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WORLD NEWS: 19-year-old Spanish martyr. who gave his life
WORLD NEWS Highlights, upcoming events and briefs
Teen martyred while protecting the Eucharist beatified in Spain
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By Courtney Mares Catholic News Agency
A19-year-old Spanish martyr who gave his life while protecting the Eucharist was beatified Nov. 7 at a Mass in the Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona.
“Yesterday in Barcelona Joan Roig Diggle, a lay man and martyr killed at the age of 19 during the Spanish Civil War, was proclaimed Blessed,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Nov. 8.
“May his example arouse in everyone, especially the young, the desire to live the Christian vocation to the full,” the pope said.
Blessed Joan Roig Diggle was killed “in hatred of the faith” in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. The young man was known for his devotion to the Eucharist at a time when churches in Barcelona were being closed, burned, or destroyed, so a priest entrusted Joan Roig with a ciborium containing the Blessed Sacrament to distribute Holy Communion to those most in need in their homes as it was not possible to attend Mass.
During one of these visits, Joan Roig told a family that he knew that red militiamen were trying to kill him. “I fear nothing, I take the Master with me,” he said. When those seeking his life knocked on his door, the young man consumed the hosts he had been guarding to protect them from potential desecration.
The Libertarian Youth patrol then took him to the Santa Coloma cemetery where he was killed on Sept. 11, 1936 with five shots to the heart and one to the head. Blessed Joan Roig’s last words were: “May God forgive you as I forgive you.”
At Joan Roig’s beatification on Nov. 7, Cardinal Juan José Omella, archbishop of Barcelona, said in his homily that the young man was an “ardent defender of the Social Doctrine of the Church” and provides youth today with a “testimony of love for Christ and for his brothers.”
Joan was born in Barcelona on May 12, 1917. His father was Ramón Roig Fuente and his mother, Maud Diggle Puckering, was from England.
He studied in schools run by De La Salle Brothers and the Piarist Fathers. His family experienced economic difficulties, so Joan worked to help cover expenses while he was pursuing his studies. Among his teachers were Fr. Ignacio Casanovas and Blessed Francisco Carceller, who would also go on to become martyrs.
His family moved to Masnou and the young man joined the Federation of Young Christians of Catalonia (FJCC), created in 1932 by Albert Bonet and which had 8,000 members before the Spanish Civil War. He wrote about social issues in the FJCC newsletter and was appointed to lead the catechesis of children between 10 and 14 years old. SCREENSHOT
“When he came to Mas- Beatification Mass for nou no one knew him, but Joan Roig Diggle in the his piety and ardent love for Sagrada Família Basilica in the Eucharist soon became Barcelona. evident. He spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament without realizing it. His example converted more than his words,” the president of the FJCC youth branch wrote in 1936.
Fr. José Gili Doria, the vicar of Masnou, wrote in 1936: “One day Joan said to me: ‘I normally dedicate at least two hours a day to spiritual life: Mass, communion, meditation and visit to the Blessed Sacrament; it is little, but my work and the apostolate do not give me more.”
In July 1936, Joan told some of his fellow members of the FJCC they should all be preparing to receive martyrdom with grace and courage, as did the first Christians.
In the intense persecution that followed, it is estimated that some 300 young people from this organization were killed in Catalonia, including some 40 priests. The headquarters of the FJCC was burned.
Joan’s mother said that in those days her son “was relieving sorrows, encouraging the timid, visiting the wounded, searching hospitals daily among the dead to find out which of his own had been killed.”
“Every night, at the foot of the bed, with the crucifix clasped in his hands, he implored for some clemency, for others forgiveness, and for all mercy and strength,” she said.
Cardinal Omella said: “Joan teaches us that all Christians are called to live our faith in community. No one builds his own faith alone, the Christian faith is essentially communal.”
WORLD NEWS Highlights, upcoming events and briefs
ANALYSIS: AFTER MCCARRICK REPORT: Embracing the cross
By JD Flynn
Catholic News Agency
Ordinarily, a news analysis attempts to bring some context or expertise to a situation, in order to assess why something has happened, what might happen next, and whether any of it will prove to be important.
A news analysis often speculates about what newsmakers will do: At CNA, analysis considers often what the pope might do, or USCCB leaders, or bishops of prominent dioceses.
But this analysis will speculate about what ordinary Catholics - people who practice the faith and love the Lord and try to follow Jesus - will do after the publication of the Vatican’s McCarrick Report.
To do that, some context in this analysis will be personal. There is a reason I offer this personal narrative. Please bear with me.
I began working for the Catholic Church in 2005, while I was in canon law school. After finishing my canon law degree, in 2007 I began working regularly on cases involving clergy misconduct.
I have sat with priests guilty of sexual assault and coercion, of grooming young men, of acting with serial disregard for the promises of their priesthood and the spiritual health of their victims. I have also sat with priests falsely accused of those things. I have seen problems ignored, and I have seen problems treated with the attention they deserve.
