Ss. Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Church

The Cathedral Church of St. Barnabas in Nottingham, England, U.K. / Credit: Kevin George/Shutterstock

London, England, Oct 19, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A leading U.K. bishop has vowed to make the Church a place of “safety and sanctuary for all” after a report showed a third of Mass-goers reduced their Mass attendance because of concerns about the child sexual abuse crisis.

Last week, the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University published a study titled “Attitudes of Catholics in England and Wales to Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.”

The study showed that a third of Catholics who previously went to Mass have reduced their attendance or stopped going altogether as a result of the child sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

Responding to the report, Bishop Paul Mason, lead bishop for safeguarding at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said: “I would like to assure Catholics, and indeed anyone who has concerns, that safeguarding is integral to a bishop’s work and ministry and that we will not rest in our efforts to make the Church a place of safety and sanctuary for all.”

Mason added an apology “for the failings of the past” and promised to “listen attentively” to those who have suffered abuse.

The report looks at a YouGov survey conducted in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in June/July 2022 with over 3,000 adults who identify as Roman Catholic. More than three-quarters (79%) of people surveyed believe the Church must change a great deal to prevent further cases of child sexual abuse. The sample was aimed at “regular” and “occasional” churchgoers as well as those who do not attend Mass but do identify as Catholics.

Almost half of regular Mass-goers considered abuse within the Church to be similar to other institutes working with children and young people. Meanwhile, almost a third of people who were regular Mass-goers were more likely to believe that child abuse is a thing of the past in comparison with non-Mass-goers.

The report shows that the abuse scandal has caused many to separate from the Church. 

One of the report’s key findings was that over three quarters (77%) of Catholics believe the Church has lost her moral authority because of clerical sexual abuse. The shorter report follows the main research report, “The Cross of the Moment,” published in April, and Bishop Mason expressed an openness to learning from the painful results of both reports.

“As with the previous report from the Boundary Breaking Project, ‘The Cross of the Moment,’ we as bishops will never pass up an opportunity to learn from research that offers insights that can improve our safeguarding work — work that is continually under review and open to improvement,” Mason said.

The report was written by Gregory Ryan and Marcus Pound from the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. 

“Overall, our analysis of the data shows that the Catholic community feels abuse is not a uniquely Catholic or clerical problem,” Pound said. “However, there is also a conviction that the Church needs to make changes to prevent such abuse happening in the future.”

The annual Day of Prayer for Victims and Survivors of Abuse, welcomed by Pope Francis and introduced in 2018, is viewed as a positive step and area of encouragement. The focus of the day, according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, is on “the hope and renewal that is necessary for the victims, survivors, and others affected by abuse (for example families, parish communities).”

Concerning attitudes among Catholics toward such a day of prayer who had not previously been aware of it, 59% said they would like to see such a day in their parishes. This was particularly popular among younger adults, with 73% of 18- to 24-year-olds in favor, which is suggested by the authors as a path forward of healing, productive dialogue, and progress for the Church.

The report states: “The unexpected positive trend for younger Catholics, previously unaware of the Day of Prayer, to support having it in their parish (even for occasional or non-attenders) invites reflection and responses from the Church in England and Wales. It also perhaps highlights the potential and significance for symbolic actions as well as practical and juridical ones, whilst being acutely aware of the danger of any such action being ‘purely’ symbolic and a surrogate for the actions the situation demands.”

“Awareness of, and even more so desire for, the Day of Prayer for Victims and Survivors of Abuse points to the potential effectiveness of communication also within the Church’s liturgical and devotional life — when done well,” he said.

Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich, seen taking part in the International Meeting for Peace in Paris,on Sept. 22, 2024, condemned the firing of a Catholic school administrator accused of violating French laws prohibiting religious expression in educational settings.  / Credit: THIBAULT CAMUS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 17, 2024 / 17:40 pm (CNA).

