Tag: Christianity

Kuremäe, Estonia, November 1, 2024

Photo: pravoslavie.ru     

Abbess of the Pükhtitsa Dormition Convent in Estonia, Mother Philareta (Kalacheva), has written an address to Minister of Internal Affairs Lauri Läänemets, responding to the state’s demands that the monastery and the Estonian Church leave the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Pükhtitsa was founded in 1891, with assistance from St. John of Kronstadt. Besides the Pskov Caves Monastery, it is the only holy habitation to have never closed during the long decades of atheist Bolshevik rule. However, now the monastery faces the possibility of closure because of its canonical status. Though on the territory of Estonia, it is a stavropegial monastery, meaning it falls directly under the episcopal oversight of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. Meanwhile, the Estonian Orthodox Church is a self-governing body within the Moscow Patriarchate.

In her new appeal, Mother Philareta presents arguments explaining why the monastery, on its own initiative, cannot and has no right to renounce its current stavropegial status or appeal to Church authorities to change its jurisdiction and transfer to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, reads a summary of the lengthy address on the site of Pükhtitsa Monastery.

There have been two Orthodox jurisdictions in Estonia since the Patriarchate of Constantinople established a structure parallel to the already existing Church under the Moscow Patriarchate in 1996. Constantinople’s Estonian Church has Constantinople’s Estonian Church proposes vicariate to subsume churches facing state pressureHowever, the EOC has said that it’s willing to hold discussions with the EAOC, but neither the hierarchy nor the faithful are willing to simply join the EAOC.

“>proposed the creation of a vicariate to subsume the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Estonian Orthodox Church, but the latter has Estonian Orthodox Church formally rejects proposal to join Constantinople’s jurisdictionOn September 19, the head of the EAOC proposed at a session of the Estonian Council of Churches to create a Russian vicariate to subsume parishes of the EOC-MP.”>rejected this option. Meanwhile, Minister Läänemets recently Estonia: Bill submitted to ban churches tied to the Moscow PatriarchateThe Estonian Ministry of the Interior has seriously ramped up its pressure on the Estonian Orthodox Church as Minister Lauri Läänemets has proposed new legislation to ban religious organizations connected to the Moscow Patriarchate.”>submitted a bill to ban the Moscow Patriarchate.

The very mystery of monasticism and the vows taken during tonsure (poverty, chastity, obedience) make it impossible for the monastery’s inhabitants to arbitrarily and willfully change their way of life, Abbess Philareta writes in her appeal.

Based on this, in the context of the state’s demands issue, the alleged granting of voting rights to people under obedience regarding the choice of jurisdiction directly contradicts both the very concept of monasticism and the vows made by the nuns, which are based on renunciation of the world, the abbess explains.

The monastery’s way of life is determined by its statutes, which prohibits an unauthorized change of jurisdiction. Examples from the monastery’s history show that changes in its jurisdiction occurred exclusively due to specific historical and state changes and were always carried out by decision of the Church authorities, the head of the monastery explains.

Further, neither the Russian Orthodox Church’s nor the monastery’s statutes allow the Patriarch to unilaterally change its jurisdiction, Mother notes. “Such a decision is not made unilaterally but requires collegiality and presupposes a sequence of canonical-legal Church events.”

The abbess’ appeal expresses confidence that Estonian authorities will properly evaluate the monastery’s commitment to observing the fundamental norms of Church life, given that the state has never had and does not have any complaints about the actions of its inhabitants.

Follow OrthoChristian on Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!

Lately I’ve read two books by St. John Henry Newman. One is Newman’s first novel, “Loss and Gain,” while the other is that classic “history of my religious opinions” (Newman’s words), the “Apologia Pro Vita Sua.” Although the two volumes could hardly be more unalike in most respects, both are of considerable interest for what they tell us about the process of religious conversion.

Let’s start with “Loss and Gain.” Published in 1848, just two years after Newman’s own conversion, its central character is an Oxford student named Charles Reding whose religious journey, from Anglicanism to Catholicism, parallels Newman’s. The story is by no means autobiographical — Reding isn’t Newman by another name — but the process of conversion is much the same in both cases.

Both conversions, the one in the story and Newman’s in real life, are what might be called Oxford conversions. Reding’s occurs in the heyday of the Oxford Movement, the Anglican renewal effort that sought to make English Anglicanism more Catholic, and ended — for those like Newman who, after much prayer and study, finally took the step of “crossing the Tiber” and became Catholics themselves.

And the key to conversion? Above all God’s grace of course, but, paradoxically, in human terms the key is often the objections raised by others against what is for Reding, as it was for Newman, no easy decision. Time and again this obstacle moves the young man to persist even though persisting means breaking with family and friends and even his beloved Oxford.

On the morning of his final parting, Reding bids an intensely personal goodbye to the university, described in lyrical terms. “The morning was frosty, and there was a mist; the leaves flitted about; all was in unison with the state of his feelings. … There was no one to see him; he threw his arms round the willows so dear to him, and kissed them; he tore off some of their black leaves and put them in his bosom.”

