illustrate the importance of community and fraternity in contrast to cruelty and self-absorption.

“The fact that the man, beaten and robbed, is abandoned on the side of the road” in the parable “represents the condition in which all too many of our brothers and sisters are left at a time when they most need help,” the pope said.

In addition, he said, in too many cases it is not easy “to distinguish the assaults on human life and dignity that arise from natural causes from those caused by injustice and violence. In fact, increasing levels of inequality and the prevailing interests of the few now affect every human environment to the extent that it is difficult to consider any experience as having solely ‘natural’ causes.”

The problem is not only illness, the pope said, but also loneliness and the feeling of abandonment, both of which “can be overcome more easily than any other injustice, because – as the parable tells us – it only takes a moment of our attention, of being moved to compassion within us, in order to eliminate it.”

In the parable, he said, “two travelers, considered pious and religious, see the wounded man, yet fail to stop. The third passerby, however, a Samaritan, a scorned foreigner, is moved with compassion and takes care of that stranger on the road, treating him as a brother. In doing so, without even thinking about it, he makes a difference, he makes the world more fraternal.”

People need the love and support of others as they age and especially when they are ill, he said.

Usually, people are not prepared to fall sick, he said, and, often, “we fail even to admit that we are getting older.”

“Our vulnerability frightens us, and the pervasive culture of efficiency pushes us to sweep it under the carpet, leaving no room for our human frailty,” he said. And even when people do not turn away, sometimes those who are sick think they should distance themselves from loved ones so they don’t become “a burden.”

But, Pope Francis said, “this is how loneliness sets in, and we can become poisoned by a bitter sense of injustice, as if God himself had abandoned us. Indeed, we may find it hard to remain at peace with the Lord when our relationship with others and with ourselves is damaged.”

If the Catholic Church is truly to be a “field hospital,” the pope said, then its members must act.

The church’s mission, he said, “is manifested in acts of care, particularly in the historical circumstances of our time. We are all fragile and vulnerable, and need that compassion which knows how to pause, approach, heal and raise up.”

“The plight of the sick is a call that cuts through indifference and slows the pace of those who go on their way as if they had no sisters and brothers,” Pope Francis insisted.

Those who are sick, he said, “are at the center of God’s people, and the church advances together with them as a sign of a humanity in which everyone is precious and no one should be discarded or left behind.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. House of Representatives Jan. 11 passed two pro-life measures, however neither has a clear path through the U.S. Senate to become law.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act passed first in a 220-210 vote, with one member, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, voting present, and with Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, joining Republicans to support the bill. According to proponents, the bill would require any infant that survives an abortion procedure to receive appropriate medical care for their gestational age.

Pro-life advocates gather near the U.S. Capitol in Washington Jan. 18, 2019. The U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 11, 2023, passed two pro-life measures on abortion, although neither have a clear path to passage by the U.S. Senate. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)

A second measure, a resolution condemning violence against “pro-life facilities, groups and even churches,” also passed in a 222-209 vote. This resolution condemned the violence that erupted following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which overturned prior precedents that found a constitutional right to abortion.

Three Democrats, Rep. Gonzalez, as well as Reps. Chrissy Houlaha of Pennsylvania and Marie Perez of Washington state, joined the resolution.

Neither measure is likely to be considered by the Senate, which remains under Democratic control.

The measures come in the first week of legislative business for the new Republican majority in the House after spending their first week in power electing a House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The votes took place as some Republican leaders, including former President Donald Trump, have blamed the issue of abortion as being responsible for the GOP’s lackluster performance in November’s midterm elections.

However, the House saw Republicans publicly restate their commitment to advancing pro-life policies.

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., the House Republican Conference vice chairman who introduced the resolution condemning the violence against pro-life facilities, said in a statement Congress needed to “make the position of Congress crystal clear: violence, property damage, threats and intimidation tactics must be condemned, and these clear violations of federal and state laws must be prosecuted.”

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, said in remarks on the House floor that “pregnancy care centers across the country have suffered a surge of violent attacks, firebombing and vandalism by pro-abortion activists in a coordinated effort to intimidate frontline volunteers and licensed medical professionals providing critical support to mothers in need and their unborn baby boys and girls.”

“Now more than ever, we – and that includes the Biden administration – need to ensure the safety and security of the estimated 3,000 pregnancy care centers that provide life-affirming alternatives to abortion — offering critical, quality care for pregnant women facing challenging circumstances and helping to save so many unborn, innocent lives,” Smith said.

