Friday, February 25, Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
BLESSED SEBASTIAN DE APARICIO (b Spain 1502 - d Mexico 1600)
Roadbuilder, Franciscan brother
Beato Sebastian has one of the most unusual biographies. Born in Spain to a poor family, who brought him up in the faith, he fell ill with bubonic plague as a a boy, from which he was miraculously cured after having been isolated to avoid infecting his family. After various migrant jobs all over Spain, he emigrated at age 31 to Mexico where he started as a farm hand and jack of all trades, then decided to build roads that would facilitate commerce in the region. He is considered the father of Mexican highways, as well as Mexico's first 'cowboy' who domesticated wild horses and cattle to be used in farm work. He introduced ox-driven carts to replace the labor carried out by humans before then. By age 50, he was a wealthy man, who had a reputation for unfailing generosity and service to the natives. He then gave up the transport business to devote himself to agriculture and ranching. Part of his personal faith was his early vow to live a chaste life. In his 60s, he married twice - both times to provide his wife's family with a dowry, and with the understanding that it would be a chaste marriage. Both wives died within a year of marriage - the first of an illness, the second because she fell from a tree while picking fruit. He said of them, "God gave me two little doves to care for and send back to him". After this, he decided to become a Franciscan friar, giving away all his goods to the convent and to the poor. He spent his novitiate as cook, porter and gardener in a Poor Clares convent, and finally became a professed friar in 1575. He spent the next 23 years as alms-collector for his community, once again taken to the roads in his horse-drawn carts for a new purpose, and came to be known as the 'fraile de las carretas'. He never learned to read and write, and all his life, his prayers were limited to the Our Father and the Rosary. Many miracles started being attributed to him in the last 10 years of his life, and he died in the odor of sanctity at age 98. His incorrupt body is venerated in the Church of St. Francis in Puebla, Mexico. When he was beatified in 1789, 968 documented miracles were presented in his cause, of which more than 500 beneficiaries testified personally.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/022511.shtml
OR today.
The main story above the fold is continuing coverage of the situation in Libya where Muammar Qaddhafi has set mercenaries and aircraft in an effort to suppress the popular uprising against him. A related story in the inside pages is an interview with Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the pontifical charity Cor Unum, who is African, on the problems of the continent exemplified right now by the revolutionary changes in North Africa. Page 1 papal story is a brief account of the Holy Father's meeting with the President of Lebanon. Other Page 1 stories: An essay by Cardinal Marc Ouellet on the 'anthropological novelty' of Christianity commenting on Benedict XVI's decree establishing the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization; and brief items on the immigration crisis facing the European Union; UN figures indicate that the overall unemployment rate in the troubled countries of North Africa from Egypt in the east to Morocco in the West is 9.8%, but that the work force aged 25 or younger is at almost 25% unemployment [The shocking thing is that the US was at 9.8% general unemployment until last December, when some improvement brought it down to 9.5%.]; and Chinese businesses in Sao Paolo, the economic capital of Brazil, register a growing presence.
PAPAL EVENTS TODAY
The Holy Father met with
- His Beatitude. Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites (Lebanon), who recently
asked to be able to resign as Patriarch
- Bishops from the Philippines (southern region, Group 1) on ad limina visit. Individual meetings.
- Mons. Pierre Morissette, Bishop of Saint-Jérôme (Canada), and president of the Canadian bishops' conference,
and the CBC vice president and secretary
In the afternoon, he met with
- Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (regular meeting)
The Vatican announced a news conference on March to present the Lineamenta (Orientations) of
the 13th General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod to be held in the Vatican on Oct. 7-28, 2012)
on the subject, "New evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith".
NB: The fuzzy picture of the Pope with the Lebanese delegation on Page 1 of OR today is yet another inexplicable instance of editorial perverseness. The aim was apparently to highlight the Plexiglas-enclosed gift in in the foreground, which (a) would have photographed hazy, regardless, because of the Plexiglas, and (b) it's not as if it were the Holy Grail that it should take precedence over the persons at the event! This pucture choice violates elementary No-Nos that even a highschool newspaper editor would find too obvious to violate!
Equally perverse, the headline for the brief item that accompanies the photo is "At the audience with the President of Lebanon, the Pope appeals for all open conflicts in the Arab world to be resolved' - a line that does not appear in the official communique of the meeting, and yet the item itself is not posted online...
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On the 150th anniversary of the newspaper, OR editor Giovanni Maria Vian tells the AP, in English, about the controversial 'pop' articles it has chosen to run: "We 'sexed up' the news a bit. We had fun doing it. But the argument was not banal." (I will post the article in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread).
(He was referring specifically to the article asserting that the characters in the TV cartoon series ;The Simpsons' are Catholic, which is factually false. But even assuming the Simpsons are Catholic, should the Pope's newspaper play them up in such a way as though they were a model for Catholics?
As erudite and scholarly as Mr. Vian may be and solidly Catholic, his editorial judgment certainly leaves much to be desired. And who is cavalier enough as not to cite the sources for most of the non-Vatican hard news it has been reporting, which are mainly summaries and paraphrases of reports from various news agencies and newspapers. That's dishonest and unworthy of 'the Pope's newspaper'.
For the responsibility that he holds and for the trust shown in him by the Pope, Mr. Vian owes it to his readers and to himself to take stock of his professional weaknesses and do something about it. All he has to do is look at what Avvenire is and does.
There are creative and fairly simple ways to be the Vatican's official newspaper of record - in terms of papal texts and appointments - while being able to convey the sense and the facts of the world in which the Pontificate and the Church are operating. But not necssarily by randomly mixing up Vatican news and commentary with the hard news to come up with a Page 1 layout that looks like any other newspaper, because it is not any other newspaper.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/02/2011 19:34]