In the case of the “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” the spur lay in the very circumstance that led to the book (“How great a trial it is to me to write the following history of myself,” Newman writes at the start). The story is familiar. An Anglican clergyman and popular writer named Charles Kingsley took an unprovoked cheap shot in a journal review at Newman and Catholic priests generally, alleging something very like habitual untruthfulness on their part.

Newman demanded a public apology, Kingsley hedged, and the upshot was a series of pamphlets by Newman putting the whole episode on the record. The pamphlets were the basis for what became the Apologia.

The book is not an easy read, since it assumes a familiarity with religious language that comparatively few readers today possess. But it contains memorable writing, such as this on the Catholic Church — an assembly of vastly different individuals “brought together as if into some moral factory, for the melting, refining, and moulding, by an incessant, noisy process, of the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes.” 

These two books together point to a surprising conclusion: Often, as here, despite significant opposition, someone persists in a life-changing decision at least partly because the opposition has the unanticipated consequence of reinforcing the determination to persist. Although that may seem like a banal conclusion, in the hands of a master like Newman it sheds helpful light on what might otherwise look like incomprehensible stubbornness.

Berlin, November 1, 2024

Photo: Telegram The Diocese of Germany of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is calling for increased prayers for the confessors of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Herald of the German Diocese Telegram Channel published a statement on Wednesday referring to the bloody and belligerent seizure of the Cherkasy cathedral on Metropolitan Theodosy diagnosed with burns and concussion after violent seizure of Cherkasy cathedral (+VIDEO)Metropolitan Theodosy of Cherkasy and Kanev was severely injured. During the attack, he was beaten, his klobuk was torn off, and his bishop’s staff was snatched away and used to strike believers.

“>October 17, which put several people, including His Eminence Metropolitan Theodosy, in the hospital.

The diocese always raises its voice in defense of persecuted believers, the statement reads:

Today we offer our prayers and sighs for the new confessors for Christ—the Orthodox Christians of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

We note with sorrow that on October 17, 2024, armed men seized and looted the cathedral in Cherkasy. His Eminence Metropolitan Theodosius and the faithful, who stood up for the defense of the shrines and courageously, by their deeds, confessing faith in Christ and faithfulness to canonical Orthodoxy, were beaten.

“We all saw how this Thursday believers were expelled from the cathedral in Cherkasy, when this terrible crowd took weapons and sticks to beat the people who built this cathedral, who had been praying there for many years. They also beat our bishop Metropolitan Theodosius… I don’t know what possessed this man who beat the bishop on the head with a stick…” said the Chancellor of the UOC, His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary.

We call upon the faithful of the German Diocese to pray fervently for the confessors of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church!

The German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia will continue its important service in witnessing to the persecution of Christians, which has been one of its main missions since its founding. For many decades, the diocese has tirelessly raised its voice in defense of believers who are persecuted around the world. Metropolitan Mark addressed letters to the Conference of Orthodox Bishops of Germany and the Catholic Church.

His Eminence Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany has addressed the situation in Ukraine a number of times in statements, interviews, and homilies.

In a sermon from Sermon of Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany on the Need to Preserve Church Unity During Times of WarThe spirit of war is demanding. It requires us to divide into parties. It forces us to hate.

“>March 2022, he called on all Christians to overcome hate despite the war, and to maintain Church unity. Metropolitan Mark (ROCOR): War is negatively affecting Russian Church, must stop immediatelyMet. Mark is certain that the war will change the Church, “and unfortunately not for the better.””>In an interview that May, he spoke about how the war is unjustified and negatively affecting the Russian Church and must stop immediately. Metropolitan Mark (Arndt): “The danger is that there will be efforts to completely destroy the Church in Ukraine”This is being sought by those who are ruled by the devil, and their goal is to destroy the spiritual bonds of the nation.”>In an interview in May 2023, he spoke about the Ukrainian government’s desire to completely shut down the Church. Ukrainian gov’t behaves just like Lenin and Stalin—Metropolitan Mark of BerlinHis Eminence Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany issued a short statement on the current persecution of the UOC last week, following the Verkhovna Rada’s vote for a bill that aims at banning the Church on a federal level.”>In another interview, he compared the current-day authorities to Lenin and Stalin.

Other hierarchs and clergy from various Local Churches, including the clergy of ROCOR’s Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America, have also Orthodox hierarchs and clergy condemn violent seizure of UOC’s Cherkasy cathedralThe Cherkasy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its ruling hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan Theodosy, have received a number of statements of condolences and support after Cherkasy’s Archangel Michael Cathedral was violently seized by anti-Orthodox bandits of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”

“>spoken out in the aftermath of the Cherkasy tragedy.

Follow OrthoChristian on Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!

Photo: Pinterest     

St. Luke’s Gospel gives us the account of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19 – 31).  We learn that the rich man was well dressed and feasted sumptuously every day (Luke 16:  19).  In stark contrast, there was a poor man named Lazarus who lay outside his gate.  He was full of sores which dogs licked.  He desired to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table (Luke 16: 20 -21).  Lazarus was grossly malnourished, and was likely in the end stages of malnutrition.  Death would soon take him.

