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The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of venerating saints, men and women whose lives and deeds serve as shining examples of faith, compassion, and unwavering devotion. These saints, recognized for their extraordinary holiness, have left an indelible mark on the Catholic faith, inspiring countless believers throughout history. In this article, we embark on a journey into the world of Catholic saints, exploring their stories, miracles, and the profound devotion they continue to evoke.

The Saints: A Diverse Tapestry of Holiness

Catholic saints are a diverse and inclusive group, hailing from various walks of life, cultures, and historical periods. They include martyrs who faced persecution with unwavering faith, mystics who experienced profound spiritual revelations, and dedicated individuals who devoted their lives to serving the poor and marginalized. This diversity reflects the universal nature of the Catholic Church, which honors the sanctity of lives from all corners of the world.

Stories of Sacrifice and Martyrdom

Many Catholic saints are known for their incredible acts of sacrifice and martyrdom. One of the most renowned martyrs is Saint Sebastian, who lived during the Roman Empire. Despite facing brutal persecution for his Christian faith, he remained steadfast in his beliefs. His story serves as a testament to the resilience of faith in the face of adversity.

Miraculous Intercessions

One of the distinctive aspects of Catholic saints is their association with miracles. Saints are believed to intercede on behalf of the faithful, presenting their prayers and petitions to God. Countless Catholics have reported miraculous healings, recoveries, and interventions attributed to the intercession of a particular saint. Saint Anthony of Padua, for instance, is often invoked to help find lost objects, a practice that has led to numerous stories of lost items miraculously being found.

Devotion and Pilgrimages

Devotion to Catholic saints is not confined to stories and prayers; it often takes physical form through pilgrimages to holy sites and shrines. Pilgrims from around the world visit places like Lourdes in France, where Saint Bernadette Soubirous experienced visions of the Virgin Mary, or the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, where the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary is displayed. These pilgrimages are a testament to the enduring power of faith and devotion to the saints.

Inspiring Lives of Service

Catholic saints are not only revered for their miracles but also for their lives of service to humanity. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for example, dedicated her life to serving the poorest of the poor in the slums of India. Her unwavering commitment to compassion and selflessness has inspired countless individuals to follow in her footsteps and serve those in need.

The Process of Canonization

The Catholic Church follows a meticulous process known as canonization to formally recognize individuals as saints. This process includes thorough investigations into the individual’s life, deeds, writings, and the presence of miracles attributed to their intercession. Once the Church declares someone a saint, they are officially included in the canon of saints, and their feast day is celebrated in the liturgical calendar.

Saints as Role Models

Catholic saints serve as role models not only for their extraordinary piety but also for their humanity. Their stories demonstrate that sanctity is attainable for individuals from all walks of life. Saints struggled with doubts, faced personal challenges, and endured hardships, making their journeys relatable to ordinary believers.

A Source of Comfort and Inspiration

For Catholics, saints are more than historical figures; they are sources of comfort and inspiration in times of need. Saints are often invoked in prayers for guidance, strength, and intercession. Their stories provide solace to those facing difficulties and encouragement to persevere in their faith.

In Conclusion

Catholic saints are a testament to the enduring power of faith, the resilience of the human spirit, and the capacity for compassion and selflessness. Their stories, miracles, and devotion continue to inspire and uplift people worldwide. Whether through stories of sacrifice, miraculous intercessions, or lives of service, these saints remind us of the boundless potential for goodness within humanity. In their legacy, we find not only faith but also hope and a call to emulate their virtues in our own lives.

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Holy Quadragesima reminds us that the world cannot be confined within the narrow framework of personal needs, the Bishop of Rome said in his homily, because the Lord must have the main place in our lives, not just “scraps of time,” so we must “stop the dictatorship of ever-overflowing plans and the demands of ever more superficial and cumbersome ego; what really matters should be chosen.”

The gracious time of Lent, the Holy Father stressed, should not be wasted, but realized in the three great ways of almsgiving, prayer and fasting. “It is not a question of outward rites, but of gestures expressing the renewal of the heart, to which sincerity of spirit and coherence of action must always correspond. In the eyes of God, our almsgiving, prayer and fasting express who we really are: His children, brothers and sisters. These three paths reveal our compassion for those in need, they encourage us to meet our loving Father, and they are a “spiritual gym” where we give up the superfluous and return to the truth about ourselves. According to Bishop Rome, ashes remind us, remind us of who we are and where we came from, that the Lord is God and we are but fragile creations of His hands that belong to our Creator and need Him. Only with God do we rise from the ashes; without Him we are but dust.

