Monday, July 27, 2015

Pope Francis' exhortation to walk on the margins makes us squirm


  • Pope Francis arrives to meet people gathered at a house as he visits Banado Norte, a poor neighborhood in Asuncion, Paraguay, on July 12. (CNS/Paul Haring)
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Editorial
In the growing corpus of Pope Francis pronouncements -- in homilies and speeches and encyclicals -- an eloquence adheres that might safely be characterized as singular in quality in the long history of papal literature. It is an eloquence eminently accessible, born of personal experience and shaped primarily by his love of the poor.
It is not a distant love or a romanticized notion out of which he speaks. He doesn't make heroes of poor people or conjure some noble purpose out of poverty that will somehow be fully realized in the next life.
Quite the opposite. Transcendence is not reserved for some other reality. For Francis, the Christ we worship in the quiet of the sanctuary is the Christ of the streets. Francis is about real here-and-now situations in very plain language, and that language at times is disarmingly undiplomatic.
Indeed, in the United States, the eloquence is difficult to discern. The words make us squirm.
During his speech in Bolivia to members of popular movements, he said: "When we look into the eyes of the suffering, when we see the faces of the endangered campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden native, the homeless family, the persecuted migrant, the unemployed young person, the exploited child, the mother who lost her child in a shootout because the barrio was occupied by drug dealers, the father who lost his daughter to enslavement ... when we think of all those names and faces, our hearts break because of so much sorrow and pain. And we are deeply moved."
It was a telling moment. No one smirked or thought it an exaggeration that he places himself fully within those circles. He's been there. It is part of the authenticity that makes his words not only bearable when they might understandably repel, but actually inviting and enticing.
His exhortation to walk to the margins is not a rhetorical flourish; his now-familiar reference to the "art of encounter" is not metaphor. The images he supplies repeatedly in real time and circumstances demonstrate precisely what he means -- move into the margins of society among the broken, the disfigured, the financially destitute, those behind bars. They are the first preference for his attention and energy, the starting point from which flows his understanding of the heart of the Gospel and the Christian life.
How many of us have heard during a retreat or day of recollection some version of the "inverted triangle," a simple image to explain how the Christian understanding of what is important in life might be different from what is preached by Wall Street or the daily bombardment of ads encountered in every corner of life.
Francis goes deeper than explanation, well beyond mere tolerance. And this, perhaps, is what makes us nervous here in the First World, the developed world, the rich North. This pope is not ideological or partisan. He is radical in the most essential sense -- going to the root of things. It can't be overstated that an indispensable part of his formation occurred steeped in the "storms of people's lives" in the slums around Buenos Aires, Argentina. These are not places where one meets perfect nuclear Catholic families. These are not places of investment portfolios, career ladders, elegant dinners and heady intellectual conversation. These are not places that influence a country's economic or military policies. But they are his starting point, the first lens through which he views the rest of the world.
Those who wish to define Catholic orthodoxy by a narrow list of sexual sins are inclined to describe themselves as countercultural, fighting the mighty forces of secularism. Come September and Francis' visit, we all are likely to be shaken to our roots by a much-expanded definition of Catholic orthodoxy and a far more demanding idea of what it means to be countercultural in the United States.
"You, dear brothers and sisters, often work on little things, in local situations, amid forms of injustice which you do not simply accept but actively resist," he told the community activists in Bolivia. He was applauding them and their heroic work for "standing up to an idolatrous system which excludes, debases and kills."
Those in the room needed no further explanation of what he meant by "an idolatrous system." It is, in his words, "a globalization that excludes." He is about to arrive in globalization central.


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Taken from: http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/editorial-pope-francis-exhortation-walk-margins-makes-us-squirm


Sunday, July 26, 2015

Planned Parenthood scam shows us evil has a way of creeping into the world

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THE gargoyle witches of Grimm’s fairytales, who kidnapped children and fattened them up to eat, served the purpose of warning tender hearts about the evil ever-present in our world.
As adults we still treat evil as the realm of alien monsters, consoling ourselves with the fiction that the butchers of Islamic State or Nazism or communism are not fully human, with people who love them and lives of normality outside their vile deeds.