The archbishop of Paris spoke out this week against the firing of a Catholic school administrator who was accused of violating French laws prohibiting religious expression in educational settings. 

“We must be able to proclaim the Gospel in Catholic schools,” Archbishop Laurent Ulrich stated in an Oct. 12 interview with Radio Notre Dame, OSV News reported.

“It must also be possible, in these schools,” he added, “to set up small groups of Christian pupils who really want to cultivate their Christian faith, for catechism classes, outside school hours but nevertheless at times when the children are still at school.” 

According to the OSV News report, the prelate voiced his concerns in light of the recent controversial expulsion of a principal from a Catholic school in southern France who was accused of breaching the country’s constitutionally mandated secularism, otherwise referred to in French as “laïcité.”

Espeso was accused of allowing confessions and Mass to take place during school hours, mandating catechism courses, inviting a local bishop to a conference at the school, and pulling materials he had deemed inappropriate from the school’s library.

Laïcité is a principle born out of the French Constitution that essentially enforces the separation of church and state by prohibiting religious expression or proselytizing in the public sphere.

Private schools in France operate under the same regulations and follow the same curriculum as public schools and are state-funded. Catholic schools are allowed to maintain their religious identity and offer catechism classes, so long as they are not mandatory for students.

On Sept. 11, local education authorities removed Christian Espeso, 61, from his position as director of Immaculate Conception School in Pau, a small French town located in southern France, following an inspection by local education authorities.

The directorate of Catholic education of the Diocese of Bayonne, which is about 70 miles west of Pau, released a statement on Sept. 13 stating: “[The] decision, which we consider to be totally disproportionate in light of the facts for which he is accused, leaves many of us stunned.”

For his part, Espeso took part in an interview with the French-language outlet La Vie shortly after his expulsion in which he revealed that his suspension came after three anonymous reports were filed against him to the rector of education in Bordeaux.

In the Sept. 16 interview, Espeso denied some of the allegations, stating that he had not mandated attendance at the conference with the bishop. He said the courses offered at the school were not, in fact, catechesis courses but “religious instruction courses,” required only for some entry-level students. A Jewish and a Muslim parent confirmed to the rectorate that the courses were not catechesis, according to the former principal.

“We are under diocesan tutelage and it did not seem aberrant to me that students meet, once in their lives for some, a Catholic bishop,” he said. “Out of 200 senior students, 130 to 150 students were present since it was on a voluntary basis, contrary to what has been advanced in the press.” Those who did not attend were not penalized, he noted.

Espeso also addressed charges that he had interfered with teachers’ “pedagogical freedom,” telling La Vie that the complaint in question arose after he was informed by several young students who had been made “uncomfortable” after their teacher showed them a video with pornographic content. He had also removed a comic strip from the school library, which he said contained “incest scenes that could be shocking for sixth-grade students.” 

“I think I just did what I had to do,” he told La Vie. “I brought photocopies of the scenes in question to the rectorate.” 

Espeso served as head of the prestigious Catholic institution since 2013. The school is currently ranked first in the region and fourth in the country.

As reported by local French news outlets, parents and students of Espeso submitted written testimonies defending the former school administrator to educational authorities. Their accounts, which included statements from teachers, parents, and elected officials, Espeso told La Vie, refuted the accusations against him “point by point.”

Pope Francis and King Philippe listen to a speech by Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo during the pope’s trip to Belgium in late September 2024. / Credit: Vatican Media

Brussels, Belgium, Oct 17, 2024 / 14:05 pm (CNA).

More than 500 Belgians have demanded to be removed from the baptismal registry (“débaptisation”) in reaction to controversial statements by Pope Francis during his apostolic journey to Luxembourg and Belgium about abortion and the role of women in the Church.

After the pope’s visit to both countries in late September, 524 people have signed a declaration published Oct. 16 in Brussels, according to local media.