I have seen priests get justice, and I have sometimes seen them face terrible injustice. I have seen victims mistreated, and victims treated with compassion and respect. I have seen cases in which every rule and protocol is followed, and cases in which most of them are ignored.
Before the initial McCarrick allegations were made public in June 2018, I had already seen some things. As friends dealt with grief and shock, I told some cynically “Now you know why I’m ticked off all the time.”
I had not known about McCarrick, but I knew about clerical abuse, and about the sins of omission and commission that allow it to happen.
The 449 pages of the McCarrick Report detail a story decades long, in which institutional and personal failures allowed a man who abused his power to act with serial and serious immorality — to, put simply, hurt people.
It includes accounts of both cowardice and courage, of institutional blindspots exploited by a manipulator, of naïveté, misplaced kindness, and ill-placed trust, of dysfunction, bureaucratic ineptitude, and malice. The report demonstrates that sin begets sin - it recounts stories of abusers who were themselves abused. It depicts the exploitation of crises for personal gain.
The report documents the damage wrought by a crippling bias towards institutional self-preservation, ironic for a Church that follows a crucified Lord.
There are few heroes: A mother who tried her best to speak out. A priest who blew the whistle to protect seminarians. A cardinal who came to realize, only over time, that he needed to make clear a serious problem.
The McCarrick Report also traces a growing awareness of the importance of addressing abuse allegations, and addressing them properly. An increased understanding that presuming on good will is not helpful in the presence of manipulators. Efforts, often faltering, and sometimes failing, to learn from previous mistakes. But even amid that trend, there are appalling personal failures at every stage of McCarrick’s career.
The report does not document, or seem even to consider seriously, how McCarrick’s ambiguous and unmonitored financial situation enabled his decades of abuse. It mentions briefly his ability as a fundraiser, but offers no forensic analysis of his discretionary accounts. U.S. dioceses maintain records of those accounts, and to date have given no indication they plan to release them.
The report addresses bishops who lied for McCarrick and about him to the Holy See, but it does not ask why those bishops were willing to lie. It does not give serious attention to McCarrick’s social networks and their influence on the life of the Church - mention is made of a friend leaking high-level documents to McCarrick in the Vatican, but no attention is given to what influence networks that friend has. Many analysts have said it does not address whether there remain in ministry bishops who were gravely negligent, or even who compounded or facilitated cover-ups.
See the full story on catholicnewsagency.com/
news/analysis-after-mccarrick-report-embracing-the-cross-95084
A WORD From our Holy Father
‘Fratelli tutti’: Pope Francis calls for unity in new encyclical
Catholic News Agency
Pope Francis presented his vision for overcoming the world’s growing divisions, laid bare by the coronavirus crisis, in his new encyclical Fratelli tutti, published Sunday.
In the letter, released, the pope urged people of good will to promote fraternity through dialogue, renewing society by putting love for others ahead of personal interests.
Throughout the encyclical, the pope emphasized the primacy of love, in both social and political contexts.
The pope said he was struck that, when St. Francis met with the Egyptian Sultan Al-Kamil in 1219, he “urged that all forms of hostility or conflict be avoided and that a humble and fraternal ‘subjection’ be shown to those who did not share his faith.”
“Francis did not wage a war of words aimed at imposing doctrines; he simply spread the love of God … In this way, he became a father to all and inspired the vision of a fraternal society,” the pope wrote.
Pope Francis explained that his new encyclical brought together many of his previous reflections on human fraternity and social friendship, and also expanded on themes contained in the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” which he signed with Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, in Abu Dhabi in 2019.
“The following pages do not claim to offer a complete teaching on fraternal love, but rather to consider its universal scope, its openness to every man and woman,” he wrote. “I offer this social encyclical as a modest contribution to continued reflection, in the hope that in the face of present-day attempts to eliminate or ignore others, we may prove capable of responding with a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words.”
The pope signed the encyclical in Assisi Oct. 3. He is thought to be the first pope to sign an encyclical outside of Rome for more than 200 years, since Pius VII issued the text Il trionfo in the Italian city of Cesena in 1814.
VATICAN MEDIA.
Pope Francis prays at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi.
Pope Francis noted that, while he was writing the letter, “the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly erupted, exposing our false securities.”
The pope divided his third encyclical, after the 2013 Lumen fidei and 2015 Laudato si’, into eight chapters.
In the opening chapter, he laid out the challenges facing humanity amid the coronavirus crisis, which has killed more than a million people worldwide. He cited wars, the “throwaway culture” that includes abortion and euthanasia, neglect of the elderly, discrimination against women, and slavery, among other threats. He also offered a critique of contemporary political debate, as well online communication, which he said was often marred by “verbal violence.”
“In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia,” he wrote. “What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat.”
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