Search

Results

China center stage on Jesuit’s rare map

21 Feb 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Moses reminds the people in this Sunday’s first reading that before the Lord led them out of Egypt they had “lived there as an alien.” A rarely seen 400-year-old map of the world drawn by another “alien,” Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, S.J., is on display through April at the Library of Congress. In the early 1600s Ricci was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of the Chinese emperor. The map places China at the center of the world. The map identifies Florida as “the Land of Flowers.” It includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river. The brief description of North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses, and a region named “Ka-na-ta.” Several Central and South American places are named, including “Wa-ti-ma-la” (Guatemala), “Yu-ho-t’ang” (Yucatan), and “Chih-li” (Chile). Ricci gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas: “In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica,” he wrote, using a label that early mapmakers gave to Australia and Antarctica. “But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them.” The Ricci map gained the nickname the “Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography” because it was so hard to find. It measures 12 feet by 5 feet and is printed on six rolls of rice paper. The Library of Congress rarely exhibits artifacts it does not own because its holdings are so vast, but curators made an exception for the Ricci map. It is being shown publicly for the first time in North America. An article by Brett Zongker for the Associated Press

china maps matteo ricci jesuits library of congress

Restricted
Europe roiled by fresh allegations of clerical child abuse

14 Mar 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

We are to be ambassadors for Christ, Saint Paul reminds readers in this Sunday's second reading. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi Tuesday acknowledged the "gravity of the crisis the church is undergoing" after fresh allegations surfaced in recent weeks of widespread sexual abuse by members of the clergy in Germany, Austria, and Holland. But the Vatican said it was wrong to focus blame for child abuse exclusively on the church, saying "the issue is much broader." Lombardi also denied allegations by a German government minister that the Vatican had hampered investigations of pedophilia by "creating a wall of silence." Reports last month alleged that Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 100 children at Jesuit schools there. "Errors committed by the institutions and members of the church are particularly reprehensible given the church's educational and moral responsibility," Lombardi told Vatican Radio. "But every objective and well-informed person knows that . . . concentrating accusations on the church alone gets things out of perspective," he said. Lombardi cited a recent report by Austrian authorities that detailed 17 cases of abuse in institutions linked to the Catholic Church, but 510 in other organizations. The Dutch Roman Catholic Church on Tuesday said it would ask an independent commission to look into more than 200 reports of alleged sexual abuses by priests, in response to an increasing number of victims coming forward. Germans were outraged by reports of abuse by Jesuits and allegations of beating and pedophilia at three Catholic schools in Bavaria, including one linked to a prestigious choir run by Pope Benedict XVI's brother from 1964 to 1994. Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, 86, has acknowledged he slapped pupils in the face to discipline them but has denied any knowledge of sexual abuse. "At the beginning I also repeatedly administered a slap in the face, but always had a bad conscience about it," Ratzinger is quoted as saying in an interview with a German newspaper Tuesday. The latest allegations follow years of damaging scandal in Ireland and the United States. The U.S. church has paid some $2 billion in settlements to victims since 1992. Source: An article by Daniel Flynn for Reuters News, Allan Hall for TimesOnline.co.uk, and Melissa Eddy and Alessandra Rizzo for the Huffington Post

vatican georg ratzinger pedophilia netherlands austria jesuits germany clergy sexual abuse federico lombardi domspatzen

Restricted
Spanish court indicts Salvadorans

12 Jun 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Until the Spirit emboldened them at Pentecost, Jesus’ disciples huddled in an upper room in fear for their lives. Two decades ago, six Jesuit priests in war-torn El Salvador who spoke out fearlessly for justice had their compound broken into while they slept and were brutally murdered along with their housekeeper and her daughter. Now Spain's National Court has invoked a special law to order the arrest and trial of 20 former Salvadoran military officers for the murders. Five of the six Jesuits were naturalized Salvadorans of Spanish birth. In announcing the charges, the Spanish court cited its universal jurisdiction law, which says that some crimes are so grave they can be tried anywhere. In the indictment, Judge Eloy Velasco Nuñez said El Salvador's judicial mechanism "was a defective and widely criticized process that ended with two forced convictions and acquittals even of confessed killers." Among those indicted were a former Salvadoran defense minister. A 1993 United Nations Truth Commission report said high-ranking Salvadoran military officials were responsible for ordering the murders and their cover-up. The six priests and two women were murdered Nov. 16, 1989 at their residence on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador. The U.N. report concluded that units of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion forced their way into the Jesuits' residence, ordered them into a garden, shot them, and did away with witnesses such as the housekeeper and her daughter. In San Salvador rights groups hailed the move as an important step towards justice. The judge's decision "gives us encouragement to continue the fight against impunity," said Miguel Montenegro, director of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador. Shortly before he was killed, one of the slain Jesuits, Ignacio Martin Baro, spoke to CNN about the chilling effect of the long-running Salvadoran civil war. "We have become used to violence," said. "We have become used to living in a very dangerous world. We have learned to live, accepting death, extraordinary abnormal death, into our lives." Sources: Articles by Catholic News Service, Agence France Presse, and Al Goodman for CNN

spain el salvador jesuits ignacio martin baro eloy velasco nuñez miguel montenegro murders

Restricted
Jesuit priest expelled from Syria

01 Jul 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

God “did not make death" nor rejoices "in the destruction of the living,” this Sunday’s reading from the Book of Wisdom assures us. An Italian Jesuit priest in Syria who condemned government abuses of human rights and opened a monastery to mourners of an opposition filmmaker killed by government troops found himself served with “a one-way visa out” of Syria last Saturday.Young filmmaker Bassel Shahad, a member of the political opposition, was killed in late May, but when friends arrived at St. Cyril’s Church in Damascus for a prayer service in his memory, they found the doors barred. Government thugs dragged some mourners off to jail and chased away the rest.The leadership of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church did not intervene, activists said, but Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, S.J. invited the mourners to pray at Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery he had renovated. “Nobody was allowing them to pray for their lost friend,” he said in Beirut after his expulsion, noting that both Muslims and Christians attended.His offer was the last straw for the Syrian government, which had been seeking to expel Dall’Oglio since last year. When he departed last Saturday, he left behind the monastery he had rebuilt and reinvented over the last 30 years into a center for interfaith dialogue.The government of President Bashar al-Assad, dominated by his own minority Alawite sect, has long presented itself as the guardian of Syrian minorities and pluralism. But that is a mirage, opponents said, with minorities cherished only if they kowtow to the authorities. Source: An article by Neil MacFarquhar for the New York Times

jesuits syria bashar al-assad deir mar musa bassel shahad paolo dall’oglio

Restricted