Some lawmakers supportive of legal abortion, including Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., however, argued Republicans should condemn violence against abortion clinics.

“Republicans have put forth a measure that condemns attacks on anti-choice facilities but says nothing about the growing violence against women’s health clinics,” DeGette wrote on Twitter. “By ignoring these attacks, Republicans are sending a dangerous message that will embolden the extremists behind them.”

Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., who sponsored the reintroduction of the Born-Alive bill, said in a statement the legislation would “provide commonsense protections for innocent children and their mothers and will ensure all babies receive the essential care they need at an incredibly vulnerable moment.”

“All children should have the right to receive life-saving care, especially those who survive an abortion,” she said.

However, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the House Progressive Caucus, stated the bill is redundant.

“This bill is absurd for so many reasons, number one, it is obviously ALREADY illegal to kill a baby,” she posted to Twitter, adding: “The only new action this bill takes is to threaten jail time for health care workers.”

Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, praised the House for passing the Born-Alive bill.

“We commend the House of Representatives for passing legislation to protect innocent children from infanticide, and urge the Senate to follow suit,” Bishop Burbidge said in a statement. “Babies who are born alive during the process of an abortion deserve compassionate care and medical attention — just the same as any other newborn baby.”

Infants who survive botched abortions are rare, but Melissa Ohden, founder and CEO of the Abortion Survivors Network, said in a statement that tens of thousands of abortion survivors like her do exist.

“We applaud Congresswoman Wagner’s leadership in ensuring infants like me, and countless others, are guaranteed medical care and legal protections when abortions fail and life wins,” she said.

Other leading pro-life organizations praised the House for passing these measures.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said in a statement her organization “is grateful to House Republicans for prioritizing commonsense and compassionate pro-life bills in the new Congress.”

“We urge all legislators to vote in favor of these measures which align with the values of the vast majority of Americans,” she said.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement, that the GOP leadership recognized the federal government’s “crucial role in protecting our most vulnerable children and their mothers in the Dobbs era,” and both initiatives “affirm the sanctity of life.”

“Our government’s most sacred duty is to safeguard the lives of all Americans,” she said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis will celebrate the fourth annual Sunday of the Word of God Jan. 22 and, like he did last year, will confer the ministries of lector and catechist on several lay people, according to the Dicastery for Evangelization.

The theme for the 2023 celebration is: “We proclaim what we have seen,” a quotation from 1 John 1:3, the dicastery said.

A newly installed catechist receives a crucifix from Pope Francis during a Mass marking Sunday of the Word of God in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican in this Jan. 23, 2022, file photo. The pope’s liturgical calendar for January and early February includes Mass for the Sunday of the Word of God and vespers to close the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Pope Francis began the Sunday of the Word of God to promote “the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God,” which will help the church “experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.”

The Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Jan. 22 for the annual event was included in the Vatican’s short calendar of papal liturgical celebrations for January and early February. The calendar was published Jan. 12.

Also on the calendar is Pope Francis’ celebration of an ecumenical evening prayer service at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls Jan. 25 to close the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

The week is organized by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. The theme for 2023 is: “Do good; seek justice,” which comes from Isaiah 1:17.

The calendar also includes Pope Francis’ trip to Congo and South Sudan Jan. 31-Feb. 5, which means he will not celebrate at the Vatican the Feb. 2 feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the World Day for Consecrated Life.

My Dear Friends,

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court issued its infamous Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion throughout our land. For 50 years, committed Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, those of other faith traditions and some with no religious affiliation have labored, marched and prayed to overturn this decision in an effort to protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us – unborn infants in the womb. On June 24, 2022, just seven months ago, these noble efforts of so many bore fruit as the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

A pro-life sign is displayed Jan. 21, 2022, during the annual March for Life rally in Washington. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)

This year has given us all hope. Yet, brothers and sisters, for as encouraging as the past year has been, more than ever, we need to cling to this hope! For the task that we have engaged to build a culture of life in our land remains unfinished.

On Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, marchers from throughout our country will converge on our nation’s capital for the 50th annual March for Life. This year, however, rather than marching to the steps of the Supreme Court, where marchers have gone for decades to ask our highest Court’s Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, participants will march to a new front in our battle for life: the steps of the United States Capitol.