In this posting I will depart from the typical commentary one would read about the rich man and Lazarus.  Instead, I will focus on food, nutrition, and malnutrition — both physical and spiritual.

Food.  The Scriptures are filled with the topic.  The life of the Church also involves food.  There are feasts, festivals, and also seasons of fasting.  The Church has many blessings for food and drink.  Before each meal there is the blessing (which can be given by a priest or layman):  “Christ our God, bless this food and drink to your servants, for you are holy now and ever and to the ages of ages.  Amen.”  There are blessings for wells, the sowing of seed, herbage, threshing floors and barns, herds and flocks, bees, beehives, and honey.  There are blessings for vineyards and wine, fishnets, meat, eggs, and cheese.  The things of agriculture and the garden, etc., are blessed that our physical lives are nourished and sustained by God’s gifts of food and drink to us.

The food and drink of nature sustains natural life, and only natural life.  A few years ago on a warm summer afternoon I was sitting on my back patio.  I was either reading, or playing a guitar when I noticed a lovely garden spider.  In her web was her catch, her prey, which provided her nourishment that sustained her life.  The capture of the insect led to its death. Later that year she would die.  No further eating would prolong her short life.  For us, as for the garden spider, our physical food, generally, derives from the death of another physical, mortal creature (even the uprooting of a carrot ends its life).  Death, when consumed, leads to death.

The rich man and his brothers ate the best foods and drank the best wines.  As with a physician’s descriptive progress note, they would be described as “well nourished, well developed males.”  Yet, he and they were spiritually malnourished.  They were spiritually emaciated and were wasting with open sores in their souls.  To nourish his soul, apparently, all he had to do was to cleanse, clothe, and feed Lazarus.  This was not done.  Spiritually speaking, he was a “Dead man walking!”

Let’s turn now to the subject of spiritual food as is found in the fourth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  In this chapter we read of the account of Jesus’ meeting of the Samaritan woman at the Well of Jacob (John 4: 1 – 42).  We read this from their conversation.  I quote our Lord’s words:

Every one who drinks of this water [the water from the well] will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4: 13 – 14).

Jesus speaks of a supernatural, spiritual water.  He speaks of the water that is the Holy Spirit.  Then, later in the fourth chapter, we have this exchange between Jesus and his disciples:

Meanwhile, the disciples were asking of him:  “Rabbi, eat.”  But he said to hem, “I have food (brosis) to eat of which you do not know.  So the disciples were saying to one another, “did someone bring him something to eat?”  Jesus says to them, “My food (broma) is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and to complete His work” (John 4: 31 – 34).

The Greek word brosis / broma refers to a food of substance such as a meat.  Such a food requirers chewing (trogo, trogon) to break down the food for proper digestion.  From this we learn that the holy works of the Father are a source of spiritual nourishment.  It was true for Christ; it is true for us (see Phillipians 2: 12 – 13 and Ephesians 2: 10).  Spiritual nourishment forms our souls.  Throughout the centuries, the Church Fathers teach that the human soul has both a type of substance and form.  The human soul is not an amorphous blob of energy.  Further, they state that a human soul is recognizable and follows our present physical form.  All the more reason to be feasting in a spiritual manner.

The holy works of faith both nourish and form our souls.  But what is the greatest spiritual food?  It is the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I now quote extensively from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel which contains the Bread of Life Discourse given by Christ in the synagogue of Capernaum (John 6: 22 – 59).  I focus on verses 4: 48 – 56:

I am the Living Bread.  Your fathers ate the Manna in the wilderness and died.  This is the Bread which is descending from heaven, that if someone might eat of it he shall not die.  I am the Living Bread which descended from heaven.  If ever someone might eat of this bread he will live for ever, and the Bread which I will give is my flesh [given] for the life of the world.

But the Jews were grumbling with one another saying, “How is he able to give us his flesh to eat?”  Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in yourselves.  The one who is eating (trogon) my Flesh and drinking my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him in the last day.  For my Flesh is true food (brosis), and my Blood is true drink.  The one who is eating (trogon) my Flesh and is drinking my Blood abides in me and I in him (John 6: 48 – 56).

Photo: foma.ru We are nourished by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  By this spiritual food Christ is taken into us — into every cell of our bodies — and into our souls.  He is formed in us and lives in us as he abides in us by this Sacrament.  By it we have a true, relational union with him which is our salvation.  We do not consume death by this Sacrament as with natural food.  The supernatural food and drink of his Body and Blood give us eternal life because we consume his divine life contained in the Eucharist.

Our souls are also nourished by the Scriptures, faith, the works of faith, prayer, the Divine Liturgy, and all the services of the Church (Matins, Vespers, the Hours, etc.), and other sacraments of the Church.  By these the Triune God is in us and we are in the Triune God.  We have this relational union.  This union is formed, sustained, and strengthened by all these forms of spiritual brosis.