In their open letter addressed to the apostolic nuncio in Brussels, Franco Coppola; Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels Luc Terlinden, the primate of the Catholic Church in Belgium; and the seven Catholic dioceses in the country, the signers condemned certain comments made by the pope and called for themselves to be removed from the baptismal registry.

While in Belgium, Pope Francis described the partial decriminalization of voluntary abortion in Belgium as a “murderous law.” On the return flight from Brussels to Rome on Sept. 29, he also called doctors who perform abortions “contract killers.” 

The pope’s trip to Belgium marked the 600th anniversary of the Catholic University in Leuven. During his visit to the French-speaking branch of the university in Louvain-la-Neuve, he used the terms “fertile welcome, care, vital devotion” to describe women, which the Vatican’s official English version of the speech translated as “fruitful welcome, nurturing, and life-giving dedication.” 

The pope’s words were rejected by the university, which criticized them as betraying a “deterministic and reductive attitude.” 

Referring to his comments, some Belgian organizations called for people to join a “de-baptism” movement in order to express rejection of the pope’s comments. To date, three weeks later, 524 people have responded. 

A historically Catholic country, since the 1950s Belgium has seen a significant decline in the number of its practicing Christians. A European Commission poll in 2021 found that 44% of the country, which has a population of more than 11.5 million, identifies as Catholic, down from 72% of the population in 1981.

A 2023 study by the Catholic university KU Leuven estimates the number of Catholics in Belgium to be slightly higher, at 50% of the population, but with just 9% attending Mass at least once a month.

In their appeal to the Catholic Church authorities on Wednesday for removal from the official baptism registry, the 524 applicants denounced not only the pope’s statements in Belgium but also a “lukewarm reaction to the violence committed by clergymen close to the pope” against children and women. The leaders of this protest also claim there has been a lack of concrete measures to support and compensate these victims.

However, during his public appearances in Belgium, Pope Francis repeatedly commented on allegations of abuse, asked for forgiveness, and instructed the Belgian bishops to take tougher measures. He also met with 15 representatives from the circle of abuse victims for a personal discussion.

Palazzo Madama, the seat of the Senate of the Italian Republic in Rome. / Credit: FrDr via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Rome Newsroom, Oct 17, 2024 / 09:10 am (CNA).

The Italian Senate of the Republic on Wednesday passed a bill making it possible to prosecute surrogacy sought even outside Italy, with violators potentially facing both prison time and a fine as high as 1 million euros (more than $1 million).

Surrogacy has been illegal in Italy since 2004. The prohibition is contained within the country’s Law 40, which regulates medically assisted procreation.

With the Oct. 16 vote, Italy will amend Law 40 to extend its jurisdiction to criminalize even surrogacy “committed abroad,” now referring to it as “universal crime” in Italian law.

The current article 12, paragraph 6 of Law 40 states that “anyone who, in any form, carries out, organizes, or publicizes the commercialization” of maternal surrogacy will be punished by up to two years in prison and a fine of 600,000 euros to 1 million euros (approximately $652,000 to $1.09 million).

With the amendment, a paragraph will be added to the law stating: “If the facts referred to in the previous clause, with reference to maternal surrogacy, are committed abroad, the Italian citizen shall be punished according to Italian law.”

The bill, which passed 84 to 58 with no abstentions, was hotly debated in the Senate hall before being put to vote. The topic of surrogacy and its criminalization has been a source of political and social contention in the majority-Catholic country for a number of years. 

Surrogacy’s criminalization is strongly supported by Italy’s current, right-leaning government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

St. Ignatius of Antioch with the child Jesus. / Credit: Lorenzo Lotto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Oct 17, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).

On Oct. 17, the Roman Catholic Church remembers the early Church Father, bishop, and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, whose writings attest to the sacramental and hierarchical nature of the Church from its earliest days.

Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate his memory on Dec. 20.

In a 2007 general audience on St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pope Benedict XVI observed that “no Church Father has expressed the longing for union with Christ and for life in him with the intensity of Ignatius.”