The theme for this year’s march is Next Steps: Marching in a Post-Roe America. It reminds us of the shift and expansion of the focus of our cause that has occurred since the justices overturned Roe. It is not only incumbent upon us who treasure life to advocate for federal pro-life policies. Now, we must work for the establishment of life-saving protections for the unborn in our state legislatures as well. Given this new landscape in our work to preserve and cherish life, I was honored to join with so many of you from throughout our 11 counties in Harrisburg this past September – close to 6,000 pro-life Pennsylvanians in all – for the first state march since Roe was overturned.

Sadly, for all of the strides that have recently been achieved, the tension that is present in our land following the Supreme Court’s decision is palpable. As such, it is vital that we not only continue our advocacy efforts in Pennsylvania and throughout our country, but that we especially continue to support mothers in need as an integral component of our next steps in building a culture of respect for all of human life.

A young woman is seen with her child during the annual March for Life rally in Washington Jan. 24, 2020. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)

We need to acknowledge with humility that the Church not only advocates for life in the womb but also works tirelessly to support life in all its forms from conception to natural death. In addition to serving the countless numbers of suffering lives that make their way into our midst, the Church in the United States and right here in our own diocese has developed scores of ministries dedicated to helping mothers facing challenging pregnancies and those who may struggle to care for their children after they are born. Through pregnancy care centers and parish-based ministries such as Walking with Moms in Need – to Shepherds Maternity House in East Stroudsburg that provides a safe home and assistance for pregnant woman and mothers and their newborn babies – to ministries like Project Rachel that offer hope, healing and spiritual renewal to women and couples who suffer after participating in abortion, our Church continues to offer a way forward to those who seek to live the Gospel of Life.

Yet, my friends, remember always that we engage this noble cause not for political reasons but as people of faith. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who recently passed to his eternal reward, reminded all of us of what is foundational to the cause that we have engaged. “God’s love does not differentiate between the newly conceived infant still in his or her mother’s womb and the child or young person, or the adult and the elderly person. God does not distinguish between them because he sees an impression of his own image and likeness (Gn 1:26) in each one. … Life is the first good received from God and is fundamental to all others; to guarantee the right to life for all and in an equal manner for all is the duty upon which the future of humanity depends.”

Simply put, if we desire to live our lives as Christians with authenticity, we have no choice but to proclaim the sanctity of life. We cannot merely speak of our respect for human life or self-righteously criticize those whose beliefs may be different from our own. We must enliven our words with action. Yet, in the midst of all that we are charged to do as disciples of Jesus, his way must always be our way. We must engage a different kind of war – a different kind of battle – than that which has been engaged by many in our land, sadly on both sides of this cause. Jesus never addressed violence with violence. Nor can we! Recall the words of a contemporary prophet of non-violence, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Brothers and sisters, ours is a noble cause rooted in faith and in the dignity of each human person – to bring to completion the unfinished work that has been engaged in our land for some 50 years so that the masterpiece of God’s creative work – the human person – will be respected and treasured from the moment of conception to its natural end. May we be guided by words of Pope Francis, as he challenges us to give witness to our faith, “Being Catholic entails a great responsibility … The Lord counts on you to spread the Gospel of Life.”

Faithfully yours in Christ,

Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L.
Bishop of Scranton

Pennsylvanians for Human Life through The VOICE of JOHN invites you to join us in a celebration of Life. The event will honor the memory of Monsignor Arthur Kaschenbach, a priest who spoke with courage in defense of human life. Through his priesthood he was always faithful to the ministry of The VOICE of JOHN and PHL. The event will recall a day that will go down in infamy, the legalization of abortion in 1972. With prayer and music, we will celebrate the overturn of Roe, as we honor the lives of almost 65 million children who have died from abortion.

The event will take place on the 50th year anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision, Sunday January 22nd at 2 PM, at St John Bosco Church, route 93 in Sugarloaf. We are pleased to announce the featured speaker for the event: Elizabeth Leon, writer, speaker, and musician from Ashburn, Virginia and the author of “Let Yourself Be Loved: Big Lessons from a Little Life”, the story which explores the heart of a mother carrying a baby to term with the certainty of death. John Paul Raphael lived only 28 hours and 10 minutes. She and her husband, Dr Ralph Leon, are the parents of ten children—5 of hers, 4 of his, and their son, John Paul Raphael. Elizabeth will share videos of her little boy and the holy mysteries of her son’s life.

