The Catholic Weekly 16 August 2020

15 16, August, 2020 catholicweekly.com.au WORLD In brief Prelate dismayed at killings John Hume dies THE CATHOLIC arch- bishop of Juba con- demned “in the strong- est terms possible” the murder of three young girls, killed while watch- ing television in their Juba home. The girls – ages 9, 7 and 4 – were the children of Edward Jami Andrea, a lecturer at the Upper Nile University in the capital. The children were alone in the house on 1 August while their mother was at the market. “I don’t know whether it was re- venge or ritual killings, but these were innocent children who someone just decided to take their lives,” Archbishop Ste- phen Ameyu Mulla said from Torit, where he is on a pastoral visit. ARCHBISHOP EAMON Martin of Armagh, North- ern Ireland, hailed po- litical leader John Hume as a “paragon of peace” for his key role in bring- ing an end to the con- flict in Northern Ireland. Hume, 83, died early on 3 August, his family said in a statement. As a young man Hume trained for the priesthood, before be- coming a community ac- tivist and later a politician highlighting the plight of the Catholic commu- nity in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s, when discrimination in employment and hous- ing was rife. Bishop Don- al McKeown of Derry de- scribed Hume as “one of the greatest peacemakers and champions of social justice of our time.” THE SUN was just rising over Bogota, and more than 50 men and women lined up for breakfast on a chilly sidewalk, with their shoulders wrapped in blankets and their faces burned by the cold wind. After receiving a blessing from Franciscan Father Ga- briel Gutierrez, the crowd of homeless people quickly filed by a handful of volunteers, who provided each person with a cup of hot chocolate, a tamale wrapped in plan- tain leaves and a bag with two pieces of bread. Father Gabriel, as he is known, tried to keep the line orderly, urging people to wear their face masks and stay a safe distance from each other. He watched for those trying to get seconds before everyone in the group had been fed. “The streets are not a ro- mantic place” said the priest, who has been providing free meals to the homeless in Co- lombia’s capital for the past four years. “But this is not a time for us to hide inside our convents or our monasteries.” Colombia has struggled to contain the coronavirus pan- demic. Each day, it reports more than 9,000 new infec- tions and more than 300 peo- ple dead from COVID-19. Social distancing measures and lockdowns, which have been in place for months, have destroyed around 5 mil- lion jobs and dragged hun- dreds of thousands of people into poverty. The nation’s un- employment rate has nearly doubled since the pandem- ic began and now hovers around 20 per cent. Homeless people around the country have been hit particularly hard by this situa- tion. In Bogota, Father Gabriel ¾ ¾ Manuel Rueda Franciscans step up Priest and volunteers are true friends of the homeless in Covid-stricken Bogota Franciscan Father Gabriel Gutierrez, wearing a face shield and mask, hands out free meals to a group of homeless people in Bogota, Colombia. PHOTO: CNS/MANUEL RUEDA and a group of volunteers are ramping up efforts to help them survive the pandemic. Their organisation, whose name translates roughly to Mercy on the Streets, feeds hundreds of homeless peo- ple each day, at four different spots in the city. “Under normal conditions it’s tough for these people to make an income and get some food,” said the 63-year- old priest. “Now the only food some of them can get are the coffee and bread that we pro- vide each morning.” A census conducted by Bo- gota’s city government three years ago found 9,600 home- less people in the city. Father Gabriel said that number now could be closer to 15,000. Most of these homeless people make a living from re- cycling trash, the priest said, while some sell coffee on the street, some beg for money and others do random jobs for tips, like guarding parked cars. But the pandemic has slowed down the economy severely, and now there is less trash to recycle from busi- nesses. The situation has left some homeless people with- out income. “I used to watch over shops and I would get some money from that,” said a homeless man who identified himself only as Harry. “Those shops shut down during the pandemic and their owners left, and I’ve been making no money since then.” Many homeless people in Bogota have addictions, such as crack or alcohol. The pan- demic has made it harder for them to manage this depend- ency. “Some of the drugs they take have become more ex- pensive,” said Father Gabriel. “For those who can’t afford them, it means going into ab- stinence, without any sort of therapy or support.” The city has centres that help homeless people with substance abuse problems, but those centres are only pre- pared