Pope Francis at General Audience (28 February 2024)
During his weekly General Audience, Pope Francis continues his catechesis series on virtues and vices, this week focusing on the sins of envy and vainglory, suggesting there are remedies to each, both of which involve making ourselves less at the center, embracing weakness, and letting God operate in our lives.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov 28 February 2024
Envy and vainglory are dangerous vices, but there are remedies to combat each.
Pope Francis suggested this during his weekly General Audience on Wednesday morning in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, as he continued his catechesis series on virtues and vices, this week examining envy and vainglory.
Given the Pope’s recent flu-like symptoms, the Holy Father opted for an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State, Msgr. Filippo Ciampanelli, to read his remarks on his behalf, as he has done for the Holy Father on other occasions.
Speaking first about envy, the Pope recalled the sin, even as early as in the story of Cain and Abel, proved to be a destructive force fuelled by resentment towards others, that often leads to deadly hatred.
“Envy,” he observed, “is an evil that has not only been investigated in the Christian sphere: it has attracted the attention of philosophers and wise men of every culture.”
God’s ‘math’ is different
At envy’s basis, the Holy Father suggested, is a relationship of hate and love. “One desires the evil for the other, but secretly desires to be like him.
“His good fortune,” he continued, “seems to us an injustice: surely, we think to ourselves, we would deserve his successes or good fortune much more!
At the root of this vice, he noted, is “a false idea of God,” where “we do not accept that God has His own ‘math,’ different from ours.”
Remedies to envy and vainglory
The remedy to envy, the Pope suggested, lies in Saint Paul’s exhortation: “Love one another with brotherly affection, compete in esteeming one another.”
Archbishop Emeritus Fernando Capalla of Davao. DAVAO CATHOLIC HERALD
By Fr. Sebastiano D’Ambra, PIME January 7, 2024 Manila, Philippines
The news of the death of Archbishop Fernando Capalla on January 6 , 2024, who died at the age of 89 is a time of sorrow for all of us and for me also an occasion to remember him as a good friend who contributed a lot for the promotion of interreligious dialogue in Mindanao and on the national and international level.
When I started the Silsilah Dialogue Movement in 1984, he was happy of this new beginning to the point that when he was elected as chairperson of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for the Commission on Interreligious Dialogue he asked me to be the executive secretary and allow me to have the office in Zamboanga near the office of Silsilah.
This great sign of trust and friendship helped me a lot to be challenged more in the mission that I started in dialogue with the Muslims in Zamboanga and along the years in Mindanao and on the national level.
Silsilah invited Archbishop Capalla in Zamboanga for some seminars and for the summer course. He was also with us the day that Fr. Salvatore Carzedda, PIME was killed in Zamboanga City on May 20, 1992. I can also recall a critical moment when in Davao I was rushed to the hospital and he helped me in many ways.
I believe many of us can say many things about the goodness and generosity of archbishop Capalla. I think he is well known for starting the Bishops Ulama Forum that after a few years was renamed as Bishops’ – Ulama Conference. I was at his side as executive secretary of the CBCP for the Commission on Interreligious Dialogue. I remember the first gathering in Cebu in 1996 and the many other gatherings in the different parts of Mindanao and Manila. For two occasions we also did the gathering of the Bishops-Ulama Conference in Harmony Village, Zamboanga City.
Our friendship was expressed in many ways and he was an honorary member of the Board of Trustee of Silsilah, he encouraged me to continue the dream to start the Emmaus Dialogue Community in Zamboanga. In that occasion as chairman of the Episcopal Commission for Interreligious Dialogue of the CBCP he wrote: “The diocesan bishop is advised by the new Code of Canon Law:’to discern the new gifts of the consecrated life which the Holy Spirit entrusted to the Church (C.605). The Emmaus Dialogue Community is a new form of consecrated life in the local Church.’ I believe that this new community is a gift and a blessing to the local Church and to the Church at large. With dialogue as its primary objective it answers a long-felt need in this Church’s Ministry.”
Guided by this spirit and friendship with the new Emmaus Dialogue Community that after was renamed Emmaus Dialogue Community opening the charism to all in the Church, Archbishop Capalla volunteered to be the patron bishop of this new reality of Emmaus in the Church and was very happy when during one of my visits in Davao I shared to him that Emmaus Dialogue Movement is ground on and we opened an Emmaus College of Theology, major on Interreligious Dialogue.
This illustration shows a laptop user browsing the internet. According to a Statista report, as of October 2023, there were 5.3 billion internet users worldwide, or 65.7% of the global population. Of this total, 4.95 billion internet users, or 61.4% of the world’s population, were social media users, the site said. (OSV News photo/Yui Mok, PA Images via Reuters)
(OSV News) — The word “missionary” can conjure up in the Catholic mind a vision of saintly figures traveling to distant lands and enduring heroic hardships to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.