In his letters, the pope said, “one feels the freshness of the faith of the generation which had still known the apostles. In these letters, the ardent love of a saint can also be felt.”

Born in Syria in the middle of the first century A.D., Ignatius is said to have been personally instructed — along with another future martyr, St. Polycarp — by the apostle John. When Ignatius became the bishop of Antioch around the year 70, he assumed leadership of a local Church that was, according to tradition, first led by St. Peter before his move to Rome.

Although St. Peter transmitted his papal primacy to the bishops of Rome rather than Antioch, the city played an important role in the life of the early Church. Located in present-day Turkey, it was a chief city of the Roman Empire and was also the location where the believers in Jesus’ teachings and his resurrection were first called “Christians.”

Ignatius led the Christians of Antioch during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian, the first of the emperors to proclaim his divinity by adopting the title “Lord and God.” Subjects who would not give worship to the emperor under this title could be punished with death. As the leader of a major Catholic diocese during this period, Ignatius showed courage and worked to inspire it in others.

After Domitian’s murder in the year 96, his successor Nerva reigned briefly and was soon followed by the emperor Trajan. Under his rule, Christians were once again liable to death for denying the pagan state religion and refusing to participate in its rites. It was during his reign that Ignatius was convicted for his Christian testimony and sent from Syria to Rome to be put to death.

Escorted by a team of military guards, Ignatius nonetheless managed to compose seven letters: six to various local Churches throughout the empire (including the Church of Rome) and one to his fellow bishop Polycarp, who would give his own life for Christ several decades later.

Ignatius’ letters passionately stressed the importance of Church unity, the dangers of heresy, and the surpassing importance of the Eucharist as the “medicine of immortality.” These writings contain the first surviving written description of the Church as “Catholic,” from the Greek word indicating both universality and fullness.

One of the most striking features of Ignatius’ letters is his enthusiastic embrace of martyrdom as a means to union with God and eternal life.

“All the pleasures of the world, and all the kingdoms of this earth, shall profit me nothing,” he wrote to the Church of Rome. “It is better for me to die on behalf of Jesus Christ than to reign over all the ends of the earth.”

“Now I begin to be a disciple,” the bishop declared. “Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me: Only let me attain to Jesus Christ.”

St. Ignatius of Antioch bore witness to Christ publicly for the last time in Rome’s Flavian Amphitheater, where he was mauled to death by lions.

“I am the wheat of the Lord,” he declared before facing them. “I must be ground by the teeth of these beasts to be made the pure bread of Christ.”

His memory was honored, and his bones venerated, soon after his death around the year 107.

This article was first published on Oct. 14, 2012, and has been updated.

Adam Smith-Connor on Oct. 16, 2024, was found guilty of praying silently outside of an abortion clinic, with the pro-life advocate facing a near-$12,000 fine over the verdict.  / Credit: ADF UK

CNA Staff, Oct 16, 2024 / 17:10 pm (CNA).

A British army veteran and Christian has been found guilty of praying silently outside of an abortion clinic, with the pro-life advocate facing a near-$12,000 fine over the verdict.

The Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday found Adam Smith-Connor guilty of silent prayer stemming from a demonstration he conducted in Bournemouth in 2022.

The court “sentenced Smith-Connor to a conditional discharge and ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £9,000” (about $11,700), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, said in a Wednesday press release.

The conditional discharge stipulates that Smith-Connor “will only be sentenced if he is convicted of any future offenses in the next two years,” ADF International said.

Smith-Connor had approached a British Pregnancy Advisory Service abortion facility in Bournemouth, in the southwest English county of Dorset, in November 2022. He intended to pray for his unborn son, who had died in an abortion he helped procure at a similar facility more than two decades ago.

He was initially fined for the prayerful demonstration before officials filed criminal charges against him.

In its ruling this week, the court determined that Smith-Connor’s display outside the abortion clinic amounted to “disapproval of abortion” because “at one point his head was seen slightly bowed and his hands were clasped,” according to ADF International.

“Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts — silent thoughts — can be illegal in the United Kingdom. That cannot be right,” Smith-Connor said in the legal group’s press release.

“All I did was pray to God, in the privacy of my own mind — and yet I stand convicted as a criminal?”

“I served for 20 years in the army reserves, including a tour in Afghanistan, to protect the fundamental freedoms that this country is built upon,” he said.

“I continue that spirit of service as a health care professional and church volunteer. It troubles me greatly to see our freedoms eroded to the extent that thought crimes are now being prosecuted in the U.K.”

Jeremiah Igunnubole, an attorney with ADF UK, called the decision “a legal turning point of immense proportions.”

“A man has been convicted today because of the content of his thoughts — his prayers to God — on the public streets of England,” he said. “We can hardly sink any lower in our neglect of basic fundamental freedoms of free speech and thought.”

The legal group is considering an appeal, Igunnubole said.

This is not the only instance of British authorities arresting a pro-life advocate for prayer outside of an abortion clinic.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in December 2022 after silently praying outside an abortion facility in Birmingham.

She was arrested again in March 2023 on similar charges. Charges were ultimately dropped and she received a police apology over the incident; she further received 13,000 pounds (about $16,800) from police over the arrests.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have condemned recent legislation relating to prayer outside abortion clinics, arguing that the proposal represents a step backward for civic and religious freedom.

Under the Public Order Act, starting Oct. 31, buffer zones will be introduced around abortion facilities across England and Wales, constituting a distance of 150 meters (almost 500 feet) of “any part of an abortion clinic or any access point to any building or site that contains an abortion clinic.”

English Catholic anti-euthanasia campaigner Matthew Schellhorn talks with “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol on Oct. 14, 2024. / Credit: "EWTN News Nightly"/Screenshot

London, England, Oct 16, 2024 / 13:45 pm (CNA).

Catholic leaders in the U.K. have hit back at plans to introduce assisted suicide in England and Wales in a key debate.

Labour member of Parliament Kim Leadbeater is proposing a bill to offer terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to end their lives. The title of the bill was announced on Wednesday — the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

In an Oct. 14 interview with “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol, English Catholic anti-euthanasia campaigner Matthew Schellhorn discussed a study released by King’s College London in which 63% of those surveyed said they favor legalizing euthanasia in the next five years. Assisted suicide is currently illegal in the U.K.

Schellhorn questioned the validity of the study, saying: “One can pull out a poll on any subject and find a majority in favor of anything.”

Schellhorn explained how the bill is being introduced via a procedure called a private member’s bill, which enables an individual member of Parliament to introduce a bill and have it proceed through the U.K. Parliament. However, Schellhorn pointed out that the issue has been abruptly introduced by the ruling Labour Party. 

“It’s certainly not been voted on in the United Kingdom and certainly doesn’t have any mandate,” he said. “Assisted dying, as it’s called, was in no way included in the Labour Party’s manifesto.”

Schellhorn outlined how U.K. leaders, led by Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, have spoken out against the bill and are urging U.K. Catholics to oppose it.

“Cardinal Vincent Nichols [is] urging the faithful to write to their lawmakers, asking them to vote against passing the bill,” he said. “He’s written pastoral letters, asking us to pray and to lobby our MPs [members of Parliament]. He said to ‘be careful what you wish for.’” 

Schellhorn pointed out that “one of the interesting phrases” used by Nichols to refer to the legalization of assisted suicide is “a slippery slope.” This is seen by examples from various jurisdictions with laws that originally had restrictive criteria for access to assisted suicide but then subsequently widened the criteria by which assisted suicide and/or euthanasia can take place. 

In Canada, for example, euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized in 2016 provided the death of applicants was “reasonably foreseeable.” This safeguard was soon overridden and repealed in 2021. It was then ruled earlier this year that assisted suicide will be legal for people with mental health conditions alone beginning in March 2027.

