Bishop Schneider: Bishops who

banned sacraments during pandemic

behaved as ‘fake shepherds’
Schneider criticized bishops who 'not only did not care but directly
prohibited their faithful access to the sacraments, especially to the
sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance'
Fri May 22, 2020 - 2:00 pm EST


Bishop Athanasius Schneider speaks at the virtual Rome Life Forum, May 22, 2020.

ROME, May 22, 2020  (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider said

that bishops who have “directly prohibited their faithful access to the
sacraments” during the coronavirus crisis have behaved as “fake shepherds.” 

“The unbelievable fact was, that in midst of this worldwide ban of the public
Holy Mass, many bishops even before the government banned public worship,
issued decrees by which they not only forbade the public celebration of Holy
Mass, but of any other sacrament as well,” Schneider said in a talk given today
at the virtual Rome Life Forum hosted by Voice of the Family (read full talk
below).

“Bishops who not only did not care but directly prohibited their faithful access
to the sacraments, especially to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the
sacrament of Penance, behaved themselves as fake shepherds, who seek their
own advantage,” he added. 

Schneider’s talk was titled “The Eucharist, the greatest treasure of the Church,
in time of tribulations.” The auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan,
contrasted the approach of many bishops to the coronavirus with the heroic
pastoral care provided in past health crises by Catholic priests such as St.
Charles Borromeo.

Schneider said that the almost worldwide ban on the public celebration of
Holy Mass had made it seem as though “the ruthless historical persecutions of
the Church were brought back” and that there had developed “[a]n

1
atmosphere of the catacombs...with priests celebrating Holy Mass in secrecy
with a group of the faithful.”

Schneider contrasted the response of bishops today with the “many moving
heroic examples from history, where priests consciously accepted the mortal
danger of administering the sacraments to people infected with lethal
contagious diseases.” 

“In the time of the plague, which had an incomparably higher mortality rate as
the current epidemic of Covid-19, St. Charles Borromeo increased the number
of the public celebrations of Holy Mass,” Schneider explained. 

“Even though he closed the churches for a while, he at the same time ordered
that there should be Masses celebrated in many public and open places, such
as squares, crossroads, street corners. He obliged the priests to visit the sick
and the dying to administer them the sacraments of Penance and of Extreme
Unction. He ordered public processions to be held, in which people walked in
due distance, to make reparation for the sins and invoke Divine Mercy. St.
Charles Borromeo did not forget the care for the body of the infected people,
but at the same time his primary concern was the spiritual help of the
sacraments, with which the sick had to be strengthened.”

Schneider also called on Pope Francis and bishops around the world to
understand the public cessation of Holy Mass and sacramental Holy
Communion during the Covid-19 epidemic as a “divine rebuke” for the
liturgical crisis in the Church for the past fifty years.

He said that the cessation of Holy Mass was “so unique and serious that one
can discover behind all of this a deeper meaning.”

“This event has come almost fifty years after the introduction of Communion
in the hand (in 1969) and a radical reform of the rite of Mass (in 1969/1970)
with its protestantising elements (Offertory prayers) and its horizontal and
instructional style of celebration (freestyle moments, celebration in a closed
circle and towards the people). The praxis of Communion in the hand over the
past fifty years has led to an unintentional and intentional desecration of the
Eucharistic Body of Christ on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

“The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be
understood by the Pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years
of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a
merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church.” 

2
He called on Pope Francis to “issue concrete liturgical norms” in order to
address irreverence to the Holy Eucharist, including making ad orientem
celebration of the Eucharistic prayer compulsory and forbidding the reception
of Communion in the hand.

“Once the current tribulation has ended, the Pope should issue concrete
liturgical norms, in which he invites the entire Church to turn again towards
the Lord in the manner of celebration, i.e. celebrant and faithful turned in the
same direction during the Eucharistic prayer,” Schneider said. 

“The Pope should also forbid the practice of Communion in the hand, for the
Church cannot continue unpunished to treat the Holy of Holies in the little
sacred Host in such a minimalistic and unsafe manner.”