In conclusion, let’s return to the rich man and Lazarus.  We know from the words of Christ regarding the Last Judgment that we will be judged by our Lord on the basis of how we treated our fellow human beings is this material life we all live (Matthew 25:  31 – 46).  It is clear that the rich man failed this one great test.  He ignored Lazarus in his suffering.  So, we all have to ask ourselves this very serious question:  Who is Lazarus in our lives?  Who do we pass by and ignore?  With the time remaining in our short, mortal lives let us feed, cleanse, and clothe Lazarus that our souls may be nourished and strengthened for the eternal life of the blessed in Christ!

The Venerable Confessor Gabriel (Urgebadze)     

A few years ago, I had a difficult legal case, in which Father St. Gabriel (Urgebadze)

“>Gabriel (Urgebadze) helped me a great deal. And now, when I had similar problems, I again turned to this wonderful saint for help. Providentially, on the way to the lawyer’s I unexpectedly met a religious woman who was going there on the same case. She and I found plenty to talk about, and I learned that she was a greatly devoted to Elder Gabriel. The woman told me about Father Gabriel’s help in her life. Her story amazed me so much that, with her permission, I decided to write it down and share with readers.

In the 1990s our family—my husband, myself and our small child—unfortunately had to leave our native Abkhazia and become refugees. We went to Russia, where we stayed in the Komi Republic.¹ Our second child was born there. The children were growing, life was getting back to normal, but suddenly I learned that I was pregnant with a third baby. And everything would have been fine, but the doctors who provided prenatal care began to scare me a lot. They said that my baby had very severe pathologies and an abortion was urgently needed. The doctors insisted, but I really did not want to have an abortion, even for medical reasons, and as a last resort I decided to go to church and pray to God for help. In the town where we lived, the first church had just been built. And I, who had never set foot in church before, came there and began to ask the Lord to help me not to terminate my pregnancy and give birth to a healthy baby.

After the prayer I felt much calmer, and I had hope that all would be fine. I stopped going to the doctors, who continued to insist on an abortion, but I regularly came to church, prayed, and as a result I gave birth to an absolutely healthy baby. Then, during my integration into Church life, I learned about the saints, including Georgian ones, one of whom was Father Gabriel (Urgebadze). A few years later, when we moved to Georgia, the elder was already one of the saints dearest to my heart, and I often prayed to him.

Many years passed. One day, while going to work the usual way and crossing the street, to my great astonishment I saw Elder Gabriel right in front of me. He looked exactly as he did on the icon, although his eyes were not brown, as in real life, but blue. Father Gabriel looked at me and said: “All will be fine.” And then he added, “You have three children, and I have four.”

Frozen in the middle of the road and listening to the saint’s words attentively, I was not looking around at all, which the elder warned me about. “Be carefull, a car is coming!” Looking in the direction of his gaze, I saw a car approaching me and took a few steps, and when I turned around, there was already no one beside me. The elder seemed to have vanished into thin air! Dumbfounded, I just stood on the spot for a while, and then continued on my way, pondering over why the Lord had sent me the elder right there, in the middle of the road, and what his words “all will be fine” meant.

And I soon figured out the meaning of his words, “You have three children, and I have four.” The fact is that I would have had four children had I not had my abortion of the first. During his lifetime the wise elder often allegorically pointed out to a person the sins he had committed, trying to attribute them to himself, as evidenced by those who knew him personally. Even now Father Gabriel tried to remind me about my past sin in this manner.

A month passed after the miraculous appearance of the elder to me. Every time I went that way to and from work, I kept remembering my meeting with the elder. And one day, opposite the site where the elder had appeared to me, I suddenly saw a very badly twisted pole on the side of the road, a tree growing nearby in the same condition, and fragments of metal on the ground below. I asked passers-by what had happened here, and they told me: “There was a terrible accident here, a man lost control and crashed into a pole and a nearby tree at full speed. Everybody who was in the car was probably killed, because it is impossible to survive such an accident.” I grieved for the crash victims and went home.

When I came home, I was horrified to learn that my nephew—for whom I had been very worried at that time and for whom I had been praying hard to all the saints, including my beloved Elder Gabriel—had been in terrible accident. I instantly remembered the car crash on the site where I had met the elder, and I went all cold.

“Did it happen there?” I gave the name of the street.

“Yes, it was there,” was the reply.

“And how is my nephew?” I wondered with great fear.

“Thank God, he’s fine, but his car has been totaled! Both he and we are simply astounded by how he walked out unscathed, because in such an accident he would have had zero chance of surviving!”

And it dawned on me. “That’s why Elder Gabriel appeared to me at that very place! That’s what his words, ‘all will be fine’, meant! And that’s who saved my nephew from certain death!”

From the bottom of my heart I thanked the elder for such a miraculous rescue of my nephew and that, foreseeing what was going to happen, he deigned to appear to me and tried to comfort me, saying that everything would be fine with my nephew!

Holy Father Gabriel, do not leave us without your intercession, keep us in all the paths of our lives and pray to God for us!

They might exist, but I cannot think of a recent or vintage sci-fi movie where religion matters. I do not count the neo-gnostic pagan mysticism of the “Star Wars” franchise.

You are not going to find a futuristic Catholic community in the 28th century, or a Franciscan missionary in A.D. 3076 opening a church in Alpha Centauri, or a person of any specific Christ-centered faith within the borders of any popular science-fiction movie. 

