Joaquim Magalhães de Castro

The Christians remained in Rangamati for about a hundred years. The condition of soldiers forced them to remain stationed in that region ready to participate in the Mughal military campaigns in neighboring Assam. This is how they created roots in the region. However, with the weakening of the Mughal influence, early in the 18th century, their service was dispensed with and it is possible that they then departed to other places, preferring instead to head east. The detailed record on the way of life and traditions of the peoples of Northern India by the Capuchin friar Marco Della Tomba, written between 1758 and 1769, shows that Portuguese priests living in Rangamati had, at the time of his visit to that village (made at the expense of Propaganda Fide), definitely returned to Dhaka.

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On the occasion of the canonization of Blessed Paul VI and Blessed Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Dicastery for Communication, in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and SIGNIS (World Catholic Association for Communication), is organizing an International Conference and a forum on Peace Journalism at the Vatican.

The meeting will take place on Saturday October 13th, beginning at 9:00. It is intended to be an opportunity to discuss a topic to which Pope Francis dedicated his 2018 World Day of Social Communications Message.

During the month of October, journalists from all over the world will be in Rome to cover the Canonization and the Synod of Bishops. Press representatives from different countries who are present in Rome are invited to participate in this Conference.

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Aurelio Porfiri

Professor Guido Vignelli, an Italian scholar of ethics, political philosophy and social doctrine of the Catholic Church has devoted to Saint Francis a book called San Francesco Antimoderno (2010, Fede & Cultura). He is now working on another book on the same topic for an English audience.

What is the dominant image of the most popular saint in the world?

Since even the figure of the Redeemer Jesus Christ has been diminished, deformed and manipulated with disconcerting audacity and often even in bad faith, it is not surprising that such treatment has been applied to his followers down the centuries, even by some authors that are Christians. Unfortunately, the dominant image of St Francis has been severely “updated” in order to adapt it to modern sensibility. In a contradictory manner, he has been painted from time to time as a pauperist and a revolutionary, or as a pacifist and ecologist, or as an “ecumenist” and a relativist. In doing so, the message, the example and the Franciscan model were deprived of their original authenticity, seriousness and radicalness and were either placed in a violent revolution framework, such as the “liberation theology,” or, on the contrary, were immersed in a sweetish and vile sentimentalism, or even in the smoke of a “new age” style spirituality. But, in this way, the authentic Franciscan message was not so much diminished but substituted by fashionable surrogates, as when a healthy and nutritious food is replaced by a tasteless food that is devoid of nutritive substance although pleasant on the palate.

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The title “Our Lady of Loreto” is associated with the Holy House of Loreto in Italy, the house of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, miraculously transported by the angels from Palestine to Europe.

The house of the Holy Family in Nazareth has always been the object of Christian veneration. Shortly after 313, St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, built a basilica over this holy abode. The Saracens invaded the Holy Land in 1090, plundering and destroying Christian shrines, including Constantine’s basilica. Under the rubble, the Holy House was found intact.

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(Vatican News) In a “Message to Catholics of China and to the Universal Church,” Pope Francis explains the reasons for signing the Provisional Agreement with the People’s Republic of China: to promote the proclamation of the Gospel, and to establish unity in the Catholic community in China.

The Message of Pope Francis—announced Wednesday morning at the General Audience—begins with a word of encouragement for Chinese Catholics, who, he says, “are daily present” in his prayers. He recalls the words of Jesus, earlier quoted by Benedict XVI in his Letter to the Chinese faithful: “Fear not, little flock” (Lk 12:32).

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USA

CATHOLIC ABUSE CRISIS IS LIKELY NO ACCIDENT, BUT A STRATEGY TO ‘DESTROY CHURCH FROM WITHIN’

(LifeSiteNews) The shocking accusation by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that Pope Francis helped cover up sexual misconduct — an accusation the Pope has so far declined to answer — as well as the litany of sexual abuse cases among clerics, force any Catholic to ask the question: how could this possibly take place in the moral institution that is the Roman Catholic Church?

One possible — little known, but very important — answer dates back to the Bolsheviks and their Communist leader Joseph Stalin. A video on Youtube of a presentation by former Soviet KGB propagandist Yuri Bezmenov, aka Tomas Schuman claimed that the West was slowly being subverted into Marxism by the methods of “ideological subversion,” a form of warfare the KGB used against America.

The main methods used by Marxists in the West, Bezmenov explains, were to “corrupt the young, get them interested in sex, take them away from religion. Make them superficial and enfeebled […] destroy people’s faith in their national leaders by holding the latter up for contempt, ridicule and disgrace […] cause breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, self-restraint, faith in the pledged word.” The main targets were — and remain — institutions of religious faith, education, media and culture, the targets also of the hippie movement of that day.

Former Communist Bella Dodd spoke on the Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church. Dodd, an important Communist party lawyer, teacher and activist, converted to Catholicism in April 1952 under the tutelage of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Stating that the Communist infiltration was so extensive that in the future “you will not recognize the Catholic Church,” Dodd testified before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). She said, “In the 1930s, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops.”

According to Catholic philosopher and professor Alice von Hildebrand, who was a friend of Dodd, she told her that “when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican who were working for us, [i.e. the Communist Party].”

Alice von Hildebrand writes, in a piece published on Catholic News Agency’s website in 2016:

Sexual abuse of minors and the practice of homosexuality is the perfect way to demoralize the Church and cause it to lose its moral authority in the eyes of the public and among believers, and cause people to abandon the faith. Most of the priests, bishops and cardinals who have been committing the horrid crimes reported now were very likely at no point true and honest followers of Christ, but planted infiltrators and deliberate enemies of the Church. For this reason, the lay people of the Church must now insist on a total purging of imposters from within the Church.

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– Joaquim Magalhães de Castro

By the turn of the 17th century, numerous references to a Christian community of considerable size, certainly of “Firingi” origin, appeared in Rangamati on the banks of Brahmaputra. A text dating from 1682 and written by the Augustinian monks living in Bandel (Hoogly) in Bengal devotes a few paragraphs to the Christian community of Rangamati, which at that time totaled 7,000 souls. Frey Sicardo, the Augustinian priest who was there attending to the spiritual needs of Catholics, refers to another place that the records refer to as Hossumpur (or Ossumpur), apparently in the vicinity of Rangamati, where another community of firingis would reside. Since then the missionaries of the Portuguese Padroado do Oriente would make frequent visits to Rangamati and Hossumpur.

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– Tej Francis

STRASBOURG, FRANCE

MYSTIC AND RELIGIOUS FOUNDER MOTHER ALPHONSE MARIE BEATIFIED IN STRASBOURG, FRANCE

(CNA) A personal encounter with Mother Alphonse Marie Eppinger inspired “conversions which were far more miraculous than the raising of the dead,” recounted her spiritual director, Father Jean-David Reichard. The nineteenth century French mystic and religious founder was beatified this week in her native Strasbourg after a miraculous physical healing through her intercession was confirmed.

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As is usual, as we approach the Feast of St Francis of Assisi (4 October), the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Our Lady offer to the readers of this magazine a reflection on some excerpts related to his life.

We remember that St Francis of Assisi founded three great Orders, and we belong to the Third Regular Order.

This time, we chose the theme of the Cross of San Damiano.

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