Schneider also suggested that Pope Francis together with cardinals and
bishops should “carry out a public act of reparation in Rome for the sins
against the Holy Eucharist, and for the sin of the acts of religious veneration to
the Pachamama statues.”

Schneider concluded his address by speaking of the importance of listening to

voices of faithful laity, who he said have been “humiliated and despised in the
midst of the Church by an arrogant and undoubtedly Pharisaic clericalism.” 

“These little lovers and defenders of the Eucharist will renew the life of the
Church in our day and these words of Jesus are rightly and deservedly applied
to them: “I bless you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have
kept these things hidden to the wise and intelligent and you have revealed
them to the little ones.” (Mt 11, 25) May this truth give us hope and light in the
midst of darkness and increase our faith and our love for the Eucharistic
Jesus, since when we have the Eucharistic Jesus, we have everything, and
nothing will be missed.”

***

The Eucharist, the greatest treasure of the Church, in time of

tribulations 

3
H.E. Bishop Athanasius Schneider 

We are witnessing a unique situation: It is for the first time in the history of
the Church that the public celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice has been
prohibited almost on a worldwide scale. Under the pretext of the Covid-19
epidemic, the inalienable right of Christians to the public celebration of the
Holy Mass has been infringed, disproportionately and unjustifiably. In many
countries, and especially in predominantly Catholic countries, this prohibition
was enforced in such a systematic and brutal way, that it seemed as though the
ruthless historical persecutions of the Church were brought back. An
atmosphere of the catacombs was created with priests celebrating Holy Mass
in secrecy with a group of the faithful.

The unbelievable fact was that in the midst of this worldwide ban of the public
Holy Mass, many bishops even before the government banned public worship,
issued decrees by which they not only forbade the public celebration of Holy
Mass, but of any other sacrament as well. By such anti-pastoral measures
those bishops deprived the sheep from the spiritual food and strength which
only the sacraments can provide. Instead of good shepherds those bishops
converted into rigid public officials. Those bishops revealed themselves to be
imbued with a naturalistic view, to care only for the temporal and bodily life,
forgetting their primary and irreplaceable task to care for the eternal and
spiritual life. They forgot the warning of Our Lord: “For what will it profit a
man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give
in return for his soul?” (Mt. 16:26). Bishops who not only did not care but
directly prohibited their faithful access to the sacraments, especially to the
sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, behaved
themselves as fake shepherds, who seek their own advantage. 

Those bishops, however, provided access to the sacraments for themselves,

since they celebrated Holy Mass, they had their own confessor, they could
receive the anointing of the sick. The following stirring words of God are
doubtless applicable to those bishops who in this tribulation, caused by the
sanitary dictatorship, denied their sheep the spiritual food of the sacraments,
while feeding themselves with the food of the sacraments: 

“Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding
yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe
yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the
sheep. … Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Because my
sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild
beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not

4
searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not
fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says
the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep
at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the
shepherds feed themselves.” (Ez. 34:2-10)

In the time of the plague, which had an incomparably higher mortality rate as
the current epidemic of Covid-19, St. Charles Borromeo increased the number
of the public celebrations of Holy Mass. Even though he closed the churches
for a while, he at the same time ordered that there should be Masses
celebrated in many public and open places, such as squares, crossroads, street
corners. He obliged the priests to visit the sick and the dying to administer
them the sacraments of Penance and of Extreme Unction. He ordered public
processions to be held, in which people walked in due distance, to make
reparation for the sins and invoke Divine Mercy. St. Charles Borromeo did not
forget the care for the body of the infected people, but at the same time his
primary concern was the spiritual help of the sacraments, with which the sick
had to be strengthened. There are many moving heroic examples from history,
where priests consciously accepted the mortal danger of administering the
sacraments to people infected with lethal contagious diseases. 

There is a touching witness from the Oxford Movement in the Anglican

Church in the 19th century, about the value of the beauty of the liturgy and the
zealous administration of the sacraments in the time of the dangerous and
highly contagious cholera epidemic in England. The Catholic Church does not
recognize these sacraments as valid, but the fact that these ministers placed
such importance on pastoral care during an epidemic should be a witness to us
now.

