Saturday, Sept. 11, 22nd Week in Ordinary Time
ST. CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (d Carthage [modern-day Tunis] 258), Bishop, Writer, Martyr, Father of the Church
Born to wealthy pagan parents, he was highly educated and a famous orator and teacher. He became a Christian as an adult, receiving his catechesis
from the future St. Caecelius; distributed his wealth to the poor, and vowed himself to chastity before being baptized. He was ordained a priest in 247,
and two years later, he was chosen Bishop of Carthage against his will. Almost immediately, he had to conduct his ministry in hiding after the Decian
persecution began in 250. Many Christians abandoned the Church easily during the persecutions, and their subsequent reinstatement after persecutions
eased, caused great controversies in the third century. Cyprian opposed a rival bishop who simply accepted everyone back without any canonical penance.
He led the opposition, supported by all North African bishops, to Pope Stephen I's decree that on the validity of baptism by heretics if the ritual was
done properly; Cyprian insisted baptism was not valid outside the Church. During a plague in Carthage, he urged Christians to help everyone, including
their enemies and persecutors. He supported Pope St. Cornelius against the anti-Pope Novatian. As a Christian writer (mostly in the form of pastoral
letters) in North Africa, he was considered second only to Tertullian, until Augustine eclipsed them both. During Valerian's persecutions, he was exiled
in 257, then brought back to Carthage where he was sentenced to beheading by sword. He died a martyr as had Pope Stephen I and his successor
Sixtus II in Rome.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/091110.shtml
OR today.
Papal stories on Page 1: The Holy Father calls on visiting Brazilian bishops to show 'a healthy ecumenism to oppose ecclesial relativism' [Certainly a strange choice of emphasis and a stranger way to express it, compared to Vatican Radio's emphasis on the Pope's call that a new evangelization is needed to oppose the attractions of the new evangelical sects in South America]; and his audience with the President of Hungary. In the inside pages, Fr. Lombardi's briefing on the coming UK visit (translated and posted above on this page), and a survey of the great English Catholic writers of the late 19th and early 20th century, starting with Cardinal Newman through G.K.Chesterton, Ronald Knox and JRR Tolkien. Page 1 international news: A denunciation of the Florida pastor who threatened to burn the Koran today (he has since backed off); drought in Brazil's Amazonia as the Amazon River falls 10 meters below its normal level (in 2005, it dropped to 18 meters below normal); in Pakistan, the total number of flood-stricken victims now almost 21 million, of whom half are below age 5, and international aid continues to be slow in coming.
THE POPE'S DAY
The Holy Father met today with
- Mons. Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising
- Recently-appointed bishops who took part in a continuing education seminar under the auspices of
the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Address in Italian.
The Holy Father today named Mons. Fausto Gabriel Trávez Trávez, O.F.M., till now Bishop of Babahoyo,
to be the new Metropolitan Archbishop of Quito (Ecuador) following the canonical retirement of Mons.
Raúl Eduardo Vela Chiriboga.