 –, Saturday, July, 25, 2015, (10:18pm)                       

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Hitler, for instance, was a vegetarian who cared deeply about the welfare of animals.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote that the line separating good from evil “passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart”.
In other words, all of us are capable of evil. It may be easier to think of evil as something foreign to ourselves. But it has a way of creeping into every complacent society, through every complicit heart.
Take the grotesque practices of one of the world’s largest abortion providers, Planned Parenthood, exposed in an undercover sting as selling the livers, brains and hearts of aborted babies for $30 to $100 a pop.
This is not just another wacky story from America to dismiss. We are deeply implicated, both because Australian researchers also use foetal tissue, whose provenance is opaque, and because we provide more than $30 million in foreign aid to the international arm of Planned Parenthood, for “reproductive health” activities in the Pacific and Asia.
You can see just what those “reproductive health” activities entail in two sickening undercover videos released by the US pro-life group, the Centre for Medical Progress.
Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr Deborah Nucatola is shown haggling over the sale of “intact” body parts over lunch with two actors she ­believes are from a “foetal tissue procurement” company.
In between forkfuls of lettuce and swigs of red wine, ­Nucatola says: “A lot of people want intact hearts these days … as many intact livers as possible … some people want lower extremities too … We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Then there is stony-faced Dr Mary Gatter, another Planned Parenthood medical director, who offers to use “a less crunchy technique to get more whole specimens”. Consent from the patient for this altered technique she describes as a “specious little argument”.
Gatter is recorded negotiating $100 per body part. “I want a Lamborghini,” she quips.
Planned Parenthood claims it gains “no financial benefit”, other than to cover its costs, and is simply “helping” ­patients who want to “donate tissue ... with full, appropriate consent under the highest ethical and legal standards”.
The videos show abortion for what it is, not the sanitised fiction of the pro-choice movement, but the messy ending of a life, the crushing of a tiny body with a beating human heart and other organs desired by the medical research industry.
This secretive traffic in foetal body parts is a global business, and it occurs in Australia. Rare detail is found in a 2003 article in the Medical Journal of Australia, titled, “Use of human foetal ?tissue for biomedical research in Australia”.
An average of 108 aborted foetuses a year were “obtained” between 1994 and 2002: “19 separate biomedical researchers at 12 separate Australian institutions (four universities, six major teaching hospitals and two research ­institutes) used human foetal tissue in their research”.
The abortions were performed between eight and 20 weeks, and “the most commonly used tissues were eye (23%), bone/cartilage (23%), brain/spinal cord (22%), kidney (15%) and pancreas (8%).”
As in America, sale of foetal tissue here is illegal, but there is no transparency about the arrangements between abortion clinics and researchers, despite warnings from the ­National Health and Medical Research Council that “financial or contractual … conflict of interest” must be “managed”.
Alarmed by the prospect of similar abuses here, the Australian Christian Lobby has called on parliament to “investigate the use and possible sale of human foetal tissue”.
Then there is the not inconsiderable matter of taxpayer funding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation: $651,801 for “core funding to strategic plan (Asia)”, $769,800 “Contribution to IPPF (global)” and $30 million to “Pacific Regional Partnerships for Reproductive Health Program (Pacific)”.
NSW MP Fred Nile wants funding stopped: “The Australian Government is aiding the organisation’s unethical, inhumane practice of utilising foetal tissue as a commodity and for monetary gain.”
But the response of the government is just business as usual.
“These allegations … do not relate to DFAT’s funding of International Planned Parenthood Federation,” a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
“DFAT contributes funding to IPPF as part of the global effort to reduce the unmet need for quality reproductive health care services in developing countries … IPPF must ensure its activities comply with the relevant country’s laws, including in relation to abortion”.
Sorry, that’s not good enough.
If the live cattle trade can be shut down overnight on the strength of undercover videos taken by animal rights activists, at the every least our government should review its funding of Planned Parenthood’s international affiliate, and seek assurances that foetal body parts are not being sold off.
Our consciences cannot remain forever anaesthetised to evil done in our name.
                

