|
|
1087 A.D.
The first crusaders arrive in Antioch from Constantinople during the First Crusade.
1187 A.D.
Death of Pope Urban III, 172nd successor of Peter whose pontificate lasted two years. Born Umberto Crivelli in Milan, he was elected on December 1, 1185. He was elected in Verona and there he set up his papal court. As a cardinal he had planned the Lombard League. He stood up firmly against the arrogance of Frederick Barbarossa, German emperor and died of sorrow when the Saracens took possession of Jerusalem.
1864 A.D.
Rather than risking the lives of his people and in order to prevent the shedding of blood, Pope Pius IX surrendered the city of Rome to King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia. The surrender virtually ended the Papal States for the Pope was no longer allowed to govern Rome, but he was allowed to retain St. Peter's and the Vatican Palace and the Italian government agreed to pay him over three million lire a year, but Pius refused to accept the monies under any condition. In effect Vatican City was born.
1939 A.D.
Pope Pius XII issues his first encyclical on the unity of human society entitled Summi Pontificatus.
Yes, I speak! O, with what love do I gaze upon My little ones. Do you not feel yourself swept into My eternal embrace? It is good, my children, to keep vigil with Me. In this manner we become as one, and I long with such love to dwell in you, in the depths of your soul. You are able to become lost in Me, in My Divinity, in My All-Consuming Love. Therefore, I am so happy that you are gathered here, before Me, worshipping Me and giving honor to My Beloved Mother as she came among you at Fatima many years ago.
Little children, you are only now awakening from the seductive slumber of satan. Can you not realize how he has pulled you to himself through the world, and away from Me?
Do you not yet understand that even at this moment all plans are complete and the evil one shall strip you of Me?
Therefore, keep vigil with Me. Do not abandon your God, Who has not abandoned you from generation to generation. Come before Me and bend your knees. Come before Me and love Me. Come before Me and find all strength and consolation. I am Life. I have told you this Truth and now in this day countless of my little ones do not believe. They call Me a myth, they say all I suffered was symbolic. Many claim that the Resurrection is a fable.
I solemnly tell you that the hour of your visitation is at hand. The Hour of Great Sorrow falls upon the world. There will be devastation in many places. Lives shall be destroyed, along with land and resources. At first the voices of the survivors shall call upon Me, seeking merciful help. But quickly will their hearts grow cold and soon their ensnared lives shall become even more mired in the stench of satan's lies.
Woe when you turn away from Life, for it is you who choose death, you who prefer to spend eternity in agony. I am a loving God, a Merciful God. Yet you have abandoned Me, you leave Me alone daily and when you come to Me in My Sacrament of Love you are unclean, bearing the stench of unrepentant sin. You force Me, your God, to flee and you believe yourselves to be a loving, faithful people.
Heed My Words. Heed My Mother's words which are meant to prepare you. Never shall faith be tested as in these days before the great purification falls from Heaven to rid the earth of evil. Prepare yourselves well, for I come again as Just Judge, Glorious King.
Come, all of My children. Put aside all cares and dwell in My Presence that you might persevere until the end.
I bestow My peace upon you. I give you My Blessing. Know that the hour has come. All Scripture shall be fulfilled. Pray, My children. Pray!
I say to all of my little ones that satan's snares have caught many of my children asleep, and now they are in danger of suffocation. They do not realize that in this day the evil one will take from you your source of life. In this day the great apostasy fulfills my words spoken at Fatima. In this day my little ones fall away, becoming as grains of dust and sand before the bellowing laugh of the evil one.
My little ones, when I spoke to all of my children at Fatima I urged, yes, pleaded, for prayer. I asked for the rosary to be recited, I asked for the First Saturday of each month to be kept in my honor, to secure my little ones in their faith and to keep Russia from the wolves' mouths.