Nowadays, however, the mission field is just as likely to be found in cyberspace — a fact recognized by the Synod on Synodality, which concluded its first session in Rome and is set to resume in October 2024.
“Digital culture,” said the synod’s synthesis report from Oct. 28, “represents a fundamental change in the way we conceive of reality and consequently relate to ourselves, one another, our surroundings, and even to God. … Missionaries have always gone with Christ to new frontiers, while the Holy Spirit pushed and preceded them. It is up to us to reach today’s culture in all spaces where people seek meaning and love, including the spaces they enter through their cell phones and tablets.”
“We need to provide opportunities for recognizing, forming, and accompanying those already working as digital missionaries, while also facilitating networking amongst them,” the synod’s report added.
Statista reports, “As of October 2023, there were 5.3 billion internet users worldwide, which amounted to 65.7 percent of the global population. Of this total, 4.95 billion, or 61.4 percent of the world’s population, were social media users.”
OSV News spoke with three “digital missionaries” to hear their thoughts about forming disciples of Jesus into missionaries for online evangelization.
“In several dioceses there are already institutes for lay formation,” said Father Iván Montelongo, judicial vicar and vocations director for the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. “I know that we have one here in my diocese. It would be a great thing in those institutions to start offering courses — curriculum guided toward that; toward learning about the internet, perhaps the nature of communications and about the Gospel.”
Father Montelongo, who regularly posts on X (formerly Twitter), attended the Synod on Synodality in Rome, and will return in 2024. One of six non-bishop voting delegates from the U.S. chosen to represent North America, he’s also the synod coordinator for his diocese.
While formation classes could equip Catholics to evangelize digital spaces, Father Montelongo advised a community bond is also essential.
“The connection to a church is important, too,” he added. “We can learn a lot of things online; take a course; I’m sure there’s great resources out there. But it should be a community that sends us, too — and we should come back to that community. I think that is necessary in order to form missionaries.”
Community roots and reinforcement gain even greater importance considering the often strident tone of online polemics.
“It’s hard sometimes when we see those debates — especially some platforms that don’t make that connection with the physical world, and don’t foster that encounter,” Father Montelongo said. “They can just become nasty places.”
As Catholic journalist and author John L. Allen Jr., observes in “Catholics and Contempt: How Catholic Media Fuel Today’s Fights, and What to Do About It,” the experience of social media shows that “people will say terrible things anonymously that they would never dare utter face-to-face. … In a sense, social media is designed to bring out the worst angels of our nature.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that Catholics should avoid online engagement; indeed, Father Montelongo was encouraged by the digital emphasis at the synod.
“Sometimes we are a little bit behind in these things,” he said, referring to the Catholic Church. “Changing our perspective from the internet as a dangerous place to the internet as mission territory — that paradigm shift is already a huge improvement.”
Preparation is important — but missionaries also need to just take the first step, Father Montelongo emphasized.
“The disciples went out. Jesus gave them enough — and they also learned on their way, too,” he said. “That should be our attitude — whether in person, whether online — being missionary disciples who are still learning,” said Father Montelongo. “We haven’t figured everything out — but we’re going out without fear, knowing that God is accompanying us.”
Sister Orianne Dyck, a Daughter of Saint Paul who serves her order as U.S. and Canada social media coordinator, said while specific formation could be helpful to digital missionaries, the first thing for Catholics to remember is their baptism.
“You have people who enter into the online space on purpose as missionaries — that’s their ministry. But then you also have just the average Joe, who — by virtue of his baptism — will always be a missionary, no matter where he or she is,” Sister Orianne explained. “So I think in that sense, it’s actually more important for us to form one another as everyday, normal Christians, able to live in a missionary way all of our life — because then that will translate over to how we interact with people online.”
Catholics’ remembering their baptism also should shape their online exchanges, said Sister Orianne.
“Being able to understand we’re called to communicate out of this covenant relationship we’ve entered into with Christ — that we have died with Christ; that we can live with Christ — should change everything about how we intake communication, and also how we output communication,” she added. “Because it means that everything I’m filling myself with I want to be for the glory of God and the peace of mankind — and likewise, everything that I share I want to be for the glory of God and the peace of mankind. And online no less so.”
It’s something she always remembers in her own online messaging, said Sister Orianne.
“People will maybe leave kind of an angry comment under a video or whatever that I post, and I try to respond in charity,” she said. “And when they notice that I’m responding to them in a different tone than every other Christian they’ve encountered online, they’re surprised — and it shouldn’t be that way. Every Christian should be able to communicate in charity and know the importance of it.”
Echoing Father Montelongo, Sister Orianne also emphasized true community as the foundation of communication.
“We are able to literally grow together — and to form one another and to encourage one another — in a way that is not possible if it’s just seen as a dissemination of information,” she noted. “It’s much more communal — which is really beautiful, because it becomes an even deeper way of building up the body of Christ. So there’s a huge gift in that — although it certainly comes with its own challenges.”