Monday, July 20, 2015

Pope Francis leading the new American (Socialist) Revolution




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Yes, Pope Francis is encouraging civil disobedience, leading a rebellion. Listen closely, Francis knows he’s inciting political rebellion, an uprising of the masses against the world’s superrich capitalists. And yet, right-wing conservatives remain in denial, tuning out the pope’s message, hoping he’ll just go away like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement did.
Never. America’s narcissistic addiction to presidential politics is dumbing down our collective brain. Warning: Forget Bernie vs. Hillary. Forget the circus-clown-car distractions created by Trump vs. the GOP’s Fab 15. Pope Francis is only real political leader that matters this year. Forget the rest. Here’s why:
Pope Francis is not just leading a “Second American Revolution,” he is rallying people across the Earth, middle class as well as poor, inciting billions to rise up in a global economic revolution, one that could suddenly sweep the planet, like the 1789 French storming the Bastille.




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Unfortunately, conservative capitalists — Big Oil, Koch billionaires, our GOP Congress and all fossil-fuel climate-science deniers — are blind to the fact their ideology is on the wrong side of history, that by fighting a no-win battle they are committing suicide, self-destructing their own ideology.
The fact is: The era of capitalism is rapidly dying, a victim of its own success, sabotaged by greed and a loss of a moral code. In 1776 Adam Smith’s capitalism became America’s core economic principle. We enshrined his ideal of capitalism in our constitutional freedoms. We prospered. America became the greatest economic superpower in world history.
But along the way, America forgot Smith’s original foundation was in morals, values, doing what’s right for the common good. Instead we drifted into Ayn Rand’s narcissistic “mutant capitalism,” as Vanguard’s founder Jack Bogle called the distortion of Adam Smith’s principles in his classic, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.” The battle is lost.
Pope Francis, leader of the coming 21st Century American Revolution
In the generation since the Reagan Revolution, America’s self-centered, consumer-driven, mutant capitalism lost its moral compass, drifting: Inequality explodes, income growth stagnates, the poor keep getting poorer. Yet across the world, billionaires have explode from 322 in 2000 to 1,826 in 2015, with 11 trillionaire capitalist families predicted to control the planet by 2100.
But not for much longer, as Pope Francis’ revolution accelerates, as his relentless socialist message of sacred rights for all people makes clear. Why? Our mutating capitalist elite have triggered a massive backlash, a “profound human crisis, the denial of the primacy of the human person. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money.”
An aggressive Pope Francis is on a mission to transform the mutant ideology of today’s capitalist world with its rampant profits-centered climate-science denialism. Fortunately, the pope will soon confront and challenge America’s GOP Congress directly, then the United Nations General Assembly to challenge the capitalist world’s failure to take climate change actions. Maybe they’ll finally wake up.
Pope Francis’ recent trip to South America revealed a clear anticapitalism, socialist message, calling for a “structural change to a global economy that runs counter to the plan of Jesus,” as reported in Time by Christopher Hale. Francis warned:
“The future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites.” The future “It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize. It is in their hands, which can guide with humility and conviction this process of change. I am with you.” The pope is warning all capitalists everywhere. As Jesus says in the Bible, the poor will always be with you, but the rich may not be after the coming revolution.


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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Pope says his economic message isn't class warfare, it's church doctrine



Updated 1544 GMT (2244 HKT) July 14, 2015


(CNN)Pope Francis defended himself against critics who accuse him of preaching class warfare, saying that he's just applying Catholic teachings to an economic system that is highly polarized between the rich and poor.
"It is I who follow the church!" the Pope said. "It's not a fight against an enemy, it's catechism." The catechism is the Catholic Church's summary of doctrine and social teachings.


The Pope was speaking at a press conference on the flight back to Rome from South America, where he had railed against the relentless pursuit of profit and said human lives are being sacrificed on the "altar of money."


