Pope Francis was in his element when he opened the ‘Door of Charity’ for the poor

Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Jubilee Year of Mercy at the Vatican Dec. 8. (CNS photo/Maurizio Brambatti, EPA)

 

By John L. Allen Jr.

Associate editor December 19, 2015

ROME — Years from now, records will show that the special jubilee Year of Mercy decreed by Pope Francis began on Dec. 8, 2015, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. If you ask the pontiff himself, however, he’d probably tell you it really got underway on Friday.
That afternoon, Francis headed across town to visit a hostel for the homeless run by Caritas, the main diocesan charity in Rome, in order to open a “holy door of charity.” In a sense, it was the natural follow-up to what happened on Dec. 8, when Francis threw open an ornate door to St. Peter’s Basilica that’s otherwise bricked up when jubilees aren’t underway.
That gesture traditionally is how jubilee years commence, but Friday’s rite was a novelty — a pontiff opening a door not to a church, where spiritual indulgences are on offer, but rather a charity center, where the “grace” dispensed is more tangible and this-worldly.

In most of the ways that matter, this was Pope Francis in his element.
Anyone who spends time watching Francis in action realizes he doesn’t particularly care for big ceremonial productions. He’s most comfortable in smaller, more intimate settings, especially with people who don’t qualify as VIPs, where he can set aside whatever speech has been prepared for him and go off-the-cuff in Spanish or Italian.
Celebrating Mass on Friday for a group of 200 people representing the various activities run by Caritas in Rome — homeless people, AIDS patients, mothers with developmentally challenged children, refugees, and so on — was, to hear Francis tell it, an expression of the heart of what the Year of Mercy is supposed to be all about.

“When we get close to those who are suffering, those who’ve been thrown away in society, that’s where Jesus is,” the pontiff said in his extemporaneous homily.
“If you want to find God, you have to seek him in humility, in poverty, where he’s hidden — in the needy, the neediest, the sick, the hungry, the prisoners,” he said.
The hostel Francis visited Friday afternoon is named for Don Luigi di Liegro, the founder of Caritas in Rome who ran it until his death in 1997. He was famed for bringing together disparate groups — the Salvation Army, Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity, Sant’Egidio, among others — into an effective network to serve the city’s poor, its immigrant population, and people often ignored by public institutions, such as residents with mental and psychological difficulties.

The fact that Francis was at home there, however, didn’t mean all was sweetness and light. On the contrary, the pontiff sounded almost like an Old Testament prophet in warning affluent and comfortable Romans about the consequences of indifference.
“Jesus has told us how our judgment will be,” Francis said. “He won’t say: ‘You, come with me because you gave lots of beautiful offerings to the Church, you were a benefactor of the Church, so come into Heaven.’ No, you can’t buy your way into Heaven,” Francis said.
“Jesus won’t say: ‘You were very important, you studied a lot and earned many honors, come into Heaven.’ No. Honors don’t open the door of Heaven.

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“What will Jesus say? ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was homeless and you gave me a place to live; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to see me’.”
Francis offered up a prayer that the Lord will help everyone grasp that “the paths of presumption, of wealth, of vanity, of pride, are not the ways to salvation.”
Looking out at a group of people typically seen as “discarded” by society, Francis said that feeling of being tossed aside is actually a “grace.”
“It would be beautiful if every one of us, all Romans, felt discarded, and thus felt the need of God’s help,” the pontiff said.
Francis celebrated the Mass along with four other priests, including the Rev. Tommas Fanti, who, at 96, is still going strong in serving Rome’s poor. The readings and prayers of the faithful were presented by the people whom Caritas serves; the prayers were actually written by a young mother with a disabled child, a refugee requesting asylum in Italy, and a homeless person living in the hostel Francis was visiting.
Basically, the pope’s message was that these folks are not only what the Year of Mercy is all about, but also the Christmas season.
“In choosing how he’d lead his [human] life, the Lord didn’t pick a great city with a grand empire, he didn’t pick a princess or a countess for his mother, somebody important, and he didn’t choose a luxurious palace,” Francis said.
“It seems that it was all done intentionally,” he said, referring to the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth, in order that the Lord would be “hidden” by the usual worldly standards.
Upon leaving the hostel, Francis urged people to go forward during the jubilee year in an “embrace of mercy.”
Over the coming days, Francis will conduct any number of important engagements: his annual speech to the Roman Curia, the Christmas liturgies, his New Year’s Day Urbi et Orbi blessing, a meeting with the diplomatic corps, and so on.
In terms of getting to the core of what he wants his jubilee year to be about, however, it’s hard to imagine that for him anything will top Friday’s encounter with the “hidden” and “discarded” who clearly form this pope’s comfort zone.