“The ritual innovations of they were accused were entirely rooted in the
desperate pastoral needs they encountered. Sisters of Mercy worked with the
clergy of St. Peter’s Plymouth in the cholera epidemics of the late 1840s, and
petitioned the parish priest, Fr. George Rundle Prynne, for a celebration of the
Eucharist each morning to strengthen them for their work. So began the first
daily mass in the Church of England since the Reformation. Similarly, the
clergy of St. Saviour’s, Leeds, laid what medicines they had on the altar at each
morning’s communion, before carrying them out to the many dozens of their
parishioners who would die of cholera that very day. These slum churches and
their priests are far too many to mention, but their audacity and their piety are
to be marveled at. The Church of England, at this time, looked upon ritual as a
wicked aping of a Papist Church. Vestments were horrific to most, and yet in
places such as the mission church of St George’s in the East, thuribles were

5
swung, genuflecting was encouraged, the sign of the cross was made
frequently, devotion to the blessed sacrament was taken for granted.
Confessions were heard, holy anointing was practised. Beauty and holiness
were to go into the midst of squalor and depression, as a witness to the
Catholic faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, present and active in his
world. And, perhaps most significantly, the sick and dying were to receive this
sacramental presence as far as was possible. Deathbed confessions, the oil of
unction, even, occasionally, communion from the reserved sacrament became
the priests’ weapons against, for example, the appalling East London cholera
epidemic of 1866.” 

St. Damien de Veuster is a luminous example of a priest and a shepherd of

souls who for the sake of providing the celebration of the Holy Mass and the
other sacraments to the abandoned people who were suffering from leprosy at
the Molokai island, accepted voluntarily to administer to them the sacraments,
living amongst them and, thereby, to expose himself to the deadly disease.
Visitors never forgot the sights and sounds of a Sunday Mass at St.
Philomena’s Chapel. Fr. Damien stood at the altar. His lepers gathered around
him on the altar. They constantly coughed and expectorated. The odour was
overpowering. Yet Fr. Damien never once wavered or showed his disgust. His
strength came from the Eucharist as he himself wrote: “It is at the foot of the
altar that we find the strength we need in our isolation…” It is there that he
found for himself and for those he served the support and encouragement, the
consolation and the hope that made him “the happiest missionary in the
world”, as he called himself. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, had said that the
world has few heroes comparable to Fr. Damien of Molokai. Belgium, the
native country of St. Damien, has proclaimed him as the greatest man in its
history. 

Our time is marked by an unprecedented and widespread liturgical and

Eucharistic crisis due to the practical negligence of the truth that the
Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is the treasure of the altar and of ineffable
majesty. Therefore the following admonitions of the Council of Trent remain
relevant today more than ever: 

“No other action taken by faithful Christians is so holy and so divine as this
tremendous mystery, in which each day that life-giving host, by which we were
reconciled with God the Father, is sacrificed by priests to God on the altar, and
it is equally clear that you must use every effort and diligence for it to be
celebrated with the greatest purity and inner transparency and an outer
attitude of devotion and piety.” (Sess. XXII, Decretum de observandis et
vitandis) 

6
This Divine majesty present in the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist,
however, is a hidden majesty. Under the Eucharistic species is the hidden God
of majesty. St. Peter Julian Eymard, a modern apostle of the Eucharist, spoke
notably on the truth of the hidden majesty of Christ in the Eucharistic
mystery.  He left us admirable reflections such as this: 