Francis also said that he has heard criticism of his economic messages, particularly the lengthy environmental manifesto released last month, and will respond when he has had time to study the critiques. He plans to visit Washington, New York and Philadelphia this September.
    Here are other highlights from the Pope's press conference on Sunday evening, with questions from various reporters on the plane.
    Q: Your Holiness, one of the strongest messages of this trip was that the global economic system imposes a profit mentality at any cost, to the detriment of the poor. This is perceived by Americans as a direct criticism of their system and their way of life. How do you respond to this perception, and what is your evaluation of the impact of the United States in the world?
    A: What I said, that phrase, it's not new. I said in (the apostolic letter) "Evangelii Gaudium": This economy kills. ... And I said it in (the encyclical) "Laudato Si."
    It's not a new thing, this is known. ... I heard that there were some criticisms from the United States. I heard about it but I haven't read about it, I haven't had the time to study this well, because every criticism must be received, studied and then dialogue must ensue.
    Q: Now you will go the United States. ... You must have some thoughts about the nation.
    A: No, I have to begin to study now.
    Q: I have a father who is younger than you and has half your energy. ... What is your secret?
    A: What is your drug is what he means, that's the question! (Laughter.) ... Mate helps me but I have never tasted coca.
    Q: Holy Father, on this trip, we've heard so many strong messages for the poor, also many strong, at times severe messages for the rich and powerful. But something we've heard very little was a message for the middle class, that is, people who work, people who pay their taxes, so "normal people." My question is why ... are there so few messages of the middle class? If there were such a message, what would it be?
    A: Thank you so much. It's a good correction, thanks. You are right. It's an error of mine not to think about this. I will make a comment but not to justify myself. You're right. I have to think a bit.
    The world is polarized. The middle class becomes smaller. The polarization makes the (difference between) rich and the poor big. This is true. And perhaps this has brought me not to take account of this, no?
    Some nations are doing very well, but in the world in general the polarization is seen. And the number of poor is large. And why do I speak of the poor? Because they're at the heart of the Gospel. I always speak from the Gospel on poverty, no? It's not that it's sociological.
    Then, on the middle class, there are some words that I've said, but a little in passing. But the common people, the simple people, the worker, that is a great value, no? But, I think you're telling me about something I need to do. I need to delve further into this.
    Q: Your Holiness, you present yourself as the new world leader of alternative politics. I would like to know: Why do you support so strongly popular movements and not so much the business world?
    A: The popular movements are a big reality, all over the world. What I gave them is the social doctrine of the church, just as I do with the business world. If you look back at what I told the popular movements, it comes from the church's social doctrine.
    Q: What do you think of people taking selfies at Mass and that young people want to take with you?
    A: What do I think of it? I feel like a great-grandfather! It's another culture. Today as I was taking leave (from Asuncion, Paraguay) a policeman in his 40s asked me for a selfie! I told him you're a teenager! It's another culture -- I respect it.

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    Sunday, July 12, 2015

    Teilhard and his Legacy


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    by Brother Jim Ward

    Perhaps one of the most influential Church writers of the last century was the Jesuit priest, Pere Teilhard de Chardin. His writings have brought him widespread renown, not only among certain Catholics but also in the scientific world for what was seen as his unique achievement in his ‘marrying’ of religious and scientific thought as regards faith and evolution. 
    This perceived achievement is encapsulated in the words of Fr. Diamuid O’Murhu, spoken at Greenspirit, London, Sep. 20, 2009, in a memorial service honouring Fr. Thomas Berry, a leading devotee of Teilhard:
     
     “Teilhard reclaimed for Christian faith the notion of evolution, and recast its meaning in a creative and dynamic way.”
     
    This simple statement bears within itself a world of meaning with far reaching implications. As will be noted in the following quotation of his, Teilhard clearly intentioned the vast sweep of implications his theory involved as he refers to the theory of evolution:
     
    “Blind indeed are those who do not see the sweep of a movement whose orbit infinitely transcends the natural sciences….
    Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis?
    It is much more: it is the general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow. Evolution is a curve to which all lines must follow” (‘The Phenomenon of Man’).
    (Emphasis mine)
     
    It was from this vision and into the matrix of its imagined reality that Teilhard fitted all his thinking, including his faith.
     