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Taken from: http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/12/19/pope-francis-was-in-his-element-when-he-opened-the-door-of-charity-for-the-poor/

Pope Francis was right about condoms and HIV

By Mary Rezac

 

Vatican City, Dec 13, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On his return flight from Africa, as Pope Francis fielded the customary questions from the press, he challenged a journalist on a question about condom use in the fight to prevent HIV.

“We know that prevention is key. We know that condoms are not the only method of solving the epidemic, but it’s an important part of the answer,” the journalist said. “Is it not time for the Church to change its position on the matter? To allow the use of condoms to prevent more infections?”

The question, Pope Francis said, seemed too narrow to address such a widespread and complex issue. Condom use in and of itself could never solve the HIV crisis or other problems facing many African nations.

“The problem is bigger,” the Pope said.

“This question makes me think of one they once asked Jesus: ‘Tell me, teacher, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Is it obligatory to heal?’ This question, ‘Is doing this lawful,’…but malnutrition, the development of the person, slave labor, the lack of drinking water, these are the problems.”

The Catholic Church has always held that artificial contraception use is immoral. In a 2010 book interview that made waves, Pope Benedict XVI said that while using a condom can represent a step in the right direction as far as showing concern for the other person, it is still an immoral solution to the HIV crisis.

But was Pope Francis right to be so dismissive of condom usage? Do condoms actually play a practical and important role in the fight against HIV?

An increasing amount of evidence says no.

 

Abstinence and fidelity in Uganda

 

At the peak of the HIV crisis in the 1980s, the country of Uganda had one of the highest infection rates – almost 25 percent of the population were HIV positive by 1991, according to the Washington Post.With the help of the country’s religious leaders, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni adopted the simplest and least expensive intervention possible in the poor and war-torn country – a public education program stressing abstinence before marriage and faithfulness afterward, largely de-emphasizing condom use except for those most at risk.

In just eight years, the country saw the most significant decline in HIV infection rates in the world.

According to a 2004 article in the “Journal of International Development”, it was “the lack of condom promotion during the 1980s and early 1990s (that) contributed to the relative success of behavior change strategies in Uganda.”

But just as Uganda was seeing a significant decline, the United States intervened, restructuring the country’s approach and focusing more on condoms and less on abstinence and monogamy. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Harvard’s leading HIV researcher Dr. Edward Green and Wilfred Mlay, then-vice president for World Vision Africa, wrote that while the United States was generous in offering their help, the Western ideologies and approaches may have actually undermined the success previously seen in Uganda.

“The Ugandan turnaround was well underway by the time foreign AIDS experts began to arrive in the early 1990s, bringing with them the Western public health approaches—and values. They began to retool Uganda’s AIDS prevention efforts away from abstinence and fidelity—goals that many Westerners felt were unrealistic. As condom use increased, the percentage of young singles having sex rose from 27 percent to 37 percent between 1995 and 2000. Health officials worry that infection rates may increase as well,” they wrote.

The problem with condoms

Regardless of religious belief, condom use to curb HIV infection proves problematic for several reasons.

One of the biggest issues with the promotion of condoms as a solution to HIV is that most people do not consistently or correctly use condoms, even after going through sex education.

A study published by “The Annals of Pharmacotherapy” found that out of 500 couples who were repeatedly told by their doctors to use condoms, only eight percent did so consistently, despite knowledge that one partner had herpes. A different study found that only 50 percent of couples in which one partner had HIV used condoms consistently over time.

Another part of the problem is something called risk compensation. In an interview with the BBC, Dr. Green said that risk compensation happens when people use risk-reducing technology in a way that assumes the technology cancels out all risk.

As an example, in an interview with BBC, Dr. Green compared condom use to sunblock. He said the protection offered by sunblock is cancelled out when the person using sunblock assumes they are completely protected and therefore spends even more time in the sun.

Similarly, people using condoms are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior because of the assumed protection, when in fact repeated exposure to infected persons decreases the protection that condoms offer.

The phenomenon of risk compensation also means people using condoms are more likely to have a greater number of sexual partners, increasing their risk for certain STDs which in turn increases the likelihood of the transmission of HIV. Many STDs create open sores, which act as portals of entry for HIV infection.

Another reason condoms alone fail at protecting people against HIV is because of the likelihood of disease transmission over time. According to a 2001 article in The Lancet, the more frequently one changes sexual partners, the more likely it is that they will spread HIV.

This is because HIV is highly contagious when it is first contracted, but it is often not detectable until later. Therefore, an infected person could think they are HIV-free and go on to infect more people before they realize they have HIV. The study found that if there were at least six months in between sexual partners, the rate of HIV infections would significantly decrease.

 

A tale of two countries: Philippines vs. Thailand

 

Two different countries in Asia help further illustrate the effectiveness of abstinence and fidelity programs over condom promotion.In 1984, both countries reported their first case of HIV infection. But the two governments had radically different responses.

