Collaborate with teachers, Pope tells parents
Without respectfully collaborating with teachers and schools, parents will risk being on their own when it comes to educating their children and be at a greater disadvantage facing the challenges emerging from today’s culture, mass media and technology, Pope Francis has said.
Speaking to hundreds of parents, the Pope told them that “teachers are like you – dedicated each day in the educational service of your children”.
His comments came to 1,400 members and guests of the Italian Parents’ Association during an audience at the Vatican’s Paul VI hall on September 7.
Praising the group’s efforts promoting the family and education as guided by Christian principles, the Pope invited them to always foster and build trust with teachers and schools.
If it is all right to “complain about limitations” or defects when it comes to schools and teachers, it is also “imperative to treasure them as the most invaluable allies in the task of education, which you together carry forward,” said the Pope, who taught high school students as a young Jesuit in Argentina.
Prelate urges Vietnam’s religious to help marginalised
The head of a Vatican congregation has asked Vietnam’s religious to follow their ancestors’ example to bring God’s love to people in remote areas.
Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Rome-based Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, paid a working visit to the archdioceses of Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and Hanoi, and Xuan Loc Diocese, from September 2-7.
The cardinal, accompanied by his secretary Father Donato Cauzzo, also celebrated Masses to pray for the local Church, visited two female congregations and met thousands of religious. The 71-year-old prefect said God loves the Catholic Church in Vietnam very much because it was built by the blood of martyrs.
He said the local Church’s history is marked by men, women and children who dared to die for God and the Catholic faith. More than 130,000 Catholics were killed for their faith in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.
The Brazilian cardinal said the local Church consequently produces many people who follow consecrated life.
Migrants must respects laws, but govt must help integration
God needs Christians to be his hands and feet on earth, and to speak out about injustice wherever it happens, especially when hidden by silence, the Pope said in an interview.
Speaking with Sole 24 ore, a daily Italian newspaper, Francis said, “the Lord promises rest and liberation to all the oppressed in the world, but he needs us to make his promise effective”.
“He needs our eyes to see the needs of our brothers and sisters. He needs our hands to help. He needs our voice to denounce the injustices committed in silence, sometimes complicit, of many.”
“Above all,” he continued, “the Lord needs our heart to manifest God’s merciful love for the least, the rejected, the abandoned, the marginalised.”
Speaking in the context of migration and helping those in need, Pope Francis said Catholics must “not stop being witnesses of hope”.
It is important for migrants to be respectful of the laws and culture of the country they have come to, and it is important for governments to help immigrants to integrate and to not stoke fear, giving a “dignified welcome to many brothers and sisters who call for help,” he said.