“Jesus, with a veil, covers his power because otherwise, I would be afraid. He
covers with a veil his holiness, the sublimity of which would discourage our
few virtues. A mother talks to her child in a childlike way down to his level. In
the same way Jesus makes himself little with the little to elevate them to
Himself. Jesus hides his love and warmth. His ardour is such that we would be
consumed if we were exposed directly to its flames. The fire is consuming. God
is a consuming fire. In this way the hidden Jesus strengthens us against our
weaknesses. ... This darkness of the hidden majesty requires of us a very
worthy sacrifice, the sacrifice of our intellect. We have to believe even against
the testimony of our senses, against the ordinary laws of nature, against our
own experience. We have to believe only in the mere word of Jesus Christ.
There is only one question: ‘Who is there?’ – ‘It is I,’ replies Jesus Christ. Bow
down and worship Him! ... Instead of being a test, this veil becomes an
incentive, an encouragement to have a humble and sincere faith.  Man wants
to penetrate a veiled truth, discover a hidden treasure, conquer a difficulty.
Similarly, the faithful soul searches for the Lord in the presence of the
Eucharistic veil as Magdalene searched at the tomb. The Eucharist is to the
soul what God is to the blessed in heaven: a truth and a beauty ever ancient
and ever new, which man does not tire of scrutinizing and contemplating. Just
as in this world love lives from happiness and desires, so also the soul is happy
and desires happiness through the Eucharist; the soul eats and is still hungry.
Only the wisdom and goodness of our Lord could invent the Eucharistic veil.”
(The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 92-94)

The same Saint left us profound reflections about the worship of the
Eucharist: 

“I have loved the beauty of Thy house. (Psalm xxv. 8.) One day a woman, a
good adorer, came to Jesus to adore Him. She brought with her an alabaster
box full of precious ointment which she poured upon His feet to show her love
for Him and to pay honour to His Divinity and sacred humanity. ‘To what
purpose is this waste?’ said the traitor Judas. ‘This ointment might have been
sold for much, and given to the poor.’ But Jesus vindicates His handmaid:
‘What this woman has wrought is a good work. And wheresoever this Gospel
shall be preached, this also which she has done shall be told in praise of her.’
This Gospel incident may be applied to the Eucharist. Our Lord is in the

7
Blessed Sacrament to receive from men the same homage He received from
those who had the happiness of coming close to Him during His mortal life.
He is there to give everybody the opportunity of offering a personal homage to
His sacred humanity. Were this the only reason for the Eucharist, it should
make us very happy; for the Eucharist enables us as Christians to pay our
respects to our Lord in person.

“This presence is the justification of public worship as well as the life of it. If
you take away the Real Presence, how will you be able to pay to His most
sacred humanity the respect and honour which are its due? As Man, our Lord
is present only in Heaven and in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Through the
Eucharist we can draw near to the living Saviour in person, and see Him and
converse with Him. Without this presence, Divine worship becomes an
abstraction. Through this presence we go straight to God and approach Him as
during His mortal life. How unfortunate it would be if, in order to honour the
humanity of Jesus Christ, we were obliged to go back eighteen centuries! That
is all very well for the mind, but how pay an outward homage to so distant a
past? We would content ourselves with giving thanks for the mysteries without
actively participating in them. But with the Eucharist we can actually come
and adore Him like the shepherds; we can prostrate ourselves before Him like
the Magi; we need no longer regret our not having been present at Bethlehem
or on Calvary.

“On the day of judgment, we shall have the right to say to Him: ‘We visited
Thee not only in the poor but in Thy august Person itself. What wilt Thou give
us in return?’ Worldly people will never understand this. ‘Give, and give a lot
to the poor,’ they say. ‘But what good is it to give to churches? All this lavish
expense on altars is wasted money.’ That is the way to become Protestant. No!
The Church wants to have a living worship because she possesses her living
Saviour on earth. Is not that worth while? But that is not all. To give to the
Eucharistic Jesus is a consolation and a joy, as it is also a need. Yes, we feel the
need of seeing and feeling our Lord near us, and of honouring Him with out
gifts. If our Lord required of us nothing more than interior homage, He would
fail to satisfy one of man's imperious needs; we cannot love without
manifesting that love through outward signs of friendship and affection.