Now the wolf has clenched his jaw. Now does the beast prepare to devour his prey. Now does mankind wear the mark of the beast, for I solemnly tell you this mark already exists! It soon shall be made known when the evil one goes to announce his victory. Yet his victory would not be if the world did not already bear his mark.
I solemnly tell you on this solemn occasion of my last visit to Fatima, that the world must turn back to God. I solemnly tell you the world must acknowledge it's servitude to God. Only in this way can the punishment of God be mitigated.
For countless years I have asked for prayer, especially Mass and the rosary. I have asked for my Divine Son to be worthily received. I have asked my little ones to be reconciled one with the other. From LaSalette to Lourdes and Fatima, to Medjugorje and countless places around the world have I come to prepare my Son's victory path.
Yet where are my little children? Even now I stand beside my Divine Son in the Blessed Sacrament, and I worship and adore Him. As I did at Calvary, I do likewise now. I see Him, God, all alone, mutilated, scorned, defiled, dying. Now, just as then, I look to see the faces of His friends but I find only a few, and I weep!
My children, what are you about? Do you not yet understand that miracles are given to awaken faith, but great faith is also necessary to obtain one?
Therefore, if you would rid my Son's Holy Church of the apostasy you must come before Him with glad hearts. You must safeguard His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament and seek to preserve Him in this Sacrament of Love.
If you truly believed, my little ones, if you truly understood how many graces you receive from Him no church would be empty, no thief would dare to defile.
In this the Hour of Sorrow I am asking that in each and every of my Divine Son's Churches Perpetual Adoration be begun. I am asking all of my children without exception to realize and believe that for my Heart to Triumph you must cling to and reverence the Blessed Sacrament. I am asking for every priest to allow my children to come and adore their God and King. Each person must make a commitment, a commitment of Love. Each person must truly believe and profess their faith in my Divine Son's Sacred Presence, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist. To the extent of your faithful love of my Son so shall Mercy be given to you. You must strive for great faith if the Justice of God is to be mitigated.
Heed your Heavenly Mother's warnings. Come, let us bow down before Him. Let us love and trust Him alone.
Do not leave my Son alone, lest you find Him stripped from you completely. I love and bless you. Thank you for responding to my Call!
The Holy Father told the faithful, "The apostolic ministry consists first in the teaching of the Word of God, the truth, and prayer." Underlining the missionary character of his new encyclical on the reciprocal relationships of faith and reason, Fides et Ratio, the Pope affirmed with his Angelus message the importance of the proclamation of truth throughout his pontificate. "What misfortune if humanity lost the understanding of truth, the courage to seek it, and confidence to find it," he said. "It is not only the faith which would be compromised, but the understanding even of life." On that subject, he also evoked St. Therese of Lisieux whom he proclaimed Doctor of the Church last year, and St. Edith Stein whom he has just canonized and whom he called the "saintly philosopher."
Commenting on the passage of St. John's Gospel where Christ asks Peter: "Do you love me?" and entrusts to him "to feed his lambs," the Holy Father affirmed in his homily that the first duty of the successor of Peter is "to confirm" his brothers in the faith and consequently to teach. "The bishop known as the bishop of Rome, and with stronger reason the pope, must continuously turn to the sources of wisdom which lead to salvation. He must love the Word of God."
"After twenty years of service to the See of Peter," he said, "Can I not raise these questions today: Did you hold to that? Were you a diligent and vigilant guardian of the faith in the Church? Did you seek to bring people closer today to the great work of the Second Vatican Council? Did you seek to satisfy the desire for the faith in the Church, and also this hunger for truth which is felt in the world apart from the Church? "
He reaffirmed: "To proclaim the Word, that is my task there, thereby making it possible for the Son of Man, when He comes, to find the faith throughout the world."