Whatever dystopian future science fiction presents seems to take the position that future humans have “grown” beyond “superstition.” The other thing all science-fiction films get wrong is just how the future is going to look.

Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant yet baffling film, “2001,” made in the late 1960s, got a lot wrong. In the real 2001, not only did we not have permanent moon bases, but no country on Earth was capable of human space flight beyond the orbital pull of our home planet. In the film “2001,” the airline Pan Am is imagined to have cornered the commercial space flight market, but in reality, they went belly up by 1991.

The original “Blade Runner,” produced in 1982 but looking into the future of Los Angeles in 2019, shows an overpopulated, perennially raining, gloomy city of not many angels. It’s been 42 years since that film was made, and five years past the future it predicted. Our city may be crowded, but not impossible, and the sun still shines through cleaner skies than it did when I was a kid. And as many demographic indicators suggest, the population threat to the Earth may come from a population implosion rather than the opposite.

“Back to the Future II” was released in 1989 and depicted a future world of 2015. They got the overwhelming descent into sensory override correct, but we are a long way from the flying cars the film envisions.

But then there are the things some science-fiction films got “right.” Taking the example of Kubrick’s “2001” again, the prediction of dependency on artificial intelligence (AI) in the film may not be as overwrought in 2024, but it is certainly on its way. The future that Kubrick envisioned was a world where humanity decreases, and machines ascend. Even when two astronauts in the film identify the threat that their AI “master” HAL has become, their attempts to overcome it are not the stuff of heroism, but more in line with lab rats getting a little revenge, until some unknown alien, neither divine or benevolent, asserts a different kind of dominance over the surviving human.

We may be able to chuckle, or even scoff, at the idea of flying Toyotas, but the AI revolution is no longer a laughing matter. It certainly cannot be all that amusing to the human employees of the mammoth, 3.5-square-mile Amazon fulfillment center in Nashville, Tennessee. According to a recent article, the humans at Amazon have new fellow employees — robots that travel up and down rows and rows of other things people have ordered and assist in lifting and loading the same.

The robots are all called Proteus, which is certainly a moniker worth noting — as it is the name of the Greek mythological god who had the power to see the future, but was not inclined to share it with humans. According to the article, Amazon is willing to share its view of the future, and it is as bright as it appears benign. “Proteus is just so darn cute,” says Julie Mitchell, director of Amazon Robotics, who put to bed any fears the “lovable” yet slightly creepy-looking autonomous mobile robot will one day try to take over the world.

That quote made me think of the 1933 version of “King Kong,” when the New York promoter quiets his anxious audience at their first sight of the 38-foot-tall gorilla, telling them not to worry because the chains that restrain the beast are made of solid steel.

There is plenty of history of humans using technology for less-than-godly things and, in many cases, for objectively evil purposes. This new world racing toward us at the speed of light will certainly outpace our capacity to fully control it and ourselves.

It is beyond just people losing their jobs, as many on the floor at the Amazon fulfillment center are probably worrying about. It is about losing our way. We are the ones made in God’s image, not the machines we build for good or ill. Although it sometimes appears that we are living in a dystopian, nonreligious time, it is comforting to know the Church and God’s presence remain on every corner of the Earth, regardless of how a sci-fi fantasist or even an AI engineer of today may think. And so it shall be until the end of time, just as Jesus said, so maybe there will be a market for plastic Jesus statues you can place on the dashboard of our flying cars when that future finally comes to pass.

With three knocks on the door of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross just after 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 31, Archbishop Richard Henning began his journey as the tenth bishop, and seventh archbishop, of the Archdiocese of Boston, succeeding Cardinal Seán O’Malley.

As is tradition, following the knock on the cathedral doors Henning was welcomed by O’Malley, and a procession into the cathedral followed. The installation was attended by about 1,400 people, according to the archdiocese, including French Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, five additional cardinals, five archbishops, and more than 50 bishops.

Nearly five hundred priests, religious, deacons, seminarians, and lay people were in attendance, as were members of Henning’s family. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was among the government, interfaith, and local business leaders in attendance as well.

O’Malley opened the installation Mass with a brief greeting, before Pierre gave remarks of his own and then read aloud an English translation of the papal bull, or decree, from Pope Francis naming Henning archbishop of Boston.

Pierre thanked O’Malley for “all the ways in which you have been close to God and to God’s people” in his 40 years as a bishop, and in 21 years as the archbishop of Boston. The comments were met with a standing ovation for O’Malley.

On behalf of Pope Francis, Pierre then thanked Henning for his closeness to the faithful, and for his pledge to continue to express that closeness in his new ministry in the Archdiocese of Boston.

“I’m confident that your experiences as a pastor and leader will help you in your mission here, but even more fundamentally, what will guide you is what you have come to know from your encounter with God,” Pierre said. “It is there, in this personal encounter, that you are able to receive the good Lord’s love, kindness, understanding, mercy.”