“If the sacred linen is clean, if the vestments are neat and in good condition,
oh! that is a sign of faith! But if a church is without the proper vestments for
the service of our Lord and looks more like a prison than a church, faith is
lacking. People give to every form of charity; but beg something for the Most
Blessed Sacrament, and they do not know what you are talking about.  Is the
King then to go in rags while His servants are richly clothed? We have not the

8
right kind of faith, a faith that is practical, a faith that loves; we have only a
negative, speculative faith. We are Catholic in name but Protestant in
practice.” (The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 172ff.)

St. Peter Julian Eymard said: 

“In the worship of God, everything is great, everything is divine. ... The Holy
Roman liturgy is therefore supremely august and authentic. It comes from
Peter, head of the apostles. Each pope kept it and passed it with all respect to
the subsequent centuries, knowing how to add in conformity with the needs of
faith, piety, and gratitude new formulas, offices, and sacred rites. [...]
Liturgical worship is the exercise par excellence of all religion” (Direttorio
degli aggregati del Santissimo Sacramento, Ch. II, art. V, n. 1.) 

The situation of the public cessation of Holy Mass and sacramental Holy
Communion during the Covid-19 epidemic is so unique and serious that one
can discover behind all of this a deeper meaning. This event has come almost
fifty years after the introduction of Communion in the hand (in 1969) and a
radical reform of the rite of Mass (in 1969/1970) with its protestantising
elements (Offertory prayers) and its horizontal and instructional style of
celebration (freestyle moments, celebration in a closed circle and towards the
people). The praxis of Communion in the hand over the past fifty years has led
to an unintentional and intentional desecration of the Eucharistic Body of
Christ on an unprecedented scale. For over fifty years, the Body of Christ had
been (mostly unintentionally) trampled by the feet of clergy and laity in
Catholic churches around the world. The stealing of sacred Hosts has also
been increasing at an alarming rate. The praxis of taking Holy Communion
directly with one’s own hands and fingers resembles ever more the gesture of
taking common food. In not a few Catholics, the practice of receiving
Communion in the hand has weakened faith in the Real Presence, in trans-
substantiation and in the divine and sublime character of the sacred Host. The
Eucharistic presence of Christ has, over time, unconsciously become for these
faithful a kind of holy bread or symbol. Now the Lord has intervened and
deprived almost all the faithful of assisting at Holy Mass and sacramentally
receiving Holy Communion.

The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be
understood by the Pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years
of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a
merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church.
May the Holy Spirit touch the heart of the Pope and bishops and move them to
issue concrete liturgical norms in order that the Eucharistic worship of the

9
entire Church might be purified and oriented again towards the Lord. One
could suggest that the Pope, together with cardinals and bishops, carry out a
public act of reparation in Rome for the sins against the Holy Eucharist, and
for the sin of the acts of religious veneration to the Pachamama statues. Once
the current tribulation has ended, the Pope should issue concrete liturgical
norms, in which he invites the entire Church to turn again towards the Lord in
the manner of celebration, i.e. celebrant and faithful turned in the same
direction during the Eucharistic prayer. The Pope should also forbid the
practice of Communion in the hand, for the Church cannot continue
unpunished to treat the Holy of Holies in the little sacred Host in such a
minimalistic and unsafe manner.

We must also listen to the voice of the little ones in the Church, that is, the
voice of countless faithful, children, young people, fathers and mothers of the
family, the elderly, who in the visible manifestation of their respect and love
for the Eucharistic Lord have been humiliated and despised in the midst of the
Church by an arrogant and undoubtedly Pharisaic clericalism. These little
lovers and defenders of the Eucharist will renew the life of the Church in our
day and these words of Jesus are rightly and deservedly applied to them: “I
bless you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have kept these
things hidden to the wise and intelligent and you have revealed them to the
little ones.” (Mt 11, 25) May this truth give us hope and light in the midst of
darkness and increase our faith and our love for the Eucharistic Jesus, since
when we have the Eucharistic Jesus, we have everything, and nothing will be
missed.

Vatican to contribute to pro-abortion

World Health Organization
The Holy See will 'contribute to the WHO Emergency Fund for the
supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to frontline medical
workers.'

