Family life is hard. In case no one has reminded you of that lately, let me be the one. Whether you’re in the stage of diapers and bottles, wiping faces and losing sleep, or worrying about the children who have grown – the now-adults making their stumbling way through a suffering world – families will always be holy, hard, humbling schools of love.
It was a Sunday in the month of May, and Sergio Jiménez stood in front of a packed church at Blessed Sacrament Church, ready to make a brief invitation at the end of Mass.
Writing to the Church at the ancient city of Galatia (now in modern-day Turkey), St. Paul the Apostle declared, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).
Christ is risen! Alleluia! We’ll be saying (and singing) that refrain and others like it until Pentecost, which this year isn’t until the end of May.
“War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between states, the noble exercise of diplomacy: These are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences. … War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations.” — St. John Paul II
As the old saying goes, sometimes we can miss the forest for the trees.
What should Catholic education look like today? As universities move toward more efficient and technical processes in higher education, is there still room for seeking truth and knowledge for its own sake? These are some of the questions explored by Timothy P. O’Malley, theology professor and director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. OSV News’ Charles Camosy spoke with him recently about the state of Catholic higher education and his vision for its reform.
ROME —After the Vatican said the third secret of Fatima foretold the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, the Turkish gunman in that attack proclaimed himself an ''unwitting instrument'' in a divine plan.
Mehmet Ali Agca, who is serving a life sentence in an Italian prison for shooting and seriously wounding the pope in 1981, said through his lawyer that he felt relieved from the weight of responsibility by the disclosure of the secret.
''I was an unwitting instrument in a mysterious design: Now I know this with certainty,'' Agca was quoted as saying by his lawyer, Marina Magistrelli. Agca said he would further explain his thoughts in a letter to the pope on the occasion of the pontiff's 80th birthday May 18.
Magistrelli said Agca had watched TV coverage of the pope's Mass at Fatima, Portugal, May 13 when Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, announced that the ''third secret'' said to have been revealed by Mary to three children in 1917 involved a prediction of a war waged by atheistic systems against the church.
The message also referred to a ''bishop clothed in white'' who ''falls to the ground, apparently dead under a burst of gunfire,'' Cardinal Sodano said. He said Pope John Paul II believes this foretold his being shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square May 13, 1981 -- the feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
The pope met with Agca in his prison cell in 1983 and forgave the gunman. On that occasion, Agca later recounted, he asked the pope about the third secret of Fatima, but the pope would not discuss it.
Later, Agca began claiming that he was part of a divine design connected with the Fatima apparitions. He also made other claims: that he was Jesus Christ, that he was an angel, and that he was sent by God to announce the end of the world.
Agca at one point claimed that the papal shooting was carried out on the orders of Bulgarian intelligence officials. Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted in 1986, in a trial that featured incoherent outbursts by Agca.
Agca later said the Bulgarian connection was a fabrication of Italian intelligence officials who had promised him early release if he went along with their plan.
In recent years, Agca has said he acted on his own in shooting the pope. Agca, a Muslim, had publicly threatened to kill the pontiff in 1979 when the pope visited Turkey; in a letter to several Turkish newspapers, he called the pope a ''crusader commander'' sent by Western imperialists.
After Agca shot the pope in 1981, he was immediately wrestled to the ground and arrested. A letter found in his hotel room said he had committed the act to demonstrate the ''imperialistic crimes'' of the Soviet Union and the United States.
For several years, Agca and his relatives have pressured Italian justice officials to release him, saying he has served long enough. Now 42 years old, Agca would be eligible for conditional release in 2005.
Italian press reports quoted Agca as saying that if released, he would travel to Fatima to pray for 10 days.
That is an unlikely scenario, since Turkish authorities want Agca back in their country to serve a life sentence for the killing of a Turkish journalist in 1979. Vatican officials have said they have no objections to Agca's early release from his Italian sentence and his return to a Turkish prison.
— John Thavis, Catholic News Service