VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE
YEAR XXII - # 130
DATE 11-07-2015
Summary:
- The Pope offers gifts to Our Lady of Copacabana, patron of Bolivia
- In the Santa Cruz-Palmasola penitentiary: reclusion is not the same as
exclusion
- The Pope arrives in Paraguay and lauds the role of women in the nation's
history
- First hearing in the trial of ex-nuncio Jozef Wesolowski postponed due to ill
health
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The Pope offers gifts to Our Lady of Copacabana, patron of Bolivia
Vatican City, 11 July 2015 (VIS) - The Holy Father's last day in Bolivia began
with Holy Mass celebrated in the chapel of the archbishop's residence in Santa
Cruz de la Sierra, and his offering to Our Lady of Copacabana, patron of
Bolivia, of the gifts given to him by President Evo Morales last Wednesday
during their meeting in the presidential palace.
"The President of the Nation, in a gesture of warmth, was so kind as to offer
me two decorative honours on behalf of the Bolivian people. I thank the
Bolivian
people for their affection and the president for this courteous gesture. I
would
like to offer these two decorations to the patron saint of Bolivia, the Mother
of this noble nation, so that she may always remember her people and from
Bolivia, from the shrine where I would like them to be, that she may remember
the Successor of Peter and the whole Church and care for them from Bolivia".
He then recited the following prayer to the Virgin Mary:
"Mother of the Saviour and Our Mother, Queen of Bolivia, from the heights of
your Shrine in Copacabana, heed the prayers and needs of your children,
especially the poorest and most abandoned, and protect them. Receive as a gift
from the heart of Bolivia and as a token of my filial affection these symbols
of
closeness and warmth that President Evo Morales Ayma has bestowed on me with
cordial and generous affection, on behalf of the Bolivian people, on the
occasion of this apostolic trip, which I entrusted to your solicitous
intercession.
"I pray that these honours, which I leave here in Bolivia at your feet, and
which recall the noble flight of the condor in the skies of the Andes and the
honoured sacrifice of Fr. Luis Espinal, S.J., may be emblems of the everlasting
love and persistent gratitude of the Bolivian people for your solicitous and
intense tenderness.
At this moment, Mother, I place in your heart my prayers for all the many
petitions of your children, which I have received in these days: I beg you to
hear them; to give them your encouragement and protection, and to show to the
whole of Bolivia your tenderness as a woman and as Mother of God, who lives and
reigns for ever and ever. Amen".
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In the Santa Cruz-Palmasola penitentiary: reclusion is not the same as
exclusion
Vatican City, 11 July 2015 (VIS) - After celebrating Mass in the chapel of the
archbishop's residence, the Pope visited the Santa Cruz-Palmasola penitentiary
where he met with various groups of inmates - men, women and young people
imprisoned for both petty and serious offences. The men's Pavilion PS4, where
the meeting with the Pope took place, is open for daily visits and hosts around
2,800 detainees, whose family members (around 1,500 per day) are able to live
with them in a sort of village protected and managed by the inmates themselves
through a "General Regency" led by State security staff.
The Pope was received by the director of the penitentiary, the chaplain and
Msgr. Jesus Juarez, head of prison pastoral ministry of the Episcopal
Conference
of Bolivia. After hearing testimonies from some of the detainees, he addressed
those present.
!I could not leave Bolivia without seeing you, without sharing that faith and
hope which are the fruit of the love revealed on the cross of Christ", he said.
"Thank you for welcoming me; I know that you have prepared yourselves for this
moment and that you have been praying for me. I am deeply grateful for this".
He continued, "You may be asking yourselves: 'Who is this man standing before
us?'. I would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain
about my own life. The man standing before you is a man who has experienced
forgiveness. A man who was, and is, saved from his many sins. That is who I am.
I don't have much more to give you or to offer you, but I want to share with
you
what I do have and what I love. It is Jesus Christ, the mercy of the Father.
