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Last Updated: 10 June 2015

CWN - The Holy See Press Office has confirmed that Pope Francis’s second encyclical will be entitled Laudato Si (Praised Be), a reference to St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun.

The press office also announced the encyclical’s subtitle (“on the care of our common home”) and the names of those who will be presenting the encyclical at its June 18 release.

Joining Cardinal Peter Turkson, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, will be Orthodox Archbishop John Zizioulas of Pergamon, who will represent the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chairman of the German Advisory Council on Global Change.

Laudato Si will be the first papal encyclical to have a non-Latin title since Venerable Pius XII’s 1957 encyclical Le pèlerinage de Lourdes.

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Last Updated: 10 June 2015

CWN - Pope Francis called for a “sincere and great effort to realize peace” in Ukraine, as he met on June 10 with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

During a 50-minute conversation that was described as cordial but serious, the Pope pressed the Russian leader to help create a “climate of dialogue” in Ukraine, to abide by the Minsk accords, and to allow immediate access for relief agencies to ease the humanitarian crisis there.

The Pontiff also spoke with Putin about the tensions in the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq. There, too, the Pope stressed the importance of ending armed violence, supporting dialogue, and protecting the human rights of all residents.

While Putin spoke with the Pope, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held separate talks with his Vatican counterpart, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher. In the traditional exchange of gifts during their meeting, Pope Francis presented Putin with a medallion that portrays an angel. The Pope—who has given the same medallion to other world leaders—told Putin: “It is an angel of peace that wins all wars and speaks of peace and solidarity between peoples.”

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Last Updated: 09 June 2015

CWN - The five Christian patriarchs of Antioch have joined in a public plea for help for Christians in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Meeting in Damascus, the five patriarchs—representing the Antiochan Catholic, Melkite Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Maronite Catholic, and Syriac Orthodox faiths—pledged to maintain the Christian presence in Syria, whatever the cost.

"We are authentic (people) of this land, deeply rooted in its earth that was watered by the sweat of our fathers and grandfathers, and we confirm more than ever that we are staying," the patriarchs said. They appealed to “everyone who claims to have an interest in our fate to help us to remain.”

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Last Updated: 09 June 2015

CWN - Describing oceans as “one of the most precious gifts of our Creator,” the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has issued a statement for World Oceans Day.

“As the invariable model of industrial development and growth becomes the inevitable norm of global behavior, so too does the world’s dependency on fossil fuels drive society’s indifference toward creation care,” said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor among the Orthodox churches.

“While many of us in more affluent societies unfortunately cannot comprehend the consequences of climate change due to our comfortable, if not complacent and complicit circumstances, the more vulnerable among us who live on low-lying islands fully understand the dire situation as they witness the rising sea levels consume their home and threaten their survival,” he added. “Nonetheless, if we have created the dire conditions that we now face, we are equally accountable for and capable of remedying the health of our environment.”

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Last Updated: 09 June 2015

CWN - The leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has said that the continuing violence in Ukraine is Europe’s most serious crisis since World War II.

“The aggression against Ukraine is a challenge for preserving peace in the world which cannot pretend that nothing happens in Eastern Europe,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev.

The archbishop called upon European leaders to address the “humanitarian catastrophe.”

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Last Updated: 09 June 2015

CWN - Two decades after the conclusion of the Bosnian War, Pope Francis visited Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on June 6 and pleaded for peace.

The visit was his eighth apostolic journey outside Italy.

Serbian forces besieged Sarajevo during the war (1992-95), which followed Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. Over 57,000 soldiers and 38,000 civilians perished in the conflict.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is now a nation of 3.9 million that is 40% Muslim, 31% Eastern Orthodox, and 12% Catholic.

The Pontiff celebrated Mass and took part in nine other meetings and ceremonies during his 11 hours in Sarajevo.

“I have come here as a pilgrim of peace and dialogue, 18 years after Saint John Paul II’s historic visit, which took place less than two years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord,” he said in a meeting with authorities and the diplomatic corps. “I am happy to see the progress which has been made, for which we must thank the Lord and so many men and women of good will. However, we should not become complacent with what has been achieved so far, but rather seek to make further efforts towards reinforcing trust and creating opportunities for growth in mutual knowledge and respect.”

In his Mass at Asim Ferhatovic Hase Stadium, the Pope decried war and recalled the words of Isaiah that “peace is a work of justice.” He preached:

The word peace echoes several times through the Scripture readings which we have just heard. It is a powerful, prophetic word! Peace is God’s dream, his plan for humanity, for history, for all creation. And it is a plan which always meets opposition from men and from the evil one. Even in our time, the desire for peace and the commitment to build peace collide against the reality of many armed conflicts presently affecting our world. They are a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal and, in the context of global communications, we sense an atmosphere of war.

Some wish to incite and foment this atmosphere deliberately, mainly those who want conflict between different cultures and societies, and those who speculate on wars for the purpose of selling arms. But war means children, women and the elderly in refugee camps; it means forced displacement of peoples; it means destroyed houses, streets and factories; it means, above all, countless shattered lives. You know this well, having experienced it here: how much suffering, how much destruction, how much pain! Today, dear brothers and sisters, the cry of God’s people goes up once again from this city, the cry of all men and women of good will: war never again!

Within this atmosphere of war, like a ray of sunshine piercing the clouds, resound the words of Jesus in the Gospel: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9). This appeal is always applicable, in every generation.

Following Mass, in extemporaneous remarks to priests, religious, and seminarians who had gathered at the city’s cathedral, Pope Francis spoke about the importance of remembering past sufferings and forgiveness.

“A man, a woman who is consecrated to the Lord’s service who does not know how to forgive, is not helpful,” he said. “To forgive a friend who swore at you, or someone with whom you have argued, or a sister who is jealous of you, this is not all that difficult. But to forgive the one who slaps you in the face, who tortures you, who abuses you, who threatens to shoot you-- this is difficult.”

Referring to priests and religious who had suffered in concentration camps, he added:

Those days are counted, not in days, but by the minute, because every minute, every hour is torture. To live together like this, dirty, with no food or water, in the heat and cold – and for a long time! And we, who complain when we have a toothache, or who want to have a television in our comfortable rooms, or who whisper behind the back of our superior when the meals are not so good. Do not forget, I beg of you, the witness of your ancestors ...

Worldly sisters, priests, bishops, and seminarians are a caricature, and are of no use to the Church. They do not remember the martyrs. They have lost the memory of Jesus Christ crucified, our only glory.

Later, during an ecumenical and interreligious meeting, the Pope said that “this city, which in the recent past sadly became a symbol of war and destruction, this Jerusalem of Europe, today, with its variety of peoples, cultures and religions, can become again a sign of unity, a place in which diversity does not represent a threat but rather a resource, an opportunity to grow together.”

“In a world unfortunately rent by conflicts, this land can become a message: attesting that it is possible to live together side by side, in diversity but rooted in a common humanity, building together a future of peace and brotherhood,” he added.

As his hours in Sarajevo drew to a close, Pope Francis met with youth at the diocesan youth center and urged them not to watch “filthy” programs and images.

“As was done in my Stone Age: when a book was good, you read it; when a book was not good for you, you would throw it away,” the Pope said as he spoke “of evil fantasy, of those fantasies which kill the soul. If you who are young live attached to your computers and become slaves to the computer, you lose your freedom! And if you use your computer to look for dirty programs, you lose your dignity.”