The event is intended to inspire, educate and motivate us as we move forward in a “World Post Roe”, Dr Frank Polidora will preside as master of ceremonies. Music by Shannon Marsyada.

The event is free of charge, donations will be welcome. Light refreshments will be served. The event chairperson is Nancy Zola and will conclude with a pro-life rosary for anyone wishing to remain.

For more information, contact Maryann Lawhon at (570)-788-JOHN (5646), or Carol Matz at 570-956-0817/

SCRANTON — Faithful throughout the Diocese of Scranton will join with members of various Christian congregations of northeastern Pennsylvania for an Ecumenical Celebration of the Word of God on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 12:10 p.m. in the Cathedral of Saint Peter.

The event highlights the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity — celebrated each January since its inception in 1908 — which will be observed this year during Jan. 18-25.

The theme for the 2023 celebration is: “Do Good; Seek Justice.” (Isaiah 1:17)

Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will serve as leader of prayer for the traditional ecumenical prayer service. Past chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Bishop Bambera was elected to reprise the role during the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops fall general assembly when he was voted chairman-elect of the interfaith arm of the Bishops’ Conference.

Guest homilist for this year’s prayer service is Protodeacon Sergei Kapral of the Orthodox Church in America. Well known for his involvement in ecumenical relations, Protodeacon Kapral attended the renowned Bossey Ecumenical Institute in Switzerland and holds membership in numerous organizations promoting ecumenism and concern for the environment.

Students from Holy Rosary School in Duryea will provide the music for the religious gathering, under the direction of David Tighe.

All faithful are welcome to attend the Jan. 19 Ecumenical Prayer Service at the Scranton Cathedral, as well as encouraged to participate in local Christian unity events throughout the weeklong observance.

The prayer service will be broadcast live at 12:10 p.m. on CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton. It will also be made available on the Scranton Diocese website and across all diocesan social media platforms.

As the universal Catholic Church, including local dioceses, immerses itself deeply into the call for a new evangelization proclaimed by Pope Francis through the 2023 Synod on Synodality, both ecumenism and interreligious dialogue have been given prominence in the discussion.

The Vademecum for the Synod on Synodality, the Official Handbook for Listening and Discernment in Local Churches, it is stated: “The dialogue between Christians of different confessions, united by one baptism, has a special place in the synodal journey.”

According to Monsignor Vince Grimalia, Diocesan Coordinator for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity provides not only an opportunity for prayer for Christianity, but a time to learn more about various Christian churches and communities while offering motivation and commitment for participation in ecumenical activities.

“It is an opportunity to renew and re-energize our commitment to Christian unity,” Monsignor Grimalia said. “In a world with so much disunity, there is a need to overcome divisions and polarization and work to get nations and various ethnic, cultural and language groups to work together.”

In accord with such strong beliefs for religious unity, the United Nations since 2010 has celebrated the first week of February as “World Interfaith Harmony Week.”

During the annual observance, an “International Day of Human Fraternity” has been designated by the U.N. for Feb. 4 to promote harmony between all peoples, regardless of their religious traditions.

SCRANTON – Just hours before the annual March for Life is expected to take place in Washington, D.C., the faithful of the Diocese of Scranton will join together for a Mass for Life at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton.

The Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will serve as principal celebrant and homilist at the Mass, which is being celebrated for a greater respect of all human life, from conception to natural death, and every moment in between.

Even with Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which allows more freedom at the state level to enact pro-life laws, the necessary work to build a culture of life in the United States is not finished. Sadly, the number of abortions annually is still well over 900,000 each year, and that number is only expected to decrease by roughly 200,000 each year in a post-Roe America.

While some pro-life supporters from parishes and organizations in the Diocese of Scranton will be joining the March for Life in Washington on Friday, others are expected to attend Thursday’s Mass as a way to pray that every life is celebrated, valued and protected.

People attending the Vigil Mass for Life are encouraged to bring a new pack of diapers to be donated to either Saint Joseph’s Center Baby and Children’s Pantry or Shepherd’s Maternity House, a facility in East Stroudsburg run by Catholic Social Services that provides educational, emotional and material support to expectant mothers.

My Dear Friends,

Faithfully yours in Christ,

Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L.
Bishop of Scranton