10
Fri May 22, 2020 - 1:42 pm EST

GENEVA, Switzerland, May 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican has

announced its intent “to contribute to the WHO Emergency Fund for the
supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to frontline medical workers.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) is part of the United Nations and
supports both contraception and abortion.

During his remarks at the 73rd World Health Assembly this May, Archbishop
Ivan Jurkovič, the Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the United
Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, pointed out that the
Vatican “has already made various donations to the regions in need of urgent
help.”

Additionally, “many religious orders, parishes and priests have been on the
frontlines, caring for those who have been infected and their families.”

Ironically, the Vatican’s announcement to contribute to the WHO came only

weeks after pro-life leaders praised President Donald Trump for halting
funding to the international public health agency.

“This is a brilliant and brave move from President Trump,” commented John
Smeaton, Director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. “Not
only has the World Health Organisation been planning for years to promote
abortion in a COVID-19-type pandemic, it has become abundantly clear even
to the secular world that the WHO is serving the world’s most corrupt power
structures rather than the common good.”

Jeff Gunnarson of Campaign Life Coalition in Canada said, “When a health

organization that is designed to monitor the physical well being of the globe’s
citizens but ignores the cries of the unborn, it’s critical that not only should
they be defunded but shuttered.”

Archbishop Jurkovič concluded his brief remarks at the World Health

Assembly “by relaying the fervent hope of Pope Francis that the heightened
research motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic will be conducted ‘in a
transparent and disinterested way, in order to find vaccines and treatments
and to guarantee universal access to essential technologies that will enable
every infected person, in every part of the world, to receive the necessary
health care.’”

11
Neither the archbishop nor the Pope addressed the fact that at least several of
the potential coronavirus vaccines currently in development are based on cell
lines of aborted babies.

While the Vatican’s donation to the WHO Emergency Fund was specified as
“for the supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to frontline medical
workers,” some Catholics wonder how the Vatican can support the WHO at all,
given its direct opposition to Church teaching on matters like abortion.

On its website, the WHO states, among other things, “Every woman has the
recognized human right to decide freely and responsibly without coercion and
violence the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the
information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of
sexual and reproductive health (ICPD 1994). Access to legal and safe abortion
is essential for the realization of these rights.”

The WHO “provides global technical and policy guidance on the use of
contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy, safe abortion, and treatment
of complications from unsafe abortion.”

The WHO also supports sex education programs that advise children be
taught about masturbation from infancy. 

In the past, the Vatican, which is not a member of the United Nations, but an
observer, has been cautious about even symbolically supporting the
organization’s efforts when they are in opposition to the Church’s doctrine.

In 1996, the Vatican announced that it “cannot offer any symbolic

contribution to UNICEF,” the United Nations International Children’s
Emergency Fund.

Archbishop Renato Martino, at the time the Permanent Observer of the Holy
See to the United Nations, argued that suspending “the practice of making a
symbolic contribution was the result of the Holy See’s increasing
preoccupation with the changes in UNICEF’s activities which have begun to
divert some of its already scarce economic and human resources from the care
of the most basic needs of children to other areas outside of that specific
mandate given by the United Nations to UNICEF.”

Martino specifically mentioned “[e]vidence of UNICEF involvement in

advocacy to alter national legislation regarding abortion” and “credible reports

12
that UNICEF workers in various countries were distributing contraceptives
and counseling their use.”

Both concerns could also be addressed at the WHO, which is nevertheless now
being supported by the Vatican.

Just last year, the Holy See declared it was not going to participate in “The
Nairobi Summit on ICPD 25” on the 25th anniversary of the International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

“The organizers’ decision, however, to focus the conference on a few

controversial and divisive issues that do not enjoy international consensus and
that do not reflect accurately the broader population and development agenda
outlined by the ICPD, is regrettable,” the Vatican pointed out.

“The ICPD and its encompassing Programme of Action within the

international community’s broad development agenda should not be reduced
to so-called ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ and ‘comprehensive
sexuality education.’”

Pope Francis himself has praised the United Nations in 2015 during his
address to the General Assembly in New York.