One of those challenges, said Matthew Warner, founder and CEO of Flocknote, a member management and messaging tool created for churches and ministries, is authenticity.
“The better Catholics learn to integrate digital tools into their lives in healthy, authentic ways, the better digital missionaries they will be able to be,” Warner said. “It’s easy for the digital tools to become distractions or misrepresentations of our true selves, which hinder our ability to build the strong relationships which lead to effective evangelization.”
But again, real community is vital.
“Personally, I think we put too much stock in a need for most people to evangelize online,” Warner shared. “Don’t get me wrong — there is a distinct need for a presence there from the church. But I think the most powerful evangelizing occurs in personal relationships and offline.”
“In fact,” he reflected, “the increase in massive digital activity — by both culture and the church — has coincided with a great increase in broken families, more depression and anxiety, fewer closer relationships and an acceleration of people no longer practicing or believing their faith.”
In 2019, a poll conducted by the American Psychiatric Association revealed, “More than one in three adults (38%) see social media usage as harmful to mental health; nearly half (45%) see social media usage as having both positive and negative impact on mental health; only 5% see it as having a positive impact.”
Warner also reminded Catholics that as digital missionaries, the mission field they’ll encounter online will often be close to home — and so making time to go offline and cultivate those relationships in person is critical.
“If we are going to reverse the mass exodus of the next generation leaving the church,” he suggested, “I think it’s going to happen more fundamentally by Catholics realizing God has already placed their most urgent mission field right in front of them — in their homes, with their neighbor, with their coworker they talk to every day … If more of us focused more there — and spent less time online — I think big things would start to happen.”
Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.
The San Nicolas church was built between 1787 and 1804 under the supervision of Augustinian friar Ambosio Otero
Philippine News Agency January 17, 2023
Interior of the San Nicolas de Tolentino Church in San Nicolas, Cebu City, before it was destroyed during the Second World War. The San Nicholas parish is considered one of the oldest in Cebu.
Parishioners of the San Nicolas de Tolentino Shrine in a village known during the Spanish time as “el primer pueblo de Filipinas,” or the first town in the Philippines, celebrate the feast of the Sto. Niño or the Child Jesus with a thanksgiving Mass.
Monsignor Rogelio Fuentes, the shrine’s moderator, traced the thanksgiving celebration at the 457-year-old Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño to the relationship between the friars of the Order of St. Augustine and the residents of the country’s oldest “pueblo.”
“Long before the pandemic, the priests from our parish would be called to celebrate the thanksgiving Mass. Why is that? Perhaps, it is because of so many connections between the Basilica and San Nicolas Parish,” said the priest in his homily.
He reminded devotees that San Nicolas, the old settlement during the Spanish time and at the same time the first parish ever established in mainland Cebu, was founded by the Spanish Augustinian friars in 1584.
As the mother parish, San Nicolas was instrumental in creating major parishes in Cebu such as the Sta. Catalina de Alexandria in Carcar City (1617), Nuestra Señora Virgen de la Regla in Lapu-Lapu City (1711), San Francisco de Asis in Naga City (1829), Sta. Teresa de Avila in Talisay City (1836), Sto. Tomas de Villanueva in El Pardo, Cebu City (1933), Our Lady of Guadalupe de Cebu in Guadalupe, Cebu City (1933), and five other parishes.
On Saturday, eve of the festivities, every image of the “Sto. Niño de Teniente” from San Nicolas will have to arrive to guard the Basilica for the entire duration of the solemn foot procession of the holy image of the Sr. Sto. Niño de Cebu.
As a tradition, Msgr. Fuentes said the Augustian friars are the ones who celebrate the fiesta
Msgr. Fuentes, who also is serving as Archdiocese of Cebu vicar general, said he finds it proper that as the oldest of all the parishes in Cebu, the parish priest in San Nicolas would lead the Holy Mass in thanking God for the three graces – the grace of history, the grace of the celebration, and the graces that each one received from the Lord.
“In the grace of history, we have many things to thank about as we have just commemorated the 500 years of Christianity, a grace that Cebuanos are grateful to God for it is in our midst that the blessing of this Basilica and the image of the Sr. Sto. Niño gifted to Queen Juana on the occasion of the first baptism here in Cebu,” he said in Cebuano.
According to a publication, Balaanong Bahandi, the San Nicolas church built in honor of an Italian saint, St. Nicolas de Tolentino, also served as a town known before as Cebu el Viejo or old Cebu back to the time of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, 439 years ago.
The adjacent settlement up north was Villa San Miguel, the city created by the Spaniards while farther away was called Parian where the Chinese lived and traded.
The San Nicolas church was built between 1787 and 1804 under the supervision of Augustinian friar Ambosio Otero. The bell tower was added in 1812 and the parochial house in 1825.
However, the church building was destroyed by aerial bombing during World War II. The present-day church was built in 1942 and was finished in 1965.
