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Pope Francis
Pope dedicates June prayers for soon-to-be newlyweds
BY JUNNO AROCHO ESTEVES
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY • While uncertainty in the world may deter young couples from taking the next big step in their relationships, the vocational call to marriage is a risk worth taking, Pope Francis said.
Marriage “is a challenging journey, at times difficult, sometimes even confrontational, but it is worth the risk,” the pope said. “And in this lifelong journey, the husband “Marriage is not and wife are not alone: Jesus accompanies them.” just a ‘social’ act.”
In a video message released by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network June 1, the Pope offered his prayer intention for the month of June, which he dedicated to “the beauty of marriage.”
Acknowledging the belief that young people “do not want to get married, especially in these difficult times,” the Pope said that marriage and sharing one’s life “is a beautiful thing.”
“Marriage is not just a ‘social’ act,” he said. “It is a vocation that is born from the heart, it is a conscious lifelong decision that requires a specific preparation.”
“Please, never forget! God has a dream for us – love – and he asks us to make it our own,” the Pope said.
At the start of each month, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network posts a short video of the pope offering his specific prayer intention.
Reciting his intention, Pope Francis prayed for “young people preparing for marriage with the support of a Christian community, so that they may grow in love, generosity, faithfulness and patience.” In his prayer intention for the month of June, the Pope prayed for young couples who answer the vocational call to marriage. CNS photo
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Pope promulgates revised canon law on crimes, punishments
BY CINDY WOODEN
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY • A series of laws and procedures promulgated by now-retired Pope Benedict XVI and, especially, by Pope Francis to protect children, promote the investigation of allegations of clerical sexual abuse and punish offenders are included in a heavily revised section of the Code of Canon Law.
The revision of “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church,” one of seven books that make up the code for the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, was promulgated June 1 and will go into effect Dec. 8, Pope Francis wrote.
Rewriting 63 of the book’s 89 canons, the revision addresses a host of issues that have come up in the life of the Church since St. John Paul II promulgated the code in 1983. The descriptions of crimes of sexual abuse, including child pornography, are more explicit, and the required actions of a bishop or superior of a religious order in handling allegations are more stringent.
The revised canons also include new references to the attempted ordination of a woman and to a variety of financial crimes; like with the new canons dealing with sexual abuse, they rely on language from laws promulgated separately over the past 20 years.
“In the past, much damage has been caused by a failure to perceive the intimate relationship existing in the Church between the exercise of charity and recourse – when circumstances and justice require it – to the discipline of sanctions. This way of thinking, as experience has taught us, risks leading to a life of behavior contrary to the discipline of morals, for the remedy of which exhortations or suggestions alone are not sufficient,” Pope Francis wrote in “Pascite Gregem Dei” (Shepherd God’s Flock), the apostolic constitution promulgating the changes.
While Church law applies to all Catholics, the Pope said, for bishops, the observance of canon law “can in no way be separated from the pastoral ‘munus’ (service) entrusted to them, and which must be carried out as a concrete and inalienable requirement of charity not only toward the Church, the Christian community and possible victims, but also toward those who have committed a crime, who need both mercy and correction on the part of the Church.”
Over the years, he said, it became clear that the code’s description of crimes and penalties needed to be “modified in such a way as to allow pastors to use it as a more agile salvific and corrective instrument, to be employed promptly and with pastoral charity to avoid more serious evils and to soothe the wounds caused by human weakness.”
The revised book was presented to the press June 1 by Archbishop Filippo Iannone and Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. In 2009, Pope Benedict had asked the council to begin the revision project.
The revision moves the canons about the sexual abuse of children – on the part of a priest, religious or layperson working for the Church – out of the section on violations of the obligation of celibacy and into a newly titled section of “Offenses Against Human Life, Dignity and Liberty.”
It adds to canon law the crime of “grooming,” calling for penalties, including dismissal from the priesthood for a cleric who “grooms or induces a minor or a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason or one to whom the law recognizes equal protection to expose himself or herself pornographically or to take part in pornographic exhibitions, whether real or simulated.”
However, the revised language still refers to rape and other forms of sexual abuse as “an offence against the Sixth Commandment” – You shall not commit adultery.
The continued use of the Sixth Commandment to refer to any improper, immoral or even criminal sexual activity “is traditional” in Church law, Bishop
A Latin-English edition of the Code of Canon Law is pictured on a bookshelf. New canon law provisions approved by Pope Francis are expected to help the Catholic Church safeguard
against abuse. CNS photo/Nancy Phelan Wiechec
BALTIMORE BASILICA MARKS BICENTENNIAL WITH NEW PERPETUAL ADORATION CHAPEL
BALTIMORE • Neither Archbishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, who started the project to build America’s first cathedral, nor Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, the third archbishop of Baltimore, who brought it to completion, could have predicted its impact over the centuries, the current archbishop said. Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, celebrated a Mass May 31 to mark the 200th anniversary of the dedication of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Immediately after the Mass, he dedicated a chapel in the Basilica’s undercroft for perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, making the spiritual practice available for the first time ever in the city, as far as parish leaders and researchers can determine. In his homily, Archbishop Lori said Archbishop Maréchal had announced in a pastoral letter released at the time of the Basilica’s dedication in 1821 that the Gospel would be proclaimed from the pulpit, sins would be forgiven through the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance, and the faithful would receive “courage in their temptations; comforts in their afflictions and infirmities; light in their doubts; and all the graces necessary to persevere in the service and love of God” and that those suffering from spiritual infirmities would be made whole. Archbishop Lori said, “These most fundamental purposes of this Basilica continue in our times, and today, we give thanks for the torrent of graces communicated and received in this sacred space.”
The afternoon sun shines through the dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore May 31, 2021, shortly after the conclusion of a Mass celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Basilica’s dedication. CNS photo/Kevin J. Parks,
Catholic Review
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