“The praiseworthy international juridical framework of the United Nations

Organization and of all its activities, like any other human endeavour, can be
improved, yet it remains necessary; at the same time it can be the pledge of a
secure and happy future for future generations,” the Pope said.

Pope Paul VI was the first Pope to speak to the General Assembly of the
United Nations, followed by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict.

“I can only reiterate the appreciation expressed by my predecessors, in

reaffirming the importance which the Catholic Church attaches to this
Institution and the hope which she places in its activities,” Francis said in
2015.

The coronavirus pandemic has also raised questions about the WHO’s
connections to the Communist regime in China.

13
Cdl Sarah: Corona crisis has laid bare
‘insidious disease’ of Church thinking
she’s a ‘worldly institution’
The Cardinal said it’s time for the Church to return to preaching about
eternal life.
Wed May 20, 2020 - 6:45 pm EST

14
May 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – “The Church has messages for this world, but
only because she has the keys to the other world.” With these words, Cardinal
Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, underscored
the Church’s mistaken bid to appear necessary to the world on the world’s
terms.

According to Cardinal Sarah (read his full remarks below), the COVID-19
crisis has revealed both the world’s incapacity to come to terms with the
scandal of death and the Church’s failure to bring to it the only possible
answer and consolation that it alone can provide: the promise of eternal life.

Cardinal Sarah, born in French Guinea in 1945 to Christian parents who had
converted from animism, has repeatedly deplored the developed West’s
rejection of traditional values such as respect for life, for the family, and for
the elderly.

In several best-selling books, Cardinal Sarah has also pleaded over recent
years for the Church to return to its spiritual fundamentals, to “silence” in
order to be more open to God, and to a Christ-centered liturgy.

His take on the coronavirus epidemic is that the Church now has the chance
and the opportunity to return to “essentials” and to bring a world that has
counted too much on the “security” of technology to understand that only she
can provide answers to its newfound doubts.

“The Church has committed herself to the struggles for a better world. She has
been right to support ecology, peace, dialogue, solidarity, and the equitable
distribution of wealth. All these struggles are just. But they could make us
forget the words of Jesus: ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’” wrote Cardinal
Sarah in his op-ed for Figaro Vox, the internet platform of French daily Le
Figaro on Tuesday.

The COVID-19 epidemic, wrote Sarah, “laid bare an insidious disease that was
eating away at the Church: she thought that she was ‘of this world.’”

He accused the secularism of the state of being responsible for choosing to

confine the elderly and to isolate them, leaving them with the risk of dying of
“despair and loneliness.” “The answer could only be a response of faith: to
accompany the elderly towards a probable death, in dignity and above all the
hope of eternal life,” he proclaimed.

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Despite the so-called protection of the elderly in nursing homes in France, in
many of them healthcare personnel were not provided with masks and other
protective equipment and large numbers of residents were infected in several
regions. More than a third of all deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 in
France (10,308 of 28,022 to date) were registered among residents of nursing
homes for the elderly. In comparison, a heat wave in August 2003 in France
directly caused an excess mortality of 14,800, mainly affecting individuals
ages 75 and over.

To date, deaths attributed to the COVID-19 crisis have reached a world total of
323,286 individuals. Every year, 6.15 million people die of lower respiratory
tract infections. But the focus on the coronavirus has led to seeing “COVID-19
deaths” as a particular tragedy. Seventy-one percent of French victims were
over 75 and 18 percent were ages 64 to 75.

Here below is LifeSite’s working translation of Cardinal Sarah’s op-ed.

***

Does the Church still have a place in times of epidemic in the 21st century? In
contrast with past centuries, the bulk of medical care is now provided by the
state and healthcare personnel. Modernity has its secularized heroes in white
coats, and they are admirable. It no longer needs the charitable battalions of
Christians to care for the sick and bury the dead. Has the Church become
useless to society?