The Lord Jesus, the Pope stressed, awaits our return and asks us not to despair, even when we fall into the dust of our own weakness and sin: “For He knows our composition and remembers that we are dust. We, on the other hand, often forget this, believing that without Him we would be self-sufficient, strong, and invincible. According to His Holiness, the forty days of preparation for Easter are a time of truth, a favorable chance to shed the masks of falsehood and hypocrisy, “to remember who is the Creator and who is the creation. In the ways of Quadragesima, we can realize that man exists only “in a relationship with God and in a vital relationship with others,” so self-sufficiency is false, and idolatry of the ego is destructive, because it “locks us in a cage of solitude.

Lent is an auspicious time to return to God, to our brothers and sisters, a time to break the chains of individualism, Pope Francis said at the end of his homily.

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The abbot of the Jesuits in Athens, Fr. Pierre Salembier recalls that the community is part of the French-speaking province of France and Belgium, whereas previously it was affiliated with the province of Sicily. He introduced himself personally, reminding Francis that they had been together at the 1987 Congregation of Procurators. He was a professor in Bordeaux and then was asked to move to Athens. After him, the Jesuit brother Georges Marangonos, who plays the organ and acts as treasurer, presents himself. The pope intervenes, saying:

Let me tell you a secret: when I was a provincial, before allowing someone to be ordained a priest, I had to ask the opinions of my brethren, and I was convinced that the Jesuit brothers did best with this evaluation. I remember once there was a graduating theology student who was especially distinguished by intelligence, character, and a pleasant disposition. The brothers said to me, “Be careful, send him to work for a while before ordination. It was like they were looking in the water. I wonder why Jesuit brothers have the ability to grasp the main thing. Perhaps because they know how to combine the realm of the senses with physical work. They touch reality with their hands. We priests are sometimes abstract. Brothers are concrete, well versed in conflicts and difficulties: they have a keen eye. When we talk about “promoting” the role of the brothers in the Society today, we must always keep in mind that everything-even their studies-should be seen as a tool for their particular vocation, which goes far beyond what they know.

Then Fr. Pierre Chongk Tsong Chan, a Korean who became a Jesuit 21 years ago. He is now rector of the parish of the Sacred Heart of Christ the Savior and a staff member of the Arrupe Center, an institution for refugee children, which he himself founded but is now only a staff member. Pope Francis comments:

Two things. One: You speak Greek very well! You’re a universal Korean! Two: there is something very important in what you say. You founded the Arrupe Center, you are the “founding father”; you have shown your creativity, you know very well what this center is, what its nature and purpose are. But now you are no longer in charge. That’s a very good thing. When one starts a process, one should let it develop, let the cause grow, and then leave. This is what every Jesuit should do. None of us owns any apostolic work, because it belongs to the Lord. This is how our creative impassivity is manifested. One must be a father and allow the child to grow. The Society of Jesus went into a crisis of fecundity when it wanted to regulate any creative development by means of O. Pedro Arrupe, becoming General of the Order, did the opposite: renewed the spirituality of the Society and let it grow. This is a great position: to do things right, and then to detach oneself without being possessive. To be fruitful as a father, one must be a father, not a master. Ignatius says a wonderful thing in Constitutions: great principles must be embodied according to the circumstances of places, times and people. And this is done through discernment. A Jesuit who acts without recognition is not a true Jesuit.

Next, Fr. Sébastien Fréry. He is 84 years old and has had various pastoral responsibilities in the parish and working with young people. He tells the Pope that the community was once large and very active, making significant contributions to society. Many of our apostolic works were cultural and intellectual, open to dialogue. One of those things was the publication of a magazine. Things are much more modest now. The Jesuits do what they can with their few resources. The Pope responding, comments like this:

The weakening of the Society of Jesus cannot be overlooked. When I joined the order, there were 33,000 Jesuits. How many are we now? More or less half. And our numbers will continue to decline. This is a fact for many religious orders and congregations. And it means something, we must ask: What is the significance of this fact? After all, this decrease in numbers is not up to us. The vocation is from God. If there is no calling, it is not up to us. I believe the Lord gives us a lesson concerning the consecrated life. For us he has a sense of humiliation. In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius always points this out: humiliation. Regarding the crisis of vocations, the Jesuit cannot remain at the level of a sociological explanation. This is at best half the truth. The deeper truth is that the Lord leads us to this humiliation through the reduction of our numbers in order to open everyone to the “third degree of humility,” the only effective fruitfulness of the Jesuit. The third degree of humility is the goal of the Exercises. The great scientific journal no longer exists: what does the Lord have in mind? Humiliation, humiliation! I don’t know if I have made myself clear. We must get used to humiliation.