    My concern is to show that Teilhard, despite his popularity in some ecclesiastical circles did, in fact, deny revealed truth as taught by the Church. Consequently, his theory, no matter how persuasive it might seem, nor how widely or by whom it might be accepted, cannot lay claim to being compatible with Catholic teaching. Nor may it be logically claimed that, while it might seem that certain elements of his theory are theologically unacceptable, other elements are theologically sound, thereby justifying his theory for, in the words of Cardinal Journet, a great  scholar on Teilhard:
     
    “Teilhard’s synthesis is logical and must be rejected or accepted as a whole” (‘Nova et Vetera’ 1962).
     
    TEILHARD’S DENIAL OF REVEALED TRUTH
     
    In support of my conclusion that Teilhard did, in fact, deny revealed truth as taught by the Church in his understanding of evolution, I offer the following quotes from his writings:
    “What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself and to diffuse around me a new religion whose God is no longer the great, Neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the soul of the world as demanded by the cultural and religious stage we have reached” (1936. Quoted in ‘Letters to I Zanta’ P. 114).
     
    “I have come to the conclusion that…a whole series of reshaping of certain representations or attitudes which seem to us as definitely fixed by Catholic dogma has become necessary, if we simply wish to Christify evolution” (1953 ‘Stuff of the Universe’). 
     
               “Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is
    saved by evolution”  (1955 ‘Le Christique’). (Emphasis mine)
     
    As can be seen from his own words as give above, it is perfectly clear that Teilhard makes no bones about his embracing errors that contradict Catholic faith. He is especially interested in targeting the dogma of Original Sin, thereby enabling him to deny redemption as Faith teaches.
     
    TEILHARD AND ORIGINAL SIN
     
    In a 1922 paper Teilhard states:
     
    “Since there is no place in scientific history of the world for the turning point of Original Sin, since everything happens in experiential series as if there were neither Adam nor Eden, it follows that the Fall as an event is something unverifiable” (Original Sin – 1st paper).
    (Emphasis mine)
               
    And in 1929 he speaks of:
     
    “Original Sin becoming little by little more like a laborious beginning than a Fall; Redemption coming closer to liberation than to a Sacrifice; the Cross  becoming more and more evocative of laborious progress than of expiatory penitence” (The Human Sense).
     
    Teilhard identifies Original Sin as a ‘turning point’ since this dogma stood as a barrier to an uninterrupted evolutionary development of man and nature. In this context it is perfectly plain that, in referring to ‘scientific history’ Teilhard means ‘evolution’.
    In a nutshell, he reveals that he must deny this revealed truth if he is to hold to his concept of evolution. To do this is, of course, to deny the Faith.
     
    Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of last century’s leading Catholic philosophers, has a damning condemnation of Teilhard’s thinking processes. He says:
     
    “I do not know of another thinker who so artfully jumps from one position to another contradictory one without being disturbed by the jump or even noticing it” (‘Trojan Horse in the City of God’ ).
     
    This observation may explain how Teilhard satisfied himself that he was reconciling his notion of evolution with the contradictory truth of Original Sin.
     
     
    THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE TO TEILHARD
     
    Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, ‘Humani Generis’ (1950), is accepted as a response to Teilhard’s errors. In this encyclical the Pope concedes that evolution may be held by Catholics but that:
     
     “souls are immediately created by God” (#62) 
     
     
    “The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of parents”  (#64).
     
     
    In 1953 the same Pope Pius XII described Teilhard’s works as “a cesspool of errors”. Severe condemnation indeed.
     
    Besides this encyclical there at least fourteen known and official interdicts, prohibitions and outright condemnations against Teilhard’s name and his works.
    Teilhard was never permitted to teach after the accidental discovery in Rome of his 1922 essay (1st paper).
     