Schellhorn explained how popular TV presenter and journalist Esther Rantzen, who is terminally ill with lung cancer, convinced Prime Minister Keir Starmer this was a key issue. Starmer, who personally supports a change in the law, has previously said he would give members of Parliament a free vote on the issue.

“It would seem to have a big endorsement from the party in power [Labour],” Schellhorn said.

Schellhorn added that, despite Nichols’ strong calls to resist the bill — as well as many other bishops — there are issues with the “moral authority” of the Church in the U.K. 

“The problem with all of that is that the moral authority of the Church in secular society is at an all-time low,” he said. “And not only that, the arguments are not merely theological. So to the layman, you know, theological arguments … don’t really strike the right tone.”

Schellhorn explained that he started opposing assisted suicide in earnest after nursing his mother at the end of her life 10 years ago. At the time, Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer was bringing an assisted dying bill to Parliament. 

“That had such a profound effect on me,” Schellhorn said. “I wrote an article just sharing my view on how that would have really destroyed the special experiences that we had at the time. And possibly destroyed the relationship of trust with the health care system and also increased everyone's vulnerability.”

The issue of assisted dying was last voted on in 2015, when members of Parliament roundly rejected it, with 118 votes for and 330 against. Introducing assisted suicide now would, according to Schellhorn, “put an unbearable pressure on the dying and on the disabled particularly as they try to gain some meaning from life.”

The full interview with Schellhorn on “EWTN News Nightly” can be viewed below.

Apparition of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. / Credit: Alacoque, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Oct 16, 2024 / 05:00 am (CNA).

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque — whose feast day is celebrated in the Catholic Church on Oct. 16 — was a French nun responsible for spreading the devotion of the Sacred Heart throughout the Western Church.

Born in July 1647, Margaret had a great love for God from a young age. Her father, Claude, passed away when she was 8 years old. From ages 9 to 13 she suffered a paralyzing illness. This, in addition to a struggle over her family’s property, made life difficult for Margaret and her mother. However, it was during her time suffering with the illness that she made the promise to enter religious life.

For some time during her adolescence, however, Margaret forgot about her vow and lived an ordinary life. It wasn’t until she had a vision one evening at age 22 that her life changed.

Margaret had a vision of Christ being scourged. She believed this meant that she had betrayed Jesus by living a worldly life instead of a religious one. It was then that she entered the convent.

In 1673, Margaret experienced Christ’s presence in a way she never had while praying. She heard Jesus tell her that he wanted to show his love for people by encouraging a special devotion to his Sacred Heart.

Christ revealed ways to venerate his Sacred Heart and explained the immense love he has for humanity, appearing with his heart visible outside his chest, on fire, and surrounded by a crown of thorns.

Christ told Sister Margaret Mary: “My Sacred Heart is so intense in its love for men, and for you in particular, that not being able to contain within it the flames of its ardent charity, they must be transmitted through all means.”

These visions continued for 18 months. When Margaret told her superior, she did not believe her.

On June 16, 1675, Jesus told Sister Margaret Mary to promote a feast that honored his Sacred Heart. He also gave Sister Margaret Mary 12 promises made to all who venerated and promoted the devotion of the Sacred Heart.

Soon after, Father Claude La Colombiere, a Jesuit, became Margaret’s spiritual director. He believed what she had to say and began to write down her revelations. Colombiere has since been canonized, and many have read his writings on the Sacred Heart.

Thanks to Colombiere, Margaret had found inner peace about her revelations being doubted by others. However, her writings and the accounts of others faced a thorough examination by Church officials.

Margaret died in 1690 and was canonized by Benedict XV on May 13, 1920.

The Vatican was at first hesitant to declare a feast to the Sacred Heart. But as the devotion spread throughout France, the Vatican granted the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to France in 1765.

In 1856, Blessed Pius IX designated the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart for the universal Church.