О. Fr. Freri parried, “You are right, but my question is: What is our future? When we were young, we dreamed of a dialogue with the Orthodox Church. But now we see that by God’s Providence we are doing other things, taking care of migrants. What about dialogue with the Orthodox?” Francis answers:

We must be faithful to the cross of Christ. With these feelings of ours, we come to the Lord and ask what He wants from us – and then in God we become able to act creatively: concrete problems, concrete solutions. Look, the dialogue with the Orthodox is now at a good point. So you have sown well with prayer, desire, and what you have been able to do.

Introduces Fr. Tonny Cornoedus, a Belgian-Flemish Jesuit. He worked in Morocco in a community that no longer exists, then was a parish priest in Belgium and is now in Greece because a French-speaking priest is needed here to work with refugees. He talks about his work, and also about his misfortune: he was once arrested, mistaken for a human trafficker.

What a beautiful humiliation! Listening to you, I thought of the end of a Jesuit’s life: after years of intense work to reach old age, probably tired, full of contradictions, but with a smile, with the joy of one who has done his work. This is the good tiredness of a man who has given his life. There is ugly neurotic fatigue, that’s not what we’re talking about. But there is also good fatigue. When you reach old age, full of weariness but not bitterness, where there is the ability to smile, then you are a song of hope. A Jesuit who has reached our age and continues to work, patiently enduring contradictions and not losing his smile, becomes a hymn of hope. I am reminded of the movie “Return of the Soldier,” which I watched as a child and liked it very much then. The soldier returns home tired, wounded, but with a smile because he is home, having done his duty. It’s nice to have Jesuits like you with a smile and the confidence that the seed that was sown has borne fruit! Both in life and in death, the Jesuit must bear witness that he follows Jesus Christ. Sowing joy, “with cunning,” with a smile, is the grace of a full, truly fulfilled life. A life not without sin, yes, but full of the joy of serving God. Thank you for your testimony and keep up the good work!

Fr. Marcin Baran, a 46-year-old Jesuit from Poland, tells us about himself and his ministry. He says he is in Greece because there is a large Polish community here. There used to be almost 300,000 Poles in this country; now there are about 12,000. There are four thousand of them in Athens, and they need a priest who speaks Polish, because those believers who attend church – there are about a thousand – are very attached to their native language. He’s a doctor of philosophy, but now his work is with the common people, the workers… Francis comments:

Philosophy of everyday life! What you tell me really touched me: you went through all this training in philosophy, and then God sent you to the Poles of Athens. That’s the creative impassivity that helps you move forward! This is the vocation of the Jesuits: you go where God reveals His will and expects obedience. God knows. We see the meaning of our apostolic life not at the beginning, but at the end of our lives, looking back with a gaze full of wisdom. St. John of the Cross said: at the end of life we will be judged only by love. You studied, got your doctorate … and now you’re the chaplain of the Poles in Athens. What is the meaning of this? – According to the logic of the Kingdom of God, the logic of contradiction, inexplicable…

Finally, Fr. Michel Rousseau, exclaiming: “This meeting is Pentecost for me!” He introduced himself by saying that he had studied archaeology in Athens. “My teacher was a friend of Albert Camus. For half a century I have been involved in dialogue between faith and culture and ecumenism. I was editor of the magazines Open Horizons and Herald of the Sacred Heart. Now I am in charge of the Apostolate of Prayer.” The Pope asks him how old he is. Fr. Rousseau replies: “Eighty-three!” and adds: “I pray, ‘Lord, make me a man useful, but not important.'” The Pope comments:

The apostolate of prayer is very important. Father Fornos deals with it very well, in a modern way. Prayer is the center of everything! I see that you are all “young” and full of joy in what you do. Thank you for your service in the name of the Church. I am encouraged by what you are doing.

The Pope concludes by suggesting that we pray together. Before parting, the rector of the community gives the Pope a painting made by young people from the Jesuit Refugee Service. Francis and the Jesuits prayed “Hail Mary” together and then took a group photo. The pope said goodbye, shaking hands with each of those present again.

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American Catholics generally like the new Pope Francis. Sixty-two percent of Catholics responded favorably to him. However, when it came to the question “would you like to see Pope Francis change the church’s position on certain issues to better reflect the views of the faithful?”, 49 percent of Catholics surveyed answered in the affirmative.