    The question arises: Since Teilhard’s works can be shown to contain errors that are condemned by the Church is it logical, in the light of Catholic Faith, to use his theory as a foundational basis for an orthodox Catholic spirituality?
    Earlier I mentioned two priests in connection with Teilhard; viz., Frs. Diamuid O’Murchu and Thomas Berry. In that same eulogy Diamuid O’Murchu states:
     
    Thomas Berry became for me a living embodiment of Teilhard for the late 20th and 21st centuries”.
     
    Clearly, both men were deeply inspired by Teilhard whose influence can readily be identified in their writing. A much-acclaimed Teilhardian disciple of Thomas Berry is one, Brian Swimme.
    Would it not be prudent, therefore, in the light of Teilhard’s basic errors of faith, to approach with extreme caution any spirituality deeply reliable on the influence of these men?
     
    Since all three men, particularly Thomas Berry, are readily recognized as leading lights in Ecological Spirituality, the question as posed by Ecclesiasticus: Ch 34 v 4 can validly be asked concerning this spirituality:
     
    “What truth can come from that which is false?”

    Tuesday, July 7, 2015

    Pope says families need a miracle, hints at 'scandalous' changes for the church



    Updated 0219 GMT (0919 HKT) July 7, 2015



    (CNN)Hinting that changes could be coming to the Catholic Church, Pope Francis asked a large crowd to pray for God to make miracles out of ideas that some believers might consider "impure" or even "threatening."
    Several hundred thousand pilgrims thronged to see the popular pontiff preach Monday at Los Samanes Park in Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to estimates provided by Ecuadorian officials. Waving flags from several South American nations -- including Argentina, the Pope's homeland -- the crowd cheered Francis like a native son.
    Monday is the first full day of Francis' weeklong trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, three of the smallest and poorest nations in South America. In addition to the Mass, Pope Francis is expected on Monday to have tea with Ecuadorian political leaders, pray with a community of Jesuits and visit a cathedral in the capital city of Quito.
    Before the Mass, the Pope visited a shrine and prayed with elderly Catholics and sick children.
    In his homily, or sermon, the Pope referred to a highly anticipated meeting of bishops to be held in Rome this October. The Catholic leaders are expected to discuss changes to several controversial areas of church teaching, including divorce and homosexuality.
      The bishops will "consider concrete solutions," Francis said, "to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time."
      "I ask you to pray fervently for this intention," the Pope continued, "so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it ... into a miracle. Families today need miracles!"
      One proposal for the synod would remove the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion. But several leading conservative bishops argue that the church can't change teachings on marriage that originate with Jesus.
      At a preliminary meeting last October, conservatives also scuttled an early draft report that mildly praised same-sex relationships and said gays and lesbians have "gifts to offer" the Christian community.
      While lightly touching on politics, Francis focused his homily Monday mainly on family life, calling it the backbone of a moral society.
      "The family is the nearest hospital, the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly," Francis preached. "The family constitutes the best 'social capital.' It cannot be replaced by other institutions."
      "The family is also a small church" the Pope continued, "which, along with life, also mediates God's tenderness and mercy. In the family, we imbibe faith with our mother's milk."
      Apparently veering off script, the Pope said his mother was sometimes asked which of her five children was her favorite. They are like the five fingers of a hand, Francis recalled his mother replying. If pinched, each one hurts the same.
      Today, many families are suffering, the Pope said. To illustrate his point, he drew on the day's Gospel reading, Jesus' turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana.
      "Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty," Francis said. "How many of our adolescents and young people sense that these are no longer found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love?"
      More than 425 million Catholics live in Latin America, according to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center. That's nearly 40% of the world's total Catholic population.
      But Catholics in nearly every country, including Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, have fled the church in recent decades for other faiths, or no faith at all.
      Later this week, Francis will take side trips to a home for the aged run by nuns, a meeting of grass-roots political activists and one of the continent's largest prisons in Bolivia, as well as a slum and children's hospital in Paraguay.

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