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Showing posts with label Pope Benedict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope Benedict. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Pope Pushes for False Peace in the Middle East
Source Associated Press
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday characterized his trip to Beirut later this week as a pilgrimage for peace for the entire Middle East region and its anguished people.
Benedict told pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo near Rome that while finding solutions for the Middle East's problems seems difficult, people "shouldn't resign themselves to violence or worsening tensions."
He noted that during his three-day visit to the Lebanese capital, which begins Friday, he would meet with Lebanese authorities as well as Christians from Lebanon and other nearby countries.
"I am not unaware of the often dramatic situation endured by the populations of this region which has been for too long torn by incessant conflict," Benedict said. "I understand the anguish of many Middle Easterners steeped daily in sufferings of every kind, which afflict sadly, and sometimes mortally, their personal and family life."
The pope urged the international community to support efforts at dialogue and reconciliation, as he stressed "the importance for the whole world of a stable and lasting peace in the entire region.
"My apostolic voyage in Lebanon, and by extension in the Middle East in its entirety, comes under the sign of peace," Benedict said.
In recent weeks there was concern that spillover in parts of Lebanon from the fighting in Syria might derail the trip by the 85-year-old pontiff. But the Vatican has assured the faithful that despite a climate of tensions in Lebanon the pilgrimage is going forward.
Benedict's visit is also aimed at encouraging his flock in the Middle East. Some Christian communities there have suffered for their faith, including terror attacks in Iraq.
His schedule also includes his celebrating Mass in Beirut and attending a gathering with youth.
This is what the Bible says when men start saying peace and safety:
1 Thessalonians 5:1-3
King James Version (KJV)
5 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI One World Church Meeting Oct. 27
By The Associated Press
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has invited Hindus, Jews, Taoists and Muslims to join him next week for a peace pilgrimage to the hilltop town of Assisi — but they won't pray together because Benedict doesn't want to show different beliefs and rituals mixing.
The Oct. 27 event marks the 25th anniversary of the first such interreligious prayer for peace, which was promoted by Pope John Paul II and held in the town known for its native son St. Francis.
Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, didn't attend that first 1986 meeting and later criticized it as an example of religious relativism — the idea that there are no absolute truths and that all religions are somehow equal — since people of different faiths were seen praying together, jointly.
In 2000, when he was head of the Vatican's doctrine office, Ratzinger issued a controversial document in part as a response to the Assisi meeting, which suggested the fullness of human salvation was found in the Catholic Church alone.
Now Benedict is presiding over his first Assisi interreligious gathering, and the decision to eliminate the common, public prayer is being seen as his way of further correcting the wrongs from the 1986 event, which was repeated in 2002, albeit with changes.
Vatican officials outlined the day's schedule Tuesday and released the guest list, which includes a record
300-plus delegates representing dozens of faiths — and even four people who profess no faith, a new feature this year.
Some of the big names include Rajhmoon Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who will head a Hindu delegation; the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; a delegation from Israel's rabbinate authority; a Bahai, a Zoroastrian, three Jains, five Sikhs, and a Yoruba.
The Dalai Lama had a scheduling conflict and is sending an envoy, and Russia's Orthodox Church — with which the Vatican is trying to improve ties — is dispatching a representative from Kazakhstan. For the first time, a Buddhist from mainland China is coming.
Some 48 Muslims are expected, but none from Cairo's Al-Azhar institute, the pre-eminent school of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world, which cut ties with the Vatican over Benedict's call for Christians to be better protected in Egypt.
The delegates will travel together with the pope aboard a train leaving from the Vatican's train station and will sit together for speeches in Assisi's St. Mary of the Angels basilica. They'll have a "spare" lunch together — obviously heavily vegetarian — and then they will go to pray privately, separately in rooms of an Assisi convent.
They'll come back together for a wrap-up session and light candles as symbols of peace.
Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, head of the Vatican's justice and peace office, confirmed that the "novelty" of this year's agenda is that there is no common, public prayer for peace as there had been in previous Assisi encounters.