Following Pierre’s reading of the papal bull, Henning showed it to the archdiocese’s College of Consultors, who validated the papal seal. Once accepted, Henning presented it to the entire assembly, making his way around the cathedral. He was then led back to the altar to cathedra – the seat of the archbishop – and assumed his role as the archbishop of Boston and celebrated the Mass.

In his homily, Henning spoke of communities and families where solidarity and compassion are present, and the hope that exists in them. He then, as an example, spoke specifically about the example set by victim-survivors of clergy sex abuse in the archdiocese.

“This Church of Boston, it is in a real sense a wounded Church because of the failure to act with compassion and healing. Sins against the innocent,” Henning said.

“We have seen over these decades a passionate effort to protect the vulnerable, but still we feel the weight of those wounds, and we owe a debt of gratitude to victim-survivors who tell their story, for they have helped to protect new generations by their courage, and by their prophetic truth telling to us, and their living of the faith, and their capacity for compassion and solidarity, of love of neighbor,” he said.

Henning was born and raised in Rockville Centre, New York, and was ordained an auxiliary bishop of his home diocese in 2018, where he served until he became the bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, last year. His ministry as a priest began at a New York parish in the 1990s, before becoming a teacher at and ultimately head of the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York.

The Mass concluded with Henning expressing gratitude from the pulpit. He thanked Pope Francis for his appointment and expressed closeness to him. He thanked all of the clergy and faithful in attendance, the religious and seminarians, as well as his family.

Henning specifically thanked O’Malley, and noted the gratitude the entire Church has for him.

“The quality of your ministry has always been a truly humble gift of yourself for the sake of others. It has been compassionate. It has been gentle, and it has been truly biblical and authentic to the faith,” Henning said.

“You, in a very real sense, have given that witness with your living and with your words and it has made all of the difference to this church. You, in a very real sense, are a foundation on which we will continue to build, so I am so very grateful to you,” he said.

The sentiment was met with another standing ovation for O’Malley.

Henning closed by again thanking everyone in attendance, saying that he was at a loss for words.

“I don’t have the words to express all of the emotions I feel this day, but I hope and pray that I will find the wisdom and the strength to give myself away completely to this beautiful church and to serve you with all of my strength for the years to come,” Henning said.

As the Vatican released its first annual report on safeguarding minors Oct. 29, officials in Africa highlighted some of the cultural practices hampering child protection on the continent.

The nearly 100-page “Annual Report on Church Policies and Procedures for Safeguarding,” written by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, is the first in an annual series. It offers a review of safeguarding measures in several countries and their dioceses as well as by Catholic organizations and religious orders.

Several African countries were listed in the report’s analytical section, among them Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and South Africa. Focus on the global south may seem technical — those countries had their “ad limina” visits planned as data for the report was being researched — but for African safeguarding officers there is more to read between the lines.

“Some of the main challenges to safeguarding minors in the context of the church in Africa are pinned down to cultural norms and practices,” Father Lowrent Kamwaza, safeguarding coordinator for the Missionaries of Africa, told OSV News in referring to the report findings.

He said important elements highlighted had to do with rejection and cultural stigmatization against victim-survivors of sexual abuse.

“This has led to many sexual abuse of minors cases (to) go unreported or underreported. Eventually this frustrates and prevents a smooth process for justice in the context of Africa,” said the priest.

The report indicates, as one of the repeated gaps in country structures, the lack of data on the scope of abuse. What was also noted is the lack of understanding among Catholics on how important the issue is in general.

“The commission notes an urgent need for an increase in research into rates of abuse, as well as a continued sensitization campaign, to support the local bishops in bringing to light the true scourge of abuse,” it wrote in its assessment for Ivory Coast.

Father Kamwaza highlighted the strong social pressure against reporting abuse that has fostered a culture of silence.

“In the same line, the report has also highlighted that sexual issues are still a taboo in many African countries, and consequently abuse issues … ‘flourish’ in these environments where no one is ready to talk about it,” he said.

George Thuku, a safeguarding adviser at the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa, known as AMECEA, agrees that culture of silence is driven directly by sexual relations being a taboo topic.

“Therefore many children would not report sexual advances and abuse by adults,” Thuku told OSV News.

According to the official, there were also communities that strongly advocated for practices such as arranged marriages, forced marriages — arrangements in which the individuals involved had no power to resist.

“This affects children who have to find themselves in sexual unions that they did not approve of. Instances of female genital mutilation strongly exist in different communities despite legal frameworks that abolish or even criminalize such” practices, he said.

Even prevention may be a tricky task across Africa, Thuku said, as it’s not necessarily the parents who will want to protect their child the most.

“The child … is likely to receive more care and attention from nonparents. Within extended families, children tend to receive care and protection from parents’ kin,” he said.

Across Africa, this situation “could be exploited to strengthen child protection,” he said.

On the front page, the report carries an image of a baobab tree, with children seemingly admiring its trunk. The tree, native to the African savanna grassland, where the climate is dry and arid, is a symbol of life and positivity. Some of the trunks reach a circumference of 82 feet and diameter of 29 feet and can store thousands of gallons of water.