to serve about a third of the current homeless popula- tion. Father Gabriel said he be- gan to work with the home- less in 2016, shortly after hun- dreds of people were expelled from a crime-ridden street called The Bronx. It operat- ed as a drug market but also provided shelter to homeless people. “When I arrived in Bogota, I would work like any other priest, helping with religious celebrations,” Father Gabriel said. “But then I found this re- ality (of homeless people) and it opened my eyes. It remind- edme of my vocation of taking the Gospel to the streets.” The priest and some volun- teers from his parish started to set up small meals for the homeless. Slowly more vol- unteers from universities and from the Franciscan move- ment joined, now they run an organisation that has around 180 volunteers. The free meals, Father Gabriel said, help them get to know the city’s homeless population and “start a con- versation” with them. Once dialogue and trust have been established, the volunteers have been able to help some homeless people enter rehab centres or to get items like re- cycling carts, with which they can improve their incomes. Pope Francis “said that the church is like a field hospi- tal,” Father Gabriel said. “We must go out in the streets and embrace these faces that are none other than the faces of God.” - CNS Wrong formula ‘means no baptism’ CHANGING THE words of the formula for baptism render the sacrament invalid, said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Specifically, a baptism ad- ministered with the formula “We baptise you ...” insteadof “I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is not valid be- cause it is the person of Christ through the minister who is acting, not the assembly, the congregation said. The doctrinal congrega- tion’s ruling was published on 6 August as a brief response to questions regarding the validi- ty of baptisms using that modi- fied formula. The congregation was asked whether a baptism was valid if it had been performed with a formula that seeks to express the “communitarian signifi- ¾ ¾ Carol Glatz cance” and participation of the family and those present dur- ing the celebration. For example, it said there have been celebrations admin- istered with the words, “In the name of the father and of the mother, of the godfather and of the godmother, of the grand- parents, of the family mem- bers, of the friends, in the name of the community we baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” A baptism administered with this kind of modified for- mula is not valid, the congre- gation said, and the baptisms would have to be redone for those individuals who had been baptised with the impro- vised wording. The correct formula in the Rite of the Sacrament of Bap- tism spoken by the bishop, priest or deacon is: “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The doctrinal congregation said modifying “the form of the celebration of a sacrament does not constitute simply a liturgical abuse, like the trans- gression of a positive norm, but a ‘vulnus’ (wound) inflicted upon the ecclesial commun- ion and the identifiability of Christ’s action, and in the most grave cases rendering invalid the sacrament itself.” Instead, such changes have “debatable pastoral motives” and the formula handed down by tradition remains funda- mental because “the sacra- mental action may not be achieved in its own name, but in the person of Christ who acts in his church, and in the name of the church,” it said. “When the minister says, ‘I baptise you …’ he does not speak as a functionarywho car- ries out a role entrusted to him, but he enacts ministerially the sign-presence of Christ,” it said. It is reallyChrist himself who baptises and has the principal role in the event being celebrat- ed, it said. The temptation to modify the sacramental formula “im- plies a lack of an understand- ing of the very nature of the ecclesial ministry that is always at the service of God and his people and not the exercise of a power that goes so far as to manipulate what has been en- trusted to the church in an act that pertains to the tradition,” it said. - CNS Pope Francis baptises a baby on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord in the Sistine Chapel. PHOTO: CNS/VATICAN MEDIA Women named RENEWING THE mem- bership of the Vatican Council for the Economy, Pope Francis named six women to the previously all-male board that over- sees the financial opera- tions of all Vatican offices and entities. Statutes for the council, approved by the pope in 2015, say the body will have 15 mem- bers: eight cardinals or bishops and seven lay- people, each serving a five-year term. The orig- inal seven lay members were all men with experi- ence in business, finance or government. The six women the pope named to replace them on 6 Au- gust have a similarly high profile and background.