This article was first published on Oct. 16, 2022, and has been updated.

An image of St. Hedwig in Wroclaw, Poland. / Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA

Vatican City, Oct 16, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).

Readers who find this story through a search engine are probably looking for information about Hedwig, Harry Potter’s snowy owl.

But Hedwig of Silesia was not an owl — she was a princess, wife, mother, and builder of bridges between the German and Polish people. (Her husband’s name was “Henry the Bearded.”) She was canonized a saint in the 13th century.

St. Hedwig, whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates on Oct. 16, received a good education in her youth at a convent in Bavaria. She is recorded to have said that knowledge plus holiness of life leads to greater glory for souls in heaven.

Hedwig came from a holy family — her sister Gertrude was the mother of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

She “became known as a helper of poor people and after her canonization, she became a beloved patron saint of the same groups of people,” Bishop Andrzej Siemieniewski, then-auxiliary bishop of Wroclaw, Poland (now bishop of Legnica since 2021), told CNA in 2019.

While still a girl, Hedwig moved to the lower part of Poland, the region called Silesia, to marry Duke Henry I the Bearded. Together they had seven children, only two of whom lived to maturity.

Hedwig loved the Eucharist, prayer, and reading and meditating on Scripture. In her household she had Scripture read aloud during meal times. Despite her wealth as a duchess, she practiced serious asceticism: She fasted, ate plain food, and lived with few personal possessions.

After her children were grown, Hedwig devoted herself to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, especially helping the poor, sick, hungry, widows, orphans, and expectant mothers.

Unlike other princesses of the time, Hedwig helped people with her own hand, and not through her servants. She also gave shelter to sick and disabled people in her castle. A biographer of Hedwig wrote that the poor followed her everywhere she went, as if she were their mother.

She would also visit and bring food and other items to the imprisoned and send money to people who could not repay their debts. She used her position as a duchess to defend and intervene on behalf of prisoners and people sentenced to death so that they would receive lighter sentences or be freed.

Hedwig was responsible for bringing the Cistercian Order to Silesia. She had a monastery and several churches, including the first, built in the region. One of these churches, in modern-day Trzebnica, where she is buried, is now a shrine to the saint, who was canonized in 1267. The shrine is a popular place of pilgrimage for people from all over the world.

The monastery connected to this church is still active and is considered to be the largest existing 13th-century building in Central Europe.

Hedwig lived in that monastery near the end of her life, and though she did not take religious vows, she lived in community with the religious sisters there. Tradition at the monastery says that she would pray a lot, to the point of sometimes locking herself in the chapel overnight.

The saint also had a strong love of the Blessed Virgin Mary and would carry a statue of Our Lady around with her, using it to bless the sick, some of whom it is said were afterward healed. She was buried with this statue, and tradition says when her tomb was opened years later, the fingers gripping it were not decomposed.

Images and statues of St. Hedwig usually depict her holding a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, feeding the poor, or holding a church.

St. Hedwig, as a Bavarian, became a symbol of “Catholic and Christian living” in the region and of how Germans and Polish people could live together as members of one Church, Siemieniewski said.

In Wroclaw, Poland, there is an important statue of St. Hedwig next to a monumental bridge. This, he said, symbolizes the bridge she formed between the neighboring nations of Germany and Poland.

Hedwig is also beloved by the Czech people.

“St. Hedwig is considered a mother to the Silesian people, and Silesia meant, in older times, ‘home for many nations,’” Siemieniewski explained.

This article was first published on Oct. 16, 2019, and has been updated.

Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland where 15 Benedictine monks pray and welcome visitors. / Credit: Giles Conacher OSB/Pluscarden Abbey

Edinburgh, Scotland, Oct 14, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

In northeast Scotland, six miles southwest of Elgin in Moray, stands Pluscarden Abbey, the northernmost Benedictine abbey in the world. Within its medieval walls, a community of some 15 Catholic monks continue to pray and welcome pilgrims for an encounter with God in the peace of the glen. 