“The baobab tree is highly significant. It is a symbol of strength, with medicinal benefits,” said Thuku, dubbing it “excellent imagery” for what the church is trying to achieve with its safeguarding measures in Africa.

And many countries try hard, given the cultural challenges, to safeguard children, the report noted. In Zimbabwe, for instance, a pilot safeguarding formation program was introduced in four dioceses, and in one of the dioceses, 40,551 children and 20,903 adults were trained in safeguarding, the report pointed out.

The report notes that the culture of safeguarding is a new concept in Africa, requiring sensitization, information, training and skills development, as the measures are not even close to being as thoroughly structured and audited as they are, for instance, in the U.S.

According to the report, safeguarding policy development and implementation vary across Africa. It also acknowledged the active general engagement and commitment of bishops and religious leaders, but flagged the lack of effective monitoring and evaluation, and lack of proper funding.

ROME — At the big picture level, the story of the 2024 Synod of Bishops on Synodality is harmony. Despite quasi-apocalyptic forecasts of chaos and schism three years ago when the process began, it ended Oct. 26 on a Saturday night in Rome without earthquakes and, to a remarkable degree, without much by way of hard feelings.

In its 51-page final document, the synod did not demand the dramatic changes in teaching and practice many had expected on issues such as women deacons, outreach to gay, lesbian, and transgender persons, and married priests. In fact, the “LGBT community” and married priests were never even mentioned, while the lone reference to women deacons was a recommendation for more study — the classic bureaucratic equivalent of a punt.

To a large extent, this result was due to Pope Francis, who took these hot-button issues off the table by assigning them to a series of study groups, who are to report their findings by June 2025.

In the end, there were differing assessments of the significance of the synod. Some hailed it as a watershed in Catholic history, ushering in a new age of bottom-up rather than top-down decision-making, while others dismissed it as largely sound and fury signifying nothing, a three-year process that produced nothing of real consequence.

Wherever a given participant fell on that spectrum, however, no one seemed truly angry, and perhaps that itself was the real accomplishment.

The absence of rancor, however, doesn’t mean there was no disagreement at all. A careful reading of the final document, along with voting totals on its individual paragraphs released by the Vatican, provides an interesting X-ray of where the fault lines ran.

Of the 368 participants in the synod, 355 actually cast votes Saturday night. Individual votes were taken on each of the document’s 155 paragraphs, and for the most part they were adopted almost without objection — a typical result was 352 to 3, for instance, or 354 to 1.

Only in eight instances did a given paragraph attract at least 35 “no” votes, meaning that 147 paragraphs received more than 90% support. Those few which dropped below the 90% threshold, therefore, are good indicators of where the debate inside the synod, such as it was, took place.

Let’s take them one by one, in order of the resistance they generated.

Paragraph 60 (97 no votes”): This paragraph deals with women, including the diaconate. Its key language is: “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.” The 97 no’s were more than double the total for any other paragraph, perhaps because it’s likely that both conservatives and liberals may have objected. Some conservatives likely felt the question should be closed, not left open, while some liberals may feel the time for study has passed and now’s the moment for action.

Paragraph 125 (45 no votes): The subject here is bishops’ conferences, including a recommendation “to specify precisely the domain of the doctrinal and disciplinary competence of Episcopal Conferences.” This alarmed some participants who don’t feel a conference should have any authority over doctrine — that’s the business of the individual bishop in his diocese, or for the pope and/or an ecumenical council at the level of the universal Church.

Paragraph 27 (43 no votes): Concerned with liturgy, this paragraph includes a recommendation for a study group to ponder “how to make liturgical celebrations more an expression of synodality.” That’s more or less a coded way of talking about greater inculturation, which, for some, may have stirred memories of the Pachamama controversy during the 2019 Synod for the Amazon. More broadly, the reaction reflects continuing tension between diversity and consistency in liturgical questions.

Paragraph 148 (40 no votes): In the context of a paragraph on formation, mostly to the priesthood but also to the episcopacy, the overall thrust is to call for a more “synodal” process, including an emphasis on collaboration and “ecclesial discernment.” Critics may fear that such an approach to formation could result in priests and bishops who see their roles mostly as moderators or facilitators, not as real leaders empowered to teach, preach, and govern.

Paragraph 92 (39 no votes): This paragraph acknowledges hierarchical authority, but asserts “it may not ignore a direction which emerges through proper discernment within a consultative process” and calls for a revision of canon law to clarify the relationship between consultation and deliberation. To some, this may sound a bit like a slippery slope toward the “democratization” of Catholicism, supplanting leadership by the bishops and the pope with the vox populi (voice of  the people).

Paragraph 129 (38 no votes): Focused on particular councils (meaning summits either of all the bishops of an episcopal conference, or the bishops of an ecclesiastical province), this paragraph includes a recommendation that Vatican approval of their results, for matters not directly touching faith, morals or the sacraments, should be quasi-automatic. For some, this can’t help but seem like weakening the Vatican’s role as the Church’s last line of defense.