The reading of the passage of the book of the Exodus where Moses is shown in prayer with raised hands prompted him to say: "Here is an icon of an extraordinary praying force: the icon of a beseeching shepherd ..." He added, "The prayer of the shepherd supports the flock. That is certain. But it is as true that the prayer of the people supports he who is charged with guiding them. It is thus since the beginning." He then quoted the passage of the Acts of the Apostles where the Church of Jerusalem prays for the imprisoned Peter and then he is miraculously delivered. "For myself, I have witnessed it personally. The prayer of the Church has a great power."
The Pope thanked all those who expressed to him their "solidarity" at this time of his 20th anniversary by naming the sick and suffering people, the contemplatives, the monks, the families, and the faithful present in St. Peter's Square, including Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Cardinal Ruini. For Rome and Italy, which he often has called his second homeland, the Pope had cordial words: "I would like to express my gratitude for the warmth of the way with which the City of Rome and Italy welcomed me from the first days of my Petrine ministry." He then renewed his devotion towards the Virgin Mary while repeating: "Totus tuus!"
In audience with bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, the Holy Father said that annulments should be a last resort. "The indissolubility of marriage is a teaching that comes from Christ himself," he said, "and the first duty of pastors and pastoral workers is therefore to help couples overcome whatever difficulties arise. The referral of matrimonial cases to the tribunal should be a last resort."
The Pontiff also warned that easy availability of annulments could cause the faithful to misunderstand a declaration of nullity as "divorce under a different name." He also affirmed that the tribunal judge must be convinced of the "moral certainty" of the existence of the nullity, and not just the probability that it exists.
He also said that, when determining if a psychological problem rendered a person incapable of contracting a valid marriage, the tribunal must make use of a psychiatrist or psychologist "who shares a Christian anthropology in accordance with the Church's understanding of the human person."
Helene Lukas, a member of the Holy See's delegation, recalled the participation of the Holy See in the consensus which had approved the Beijing Platform for Action, in spite of some reservations on certain sections of the document. For the Vatican, the Action plan is in "narrow convergence" with the social doctrines of the Church, particularly on the section of document which focuses "on the needs of poor woman, on ending violence against the woman, on access of woman to employment, land, capital, and technology, and to a strategy of promotion of woman in education." "Too many women are still poor, impotent, and victims of violence," said Lukas who also counted more than 538 million illiterate women currently in the world.
In the field of health, the Vatican delegation recognized that the last thirty years saw "a great improvement" in the access of women to medical care, insisting however on "an always decreasing number" of women who die during pregnancy or childbirth. AIDS is also a wound which touches women particularly, she said, including "one million women" in the last year. Lukas also noted that more than 8 million orphans less than 15 years old now suffer from AIDS.
Faced with all these "injustices" endured by women, the Holy See does not cease promoting any action aimed at "improving the status of woman," continued Lukas. Citing "the primary strategy," she requested "educational institutions, teaching religious congregations, and Catholic medical institutions" to focus on girls and women, "particularly the poorest."
"The Church is completely conscious of the importance" of continuing the work started in Beijing, concluded the representative from the Holy See. "It encourages people, society as a whole, and political authorities of the whole world to make a real contribution to the promotion of the status of women" and "makes it integral with any authentic international initiative to improve the situation of women."
"Given the history of Guatemala, the perception that this is a political crime is justified. That hypothesis is totally reasonable. We know there are groups in Guatemala that are capable of giving a common appearance to a political crime," said Jean Arnault, chief of the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala.
Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, head of the human rights office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala city, was murdered at his home in April, just two days after releasing a human rights report that blamed pro-government forces for most of the deaths during the country's 36-year civil war. Government prosecutors have charged Father Mario Orantes, who lived in the same rectory as the bishop, with the murder.
"The case continues as a thick cloud over the state of justice in Guatemala. ... We feel the investigation has not shown the necessary vigor or transparency," said Arnault, who helped the government and rebels negotiate 1996 peace accords that brought the civil war to an end. Human rights and Catholic groups have said the government has not sufficiently investigated leads that the military was involved with the crime.