This is not surprising. According to another recent New York Times poll, American Catholics are at odds with the Vatican on many issues: by a ratio of about 2 to 1, those surveyed favored legalizing same-sex marriage, having female clergy, abolishing celibacy, allowing contraception, abortion and so on – all positions completely unacceptable to the Catholic Church. But this contradiction does not embarrass American Catholics – when asked, “Is it possible to disagree with the pope on issues such as birth control, abortion and divorce and still be good Catholics?” 83 percent of those surveyed answered yes.

The important thing here is to understand the historical context – American Catholics have had to maneuver between two poles – the dogmatic Vatican and a freedom-loving, individualistic American society.

From the very beginning, Catholics faced the extreme hostility of the Protestant majority in the English colonies of America, which later gave birth to the United States. Persecuted in England during the Restoration, the Puritans, on their way to the New World to build a shining city on the Hill, went from being persecuted to being persecuted in North America. In the New England colonies founded by the Pilgrim fathers, a ferocious clerical regime reigned.

John Locke, an eminent 17th-century English political thinker and author of the concept of separation of church and state, denied Catholics equal rights with other Christian denominations. In his “Experience of Religious Tolerance,” he wrote:

• Since neither condescension nor severity can turn the Papists, so long as they remain so, into supporters of your government, for they are hostile to it both in their principles and in their interests, and must therefore regard them as irreconcilable enemies, in whose loyalty you can never be sure, As long as they are obliged to obey blindly the infallible pope, who carries on his belt the keys of their conscience, and can on occasion resolve them from all oaths, promises, and obligations to the sovereign, especially if he is a heretic, and arm them to riot against the government, I think they should not enjoy the benefit of toleration.

Catholics in America have come a long way toward equality before the law and, just as importantly, in public opinion. The first Catholic church in the New World was not consecrated until 1784, before which Catholics prayed in home chapels. The number of Catholics then was about 30,000. All states except Pennsylvania and Delaware banned Catholics from holding public office. New Hampshire was the last to do so, in 1877. After the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the U.S. Catholic community grew considerably. Throughout the nineteenth century it grew thanks to mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and the Kingdom of Poland, but the immigrants were people of low social status and so was the status of their faith.

During the same years, the Catholic Church, in order to shield its flock from the influence of American Protestantism, organized parallel social institutions in America – hospitals, newspapers, colleges, and parochial schools. The attempt to maintain separation, however, did not work – assimilation took place, American Catholics became part of society and shared its individualistic ideas and aspirations for freedom. Our Radio Liberty colleague Brian Whitmore, who grew up Catholic, told us that – ironically – it was at Jesuit St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia that he began to wonder “why are we right?” – and as a result he stopped attending church and being a churchgoing believer.

The liberty of American Catholics can be judged by the fact that in 1899 Pope Leo the 13th even issued a special encyclical against the heresy called “Americanism”. Here is an excerpt from it: “…there are opinions that in order to more easily attract those who differ in their views from her, the Church should give her teaching a form more consonant with the spirit of the times, and to soften somewhat her ancient severity, to make some concessions. Many think that such concessions must be made, not only to the way of life, but even to the doctrines which are the depository of the faith… It does not take many words to prove the falsity of these ideas… The Vatican Council declared, “The doctrine of faith given by God is not a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but a sacred gift to be faithfully kept…”

That is to say, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Catholics in America have also been under the suspicion of the Vatican, without finally shaking off the suspicions of American society.

Even in 1958, in “A Protestant View of American Catholicism,” three religious figures, John Bennett, Stanley Lowell and William Clancy, wrote of two profound problems with Catholicism: “One is the dogmatic intolerance that is part of the Roman Catholic Church… The other basic problem is the serious conflict between an authoritarian, centralized hierarchical church and an open, pluralistic, democratic society.”

The suspicion of American society was overcome two years later by John F. Kennedy, a Catholic of Irish descent who won the 1960 presidential election.

In September 1960, during his campaign, Kennedy spoke in Houston to members of the Protestant Pastors Association of America:

“While religious questions are the obligatory and necessary subject of this convention, I want to emphasize from the outset that in the election of 1960 we are confronted with much more important problems. These include the expansion of communism, which now nests just 90 miles off the coast of Florida; these are the hungry children I saw in West Virginia; these are the elderly unable to pay the doctor; these are the families forced to abandon their farms. There are so many slums and so few schools in America that it is no longer about the moon or space. These are the real issues that must decide the outcome of the campaign. These are not religious issues, because war, hunger, ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”

The speech itself was a major milestone – it could be considered Kennedy’s response to those longstanding accusations of John Locke against Catholics.