Paragraph 133 (37 no votes): In the context of discussing the Eastern Catholic churches, this paragraph mentions the problem of faithful of the Eastern churches who migrate into regions of the Latin Rite, but doesn’t address the issue of Eastern churches enjoying some sort of universal jurisdiction over their faithful, simply recommending instead “sincere dialogue and fraternal collaboration between Latin and Eastern Bishops.” Naturally, that formula likely disappointed some on both sides of the issue.

Paragraph 136 (37 no votes): This paragraph deals with the synod itself, and basically asserts that the nature of the last two assemblies, the 2023 and 2024 editions on synodality — including opening membership to other constituencies in the Church beyond the bishops) is not only the pattern for all future synods, but for any exercise of leadership in the Church. For those who found this process unwieldy and confused, such a prospect may not be welcome.

What emerges is this: Aside from women deacons and liturgy, every other disputed component of the final document deals with what we might loosely call “decentralization,” implying a shift in power away from the top and toward the bottom. In that sense, the document has defined the terms of debate for what “synodality” may look like in practice, depending on how these contested matters are resolved.

Ironically this debate has been engineered by a pope who called this synod on his own authority, and who intervened repeatedly without consulting anyone. How to square the call for decentralization with the exercise of top-down authority which helped produce it is, perhaps, a matter for another day.

When I told a lapsed friend several years ago that I’d published a book about St. Thérèse of Lisieux, she rather pointedly inquired, “But you don’t have to be inside the Church to be a saint, do you?”

I understood her concern; one of my abiding obsessions is the “unsung saint”: the person who is never noticed.

In fact, I write a monthly column for Magnificat Magazine called Credible Witnesses that celebrates a notable Catholic who has died but has not yet, and may never be, canonized. But here’s why saints are compelling: Saints are exceptional. Saints are extreme. As William James observed in “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, $7.85): “There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric … It would profit us little to study this second-hand [i.e. conventional, ordinary] religious life. We must make search rather for … individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather.”

So though in the general sense “saints” can be found everywhere, those who love Christ tend to be the most extreme people of all. Thus we have an 11-year-old who preferred to be stabbed to death rather than yield her virginity (St. Maria Goretti). We have a nun who drank the pus from the cancerous breast of her mother superior (St. Catherine of Siena). We have a medieval scholar, regarded as one of the most magnificent philosophers the world has known, who at the end of his life regarded his oeuvre and remarked, “All straw!” (St. Thomas Aquinas). I have my own personal pantheon: St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill. St. André Bessette, who achieved sainthood by humbly tending the door of a Montreal church for 40 years.

Another favorite is St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, a Chinese layman and opium addict who was prohibited from receiving the sacraments for the last 30 years of his life because of this “grave sin.” During the Boxer Rebellion, in which Christians were brutally persecuted, he was sentenced with many others to die and is reputed to have gone to his execution singing the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I’m no canonical lawyer, but I wonder if there isn’t another kind of unsung saint: the one who commits what would otherwise be a sin in order to save a number of human lives.

I’m thinking of Irene Gut Opdyke (1922-2003), a Polish nurse, who risked imprisonment, torture, and execution to save 12 Jews in Nazi Germany during World War II.

The oldest of five daughters, Irene was raised a devout Catholic and at 16, began studying to be a nurse. When Poland fell in September 1939, divided between the Germans and the Russians, Irene, who had never so much as kissed a boy, fled with the Polish medical corps into a forest.

There she was captured by Russian soldiers, beaten unconscious, raped, and left for dead in the snow.

Forced into service as a nurse in the Russian Army, she escaped only to be recaptured by the Nazis.

“Whoever helps a Jew will be punished by death,” blared from loudspeakers. Massacres and public executions were everyday occurrences. She once saw a German soldier throw an infant into the air and shoot it dead. Then he shot the mother.

Ordered to work in a hotel kitchen where sumptuous meals were prepared for Nazi officers, Irene began smuggling food into the adjacent Jewish ghetto.

And when she was pressed into service as a housekeeper for Major Eduard Rügemer, she began harboring Jews — eventually 12 in all — in the basement of his requisitioned villa.

One day the major returned home unexpectedly and came upon Irene in the kitchen with two Jewish women who’d been living below.

Irene pled with Rügemer to take her life and spare theirs. Instead, he confessed to being in love with her and agreed to protect her charges — on condition that she become his mistress.

At confession the next day, the priest refused to absolve her. “Father, I cannot throw their lives away,” she replied, “even for my own soul.”

In 1982, Opdyke was recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel, as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honorific for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the war.

I am second to none in my admiration of the virgin martyrs, but when Irene Gut Opdyke died, I wonder if Sts. Lucy, Agatha, Cecilia, and their cohort didn’t welcome her into heaven as one of their own. I wonder if there she has not been awarded another kind of honorific.

How capacious a Church that holds to her bosom female saints and male saints; saints of every race, age, demographic, IQ, livelihood, and walk of life! How welcoming the arms of a Church that embraces as some of her most precious children the broken, the fragile, the weak, the still sinning, the still in bondage, the still stuck. How emblematic of a Church of mercy and humor to take us as we are.

St. Teresa of Ávila defined a saint as simply “a friend of Christ.” Glory be to God that the invitation is extended to all.