"Jesus came to show the love which God has for us. For you and for me. It is a
love which is powerful and real. It is a love which takes seriously the plight
of those he loves. It is a love which heals, forgives, raises up and shows
concern. It is a love which draws near and restores dignity. We can lose this
dignity in so many ways. But Jesus is stubborn: he gave his very life to
restore
the identity we had lost.
"Here is something which can help us to understand this. Peter and Paul,
disciples of Jesus, were prisoners too. They too lost their freedom. But there
was something that sustained them, something that did not let them yield to
despair, that experience of darkness and meaninglessness. That something was
prayer, both individually and with others. They prayed, and they prayed for one
another. These two forms of prayer became a network to maintain life and hope.
And that network keeps us from yielding to despair. It encourages us to keep
moving forward. It is a network which supports life, your own lives and those
of
your families.
"When Jesus becomes part of our lives, we can no longer remain imprisoned by
our past. Instead, we begin look to the present, and we see it differently,
with
a different kind of hope. We begin to see ourselves and our lives in a
different
light. We are no longer stuck in the past, but capable of shedding tears and
finding in them the strength to make a new start. If there are times when you
experience sadness, depression, negative feelings, I would ask you to look at
Christ crucified. Look at his face. He sees us; in his eyes there is a place
for
us. We can all bring to Christ our wounds, our pain, our sins. In his wounds,
there is a place for our own wounds. There they can be soothed, washed clean,
changed and healed. He died for us, for me, so that he could stretch out us his
hand and lift us up. Talk to the priests who come here, talk to them! Jesus
wants to help you get up, always.
"This certainty makes us work hard to preserve our dignity. Being imprisoned,
'shut in', is not the same thing as being 'shut out'. Detention is part of a
process of reintegration into society. I know that there are many things here
that make it hard: overcrowding, justice delayed, a lack of training
opportunities and rehabilitation policies, violence. All these things point to
the need for a speedy and efficient cooperation between institutions in order
to
come up with solutions. And yet, while working for this, we should not think
that everything is lost. There are things that we can do even today.
"Here, in this rehabilitation centre, the way you live together depends to
some
extent on yourselves. Suffering and deprivation can make us selfish of heart
and
lead to confrontation, but we also have the capacity to make these things an
opportunity for genuine fraternity. Help one another. Do not be afraid to help
one another. The devil is looking for rivalry, division, gangs. Keep working to
make progress.
"I would ask you to take my greetings to your families. Their presence and
support are so important! Grandparents, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
couples, children: all of them remind us that life is worth living and that we
should keep fighting for a better world. Finally, I offer a word of
encouragement to all who work at this centre: to the administrators, the police
officials and all the personnel. They carry out a vital public service. They
have an important responsibility for facilitating the process of reintegration.
It is their responsibility to raise up, not to put down, to restore dignity and
not to humiliate; to encourage and not to inflict hardship. This means putting
aside a mentality which sees people as 'good' or 'bad', but instead tries to
focus on helping others. This will help to create better conditions for
everyone. It will give dignity, provide motivation, and make us all better
people.
"Before giving each of you my blessing, I would like for us to pray for a few
moments in silence. Each of you, in whatever way you can. I ask you, please, to
keep praying for me, because I too have my mistakes and I too must do penance.
Thank you".
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The Pope arrives in Paraguay and lauds the role of women in the nation's
history
Vatican City, 11 July 2015 (VIS) - After his visit to Palmasola, Pope Francis
proceeded to the parish church of La Santa Cruz, where he met with Bolivian
bishops (37, including bishops emeritus) for an informal meeting lasting around
an hour. He then transferred by car, greeted and applauded by thousands of
people, to Viru Viru airport where he left for Paraguay. He arrived in the
capital Asuncion two hours later, at 3 p.m. local time.
In the airport he was received by the president of Paraguay Horacio Manuel
Cartes Jara, and witnessed a brief choreographic display on the history and
culture of Paraguay. He received a floral tribute from a group of children and
blessed the plaque commemorating St. John Paul II's visit to this country from
16 to 18 May 1988.
Following the ceremony the Holy Father travelled the fifteen kilometres
between
the airport and the capital by popemobile. He stopped along the way to greet
the
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