Covid-19 is bringing Christians back to the essentials. Indeed, the Church has
since long entered into a distorted relationship with the world. Confronted
with a society that pretended not to need them, Christians, through pedagogy,
did their best to demonstrate that they could be useful to it. The Church has
shown herself to be an educator, the mother of the poor, an “expert in
humanity” as Paul VI put it. And rightly so. But little by little, Christians have
come to forget the reason for this expertise. They ended up forgetting that if
the Church can help man to be more human, it is ultimately because she has
received from God the words of eternal life.

The Church has committed herself to the struggles for a better world. She has
been right to support ecology, peace, dialogue, solidarity, and the equitable
distribution of wealth. All these struggles are just. But they could make us
forget the words of Jesus: “My kingdom is not of this world.” The Church has
messages for this world, but only because she has the keys to the other world.
Christians have sometimes thought of the Church as a help given by God to

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humanity to improve its life here on earth. And they did not lack reasons, so
true is it that faith in eternal life sheds light on the proper way to live in this
century.

Dying of despair and loneliness

Covid-19 laid bare an insidious disease that was eating away at the Church:
she thought that she was “of this world.” She wanted to feel legitimate in her
own eyes and according to her own criteria. But a radically new reality has
appeared. Triumphant modernity has collapsed in the face of death. This virus
revealed that, despite its assurances and security, this earthly world was still
paralyzed by the fear of death. The world can solve health crises. It will
certainly solve the economic crisis. But it will never solve the enigma of death.
Faith alone has the answer.

Let us illustrate this very concretely. In France, as in Italy, the issue of nursing
homes for the elderly, the so-called “EHPADs,” has been a crucial point. Why
is that so? Because it directly raised the question of death. Should elderly
residents be confined to their rooms at the risk of dying of despair and
loneliness? Should they stay in contact with their families, risking death from
the virus? We did not know how to answer.

The State, trapped in a secularism that chooses on principle to ignore hope

and send cults back to the private domain, was condemned to silence. For the
State, the only solution was to flee physical death at all costs, even if it meant
condemning moral death. The answer could only be a response of faith: to
accompany the elderly towards a probable death, in dignity and above all the
hope of eternal life.

The epidemic has hit Western societies at their most vulnerable point. They
had been organized to deny death, to hide it, to ignore it. It came in through
the front door! Who has not seen those giant mortuaries in Bergamo or
Madrid? These are the images of a society that not long ago was promising an
immortal, augmented man.

Forgetting fear
The promises of technology make it possible to forget fear for a moment, but
in the end they prove to be illusory when death strikes. Even philosophy
merely restores some dignity to human reason when it is overwhelmed by the
absurdity of death. But it is powerless to console hearts and give meaning to
what seems to be definitively deprived of meaning.

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In the face of death, there is no human response that can hold. Only the hope
of eternal life can surpass the scandal of death. But who is the man who will
dare to preach hope? It takes the revealed word of God to dare to believe in a
life without end. It takes a word of faith to dare to hope for oneself and one's
family. The Catholic Church is therefore called back to its primary
responsibility. The world expects of her a word of faith that will enable it to
overcome the trauma of this face-to-face encounter with death that it has just
experienced. Without a clear word of faith and hope, the world can sink into
morbid guilt or helpless rage at the absurdity of its condition. Only the Church
can enable it to give meaning to the deaths of loved ones, who died in solitude
and were buried in haste.

But if that is so, the Church must change. She must stop being afraid of
causing shock and of going against the tide. She must give up thinking of
herself as a worldly institution. She must return to her only “raison d'être”:
faith. The Church is there to announce that Jesus conquered death through
His resurrection. This is at the heart of her message: “And if Christ has not
been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith … and we
are the most wretched of all men” (1 Corinthians 15:14-19). All the rest is only
a consequence of this.

Our societies will come out of this crisis weakened. They will need
psychologists to overcome the trauma of not being able to accompany the
elderly and the dying to their tombs, but even more, they will need priests to
teach them to pray and to hope. The crisis reveals that our societies, without
knowing it, are suffering deeply from a spiritual evil: they do not know how to
give meaning to suffering, finitude and death.

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