“Because I am a Catholic, and a Catholic has never yet been elected president, the real issues of this campaign have been overshadowed. And so it seems necessary to me to state again: which God I believe in matters only to me, and it should matter to everyone else what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where church and state are separate, completely separate. Where neither a Catholic prelate tells a Catholic president how to act, nor does a Protestant priest dictate to his parishioners who they should vote for. I believe in an America where no church or ecclesiastical institution is funded by the state and enjoys no political privileges. I believe in an America where no one can be denied employment because of their faith, different from the faith of the president who appoints to office, or the faith of the people who vote if the office is elective.

I believe in an America where no official asks for or accepts advice concerning his office, either from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other church body. Where no religious organization seeks directly or indirectly to impose its will on the people or on politicians, and where religious freedom is so immutable that actions against any church are regarded as a threat to all other churches.

Today, Catholics hold key positions in the Democratic Party and the Barack Obama administration: Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Democrat leader in the lower house of Congress Nancy Pelosi, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius, Presidential National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, recent CIA director and then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are all Catholic. And, of course, none of America’s top officials look back to the Holy See in the line of duty. Here is a vivid example: the Russian spy Robert Hannsen and the FBI director who caught him, Louis Free, are not only both Catholics, but both were members of Opus Dei and were members of the same church.

So the relationship between American Catholics and society can be considered fully regulated, but the same cannot be said for their relationship with the Vatican.

There is a kind of free religious market in America, where, as the sociologist Claude Fisher writes, religions, whose membership is usually determined by birth and environment, face a competition of religions based on individual choice. In this competition, the Catholic Church, even liberalized in the second half of the twentieth century, is not always successful.

Fisher cites a study showing that in the past decade about 30 percent of people over 30 who grew up as Catholics no longer consider themselves members of that church. (In the 1970s, the figure was 13 percent.)

This is also due to the sex scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years, but also to the divergence between American voluntarism and the dogmatism of Catholicism.

Lowe’s and the ruin of the church

78 percent of Catholics asked in the aforementioned study for the New York Times, “When faced with a difficult moral choice, would you rather follow the teachings of the pope or your conscience,” chose “your conscience. This, however, does not mean, as American Catholics see it, a break from the church-as we have seen, they believe it is possible to disagree with the church and remain “good Catholics. How they manage to reconcile such views is evident in the same survey: many participants said that the Catholic Church and its American bishops do not understand the needs of the flock. However, according to most, parish priests do understand these needs. That is, for the flock, the church is not so hierarchical as to be more important to the grassroots, horizontal level. This is probably the influence of the American social order.

In November 1997 Archbishop Francis George of Chicago made a startling statement: U.S. citizens are culturally Calvinist, even those who practice the Catholic faith. American society, he added, is the secular counterpart of the faith, based on personal interpretation of scripture and personal experience with God.

The isolationism of American Catholics sometimes takes funny forms. During the election of a new pope, in a report from the Vatican, Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was asked whether the conclave would be long or fast. He replied that it would be quick: “I miss New York. And I’m running out of socks!”.

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The World Meeting of Catholic Youth opens in the Spanish capital, Madrid, on the evening of Tuesday, August 16, and organizers estimate it will bring together about a million people. The six-day Catholic gathering will begin with a worship service in the Cibeles Square in the center of the capital.

The forum program includes not only services but also more than 300 cultural events. A high point will be the mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday, August 21, at Cuatro Vientos airfield near Madrid. The pontiff is expected to arrive in Madrid on August 18.

Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, initiated the World Meetings of Catholic Youth. The event is held every two or three years. Benedict XVI called it a “feast of faith.”

Convention amid mass protests

This year’s gathering coincided with a period of mass social protests in Spain. Many in that country are unhappy with the left-liberal course of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government, which has been forced to call early general elections for Nov. 20 due to continued social ferment in the country. Some of Zapatero’s reforms, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage, express divorce, and the legalization of abortion, have led to serious conflicts with the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, social protest activists from the “Indignados” (“Indignados”) movement are annoyed that the Madrid authorities dispersed demonstrators who had settled in the central square of the capital Puerta del Sol due to the arrival of Benedict XVI for the World Meeting of Catholic Youth.

In this context, the “Outraged” called for new demonstrations – against the visit of the Pope, the expulsion of protesters from the Puerta del Sol and the high costs of the Catholic gathering.

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