Thailand’s response was to promote condom use across the board, while the largely Catholic country of the Philippines focused their response on promoting abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterwards.

By 2005, the HIV rate in Thailand was 50 times higher than that of the Philippines.

And while some experts hail Thailand as a success story rather than the Philippines, since Thailand’s rate of infection eventually decreased from previous levels, other experts say it is no coincidence that the Catholicism which permeates Filipino culture has led to a small rate of HIV infection.

 

Catholicism and HIV infection rates

 

Although some experts are hesitant to recognize the effectiveness of abstinence and fidelity programs promoted by the Catholic Church, a 2005 article in British Medical Journal hailed their success.

“The greater the percentage of Catholics in any country, the lower the level of HIV. If the Catholic Church is promoting a message about HIV in those countries, it seems to be working,” the article states.

“On the basis of data from the World Health Organization, in Swaziland, where 42.6 percent have HIV, only 5 percent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 percent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 percent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 percent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 percent is Catholic. In Uganda, with 43 percent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 percent.”

Dr. Green, too, emphasized in a 2009 article that his support of abstinence and fidelity programs comes not from a conservative worldview but rather from his experiences in Africa and from looking at the results.

“I’m a flaming liberal, don’t go to church, never voted for a Republican in my life,” he said.

In his aforementioned op-ed, he also added that it would be a wrong to place politics and ideologies above the lives of people who are at risk.

“Billions of dollars and the lives of countless men, women, and children will be wasted if ideology trumps proven health policy.”

….

Taken from: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/the-pope-was-right-about-condoms-and-hiv-49253/

Tags: Contraception, HIV/AIDS, Pope Francis
 

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Pope Francis opens St Peter’s Holy Door to launch jubilee

Pope Francis pushed opened the huge bronze Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome to launch the Catholic Church’s “Year of Mercy”. Tens of thousands attended a Mass in St Peter’s Square for the start of the Pope’s “revolution of tenderness”. It took place place amid tight security with extra police and soldiers deployed, and a no-fly zone imposed. Under the year’s theme of mercy, the Pope has said priests can absolve women who have had abortions. During the jubilee celebrations, one of the most important events in the Roman Catholic Church, pilgrims travel to Rome and religious sites around the world. At the end of the Mass, Francis opened the basilica’s Holy Door. He said that by passing through it, Catholics should take on the role of the Good Samaritan. Image copyright EPA Image caption Pope Francis, centre, has long signalled his wish for the Church to be more forgiving and understanding of its flock Image copyright AFP/Reuters Image caption Workers had to reveal the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica, which had been behind a brick wall It is the first time the Holy Door has been opened since the Great Jubilee in the 2000 called for by St John Paul II. It has been bricked up since then. Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, 88, attended Tuesday’s event. Jubilee Years: Jubilee years are rooted in the Old Testament tradition of freeing slaves and prisoners once every 50 years, a concept that died out within Judaism but was taken up by Pope Boniface VIII for the Catholic Church in 1300. Pilgrimages to Rome were at the heart of the original jubilee years, and attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the city, many willing to pay for “indulgences” – the eradication by the Church of the spiritual debt arising from sin. It was a tradition that not only contributed copious cash to the Vatican’s coffers, but also contributed to the theological turmoil that led to the establishment of rival Protestant churches across much of northern Europe. The last Jubilee was called by St John Paul II to mark the millennium, and this Holy Year of Mercy starts on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December 2015 and will end on the Feast of Christ the King on 20 November 2016. What is the Catholic Year of Mercy? – by Caroline Wyatt, BBC Religious affairs correspondent Italian security forces are on high alert following recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Visitors to St Peter’s Square had to pass through metal detectors and under go bag and body checks. More forgiving Announcing the extraordinary jubilee in March, the Pope said the Holy Door was a “Door of Mercy, through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons and instils hope”. Image copyright AFP Image caption Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (centre) was among those to pass through the Holy Door as Pope Francis (left) looked on Image copyright AP Image caption Ten of thousands of people packed into St Peter’s Square for the Mass before the Holy Door was opened For the first time, he has instructed churches and cathedrals to take part in the tradition of the Holy Door, to help Catholics mark the jubilee at home rather than coming to Rome.Pope Francis has long signalled his wish to change the Church’s approach from condemnation of wrongdoing to a Church that is more forgiving and understanding of its flock, our correspondent says. This extraordinary jubilee year is seen as a practical way of giving expression to that wish. Pope Francis took many by surprise when he announced in September that, as part of the jubilee, parish priests across the world would be allowed to absolve repentant women who asked for forgiveness for having an abortion, even though Church teaching still terms abortion a grave sin. …. Taken from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35037740