"The emphasis is on the pilgrimage, not on the common prayer," he said. But he denied the change represented any negative judgment on past meetings, saying it was merely "a way to try to improve the character itself of inviting exponents of other faiths together."
"It's an exercise of dialogue, and dialogue always respects the specific identity of the people, of individuals," he told reporters.
Traditionalist Catholics, in particular, were horrified at some of the images broadcast from the 1986 event, where non-Christians were seen praying in Catholic churches and in one, a small statue of a Buddha was reportedly placed on an altar.
Turkson said he had received e-mails from concerned Catholics, including one promising that the sender would celebrate 1,000 Masses of reparation for the harm done in Assisi.
To counter the criticism that the pope was hosting yet another Assisi gathering, the Vatican newspaper has for months been featuring essays by top Vatican cardinals who have sought to put the 2011 Assisi edition in the correct light: That it is merely a pilgrimage of people of different faiths, and that it in no way will involve any religious syncretism, or combining of different beliefs and practices.
Revelation 17: 1-6 says, 1And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:
2With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
3So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
5And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
The Oct. 27 event marks the 25th anniversary of the first such interreligious prayer for peace, which was promoted by Pope John Paul II and held in the town known for its native son St. Francis.
Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, didn't attend that first 1986 meeting and later criticized it as an example of religious relativism — the idea that there are no absolute truths and that all religions are somehow equal — since people of different faiths were seen praying together, jointly.
In 2000, when he was head of the Vatican's doctrine office, Ratzinger issued a controversial document in part as a response to the Assisi meeting, which suggested the fullness of human salvation was found in the Catholic Church alone.
Now Benedict is presiding over his first Assisi interreligious gathering, and the decision to eliminate the common, public prayer is being seen as his way of further correcting the wrongs from the 1986 event, which was repeated in 2002, albeit with changes.
Vatican officials outlined the day's schedule Tuesday and released the guest list, which includes a record
300-plus delegates representing dozens of faiths — and even four people who profess no faith, a new feature this year.
Some of the big names include Rajhmoon Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who will head a Hindu delegation; the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; a delegation from Israel's rabbinate authority; a Bahai, a Zoroastrian, three Jains, five Sikhs, and a Yoruba.
The Dalai Lama had a scheduling conflict and is sending an envoy, and Russia's Orthodox Church — with which the Vatican is trying to improve ties — is dispatching a representative from Kazakhstan. For the first time, a Buddhist from mainland China is coming.
Some 48 Muslims are expected, but none from Cairo's Al-Azhar institute, the pre-eminent school of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world, which cut ties with the Vatican over Benedict's call for Christians to be better protected in Egypt.
The delegates will travel together with the pope aboard a train leaving from the Vatican's train station and will sit together for speeches in Assisi's St. Mary of the Angels basilica. They'll have a "spare" lunch together — obviously heavily vegetarian — and then they will go to pray privately, separately in rooms of an Assisi convent.
They'll come back together for a wrap-up session and light candles as symbols of peace.
Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, head of the Vatican's justice and peace office, confirmed that the "novelty" of this year's agenda is that there is no common, public prayer for peace as there had been in previous Assisi encounters.
"The emphasis is on the pilgrimage, not on the common prayer," he said. But he denied the change represented any negative judgment on past meetings, saying it was merely "a way to try to improve the character itself of inviting exponents of other faiths together."
"It's an exercise of dialogue, and dialogue always respects the specific identity of the people, of individuals," he told reporters.
Traditionalist Catholics, in particular, were horrified at some of the images broadcast from the 1986 event, where non-Christians were seen praying in Catholic churches and in one, a small statue of a Buddha was reportedly placed on an altar.
Turkson said he had received e-mails from concerned Catholics, including one promising that the sender would celebrate 1,000 Masses of reparation for the harm done in Assisi.
To counter the criticism that the pope was hosting yet another Assisi gathering, the Vatican newspaper has for months been featuring essays by top Vatican cardinals who have sought to put the 2011 Assisi edition in the correct light: That it is merely a pilgrimage of people of different faiths, and that it in no way will involve any religious syncretism, or combining of different beliefs and practices.
2With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
3So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
5And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
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