Pluscarden is the only medieval British monastery still being used for its original purpose, according to its website. And with good reason: The origin of this holy place dates back to 1230, when monks from Burgundy, France, arrived at the invitation of King Alexander II of Scotland. They were from a branch of Cistercians, present mostly in Francophone Europe, the monastery’s prior, Father Giles Conacher, told CNA.

The monastery has endured many of history’s tribulations: destructive fire from enemies and consequences of wars that tore apart England, France, and Scotland. More than two centuries after its foundation, in 1454, the monks joined the Benedictine order. 

In 1560, the monastery suffered another setback. Becoming a Protestant country, the Scottish Parliament repudiated the pope’s authority, and the Catholic Mass was declared illegal. 

“It was a difficult time, but monasteries were not suppressed in Scotland as in England; there was continuity,” Conacher explained. “We don’t know exactly where the monks went; we just know that one was found here 40 years later.” 

Monastic life was extinguished for a time. Toward the end of the 19th century, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, third marquess of Bute, one of the richest men in Europe, became a fervent protector of the Catholic Church. Undertaking a vast project of monument restoration, he bought Pluscarden monastery. “He didn’t restore it, but he certainly conserved it,” Conacher said. 

The place passed to his nephew, and finally, in 1948, five monks came to inhabit the monastery. Their origins were unusual: Founded on the Isle of Dogs in London in 1896 by an Anglican medical student, the community of monks has some practices that were not part of the Church of England: their view of the Blessed Sacrament and their belief in the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption “were central in their life,” Conacher explained. Therefore, they decided to become Catholic in 1913. 

The abbey today

The monastery of Pluscarden became independent in 1966, and in 1974, 50 years ago, it became an abbey — with legal autonomy. Today, Pluscarden has a community of 15 Benedictine monks, some of whom hail from Nigeria, Australia, East Africa, Poland, England, and New Zealand. The abbey still receives vocational applications. 

Of the monks, Conacher, who was born in England and then moved to Edinburgh as a child, has been there the longest — 52 years. He arrived at the abbey at the age of 23. 

“I came to Pluscarden on a wet afternoon, on the 27th of September 1971, with the rain dripping on trees, and somehow, this rang a bell, this had to be God,” he recalled. “When I came back, and told my family of my desire to join, my uncle exclaimed: ‘That’s the first bloody sensible thing you’ve done in your whole life’… And he was right!”

During his monastic life, Conacher was sent to Africa and Australia, for their missions. 

Pluscarden is in fact a member of the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation, an international union of Benedictine houses that includes Subiaco, Monte Cassino, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and various monasteries in Italy, France, Germany, Africa, Central and South America, as well as India, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

A place to meet God

At Pluscarden, the day begins early. The first prayer service is at 4:30 a.m. and the last one at 7:30 p.m. Besides maintenance, gardening, and intellectual work like translating, craftwork, and woodwork, the monks dedicate themselves to hospitality. Visitors are received in the two guest houses for men and women.

The beauty of the site certainly attracts people, but it is above all the spiritual thirst people come with that the monks notice. 

“Some people from Cambridge were here recently, and they told us they thought monasteries existed only in books and museums. And here it was, alive and active, and that was astonishing to them. That’s true for a lot of people,” Conacher said.

“Some of them come without any particular belief, and they leave with tears because of the beauty of the liturgy; or they sit in silence for half an hour in the chapel, and they go away comforted. We don’t need to know how it works. We just know that God’s here,” he added. 

In this medieval place where the walls are soaked in prayer, individuals, families, and groups can come freely. “There are no questionnaires, no members cards; the door is open,” Conacher said.

To reach more people, the monks have made the Masses and the Divine Offices, sung in Gregorian Chant, accessible on streaming on their website. From this platform, one can also light a candle to pray for a particular intention.