FROM THE HOLY FATHER FOR THE 4TH

 

POPE LEO’S LETTER TO U.S.A. FOR 250 ANNIVERSARY OF FOUNDING

I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all Americans on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This semiquincentennial marks that defining moment in the history of the United States of America, July 4, 1776, that gave enduring voice to the ideals of liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, justice and democratic self-government.

For two and a half centuries, generations of Americans have worked together to carry these principles forward — through sacrifice, service, innovation and civic participation. This anniversary stands as an invitation not only to celebrate the nation's remarkable journey, but also to reflect upon the responsibilities that the sons and daughters of this country bear to one another, and to the generations who will inherit the nation that is being shaped today.

Among the most cherished of these principles is religious freedom — the right of every person to worship according to conscience and to practice their faith openly, without coercion or fear. In marking this anniversary, it is important to recognize that freedom of religion has long been central to the American promise, protecting both individual dignity and the peaceful coexistence of a diverse people.

This same freedom has permitted the Catholic Church to take root and flourish within the United States, to the advantage not only of her own members, but of the entire nation. As faithful sons and daughters of the Church, Catholics e called to imbue every dimension of their existence with the charity of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5:14), living out the Gospel in the circumstances of daily life. Such a way of living has given rise to the many benefits that the Church has provided over the years to the development of this nation. In particular, I bring to mind her service in areas of education, the preferential care of the poor, healthcare and basic social services, to name a few.

In the Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, my predecessor Pope Leo XIII wrote that "no better citizen is there… than the Christian who is mindful of his duty" (no. 7). In fact, faith — far from standing in opposition to the responsibilities of citizenship — lends new vigor to the pursuit of justice, peace and the common good, bringing to perfection every natural gift bestowed by the Creator. Saint Paul himself encouraged the early Christians to pray for those in positions of authority in order to live a peaceful life in accord with the will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:2). In this regard, it is in the faithful fulfilment of duty — to God and country — that Catholics are called to continue to serve the nation, as leaven for the growth of a civilization of love (cf. Mt 13:33).

Also among the principles that have guided the development of this country is the God-given dignity of every human life, each person being endowed with an inherent worth that calls for reverence, protection and care. In this spirit, a full understanding of this dignity leads to recognizing the importance of safeguarding human life from its beginning at conception until natural death, and of building a society in which the vulnerable, the suffering and the forgotten are always met with compassion, solidarity and love.

Defending human life also includes welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contribution have formed part of the history of this country from its very beginning. In every generation, those who have arrived seeking freedom, opportunity and a place to belong have helped to shape the nation's character. To receive them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person.

In my recent Encyclical Letter, Magnifica Humanitas, I wrote about working together for the common good. "Building a world in which everyone can flourish requires shared responsibility and courage. No one can single-handedly bear the weight of the challenges the world is facing" (no. 13). We need one another, and we need to work together in unity to confront the challenges that the world is facing today.

May this milestone renew the shared commitment to the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity and democracy. May Americans honor the courage and vision of those who came before them by strengthening their communities, respecting their differences and working together toward a more perfect union.

Congratulations on this extraordinary national anniversary. May the spirit of 1776 continue to inspire hope and unity as the United States of America moves into the future. In assuring all of you of my prayers in your renewed efforts to strengthen the nation in the principles that guided its Founding Fathers, I entrust you to the intercession of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of this country, that she will continue to watch over America and protect all who dwell therein.

250 YEARS TO COME

 

As we celebrate the 250 anniversary of our country's birth with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I give you this poem by the agrarian poet, Wendell Barry, with the hope and prayer that the future will be brighter, more just and freer for all people who dwell in this amazingly beautiful land.

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
in a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides...
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

    (From "New and Collected Poems", Counterpoint Press)

NEW VENERABLE

 

On June 18, 2026, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints promulgated the decree of Pope Leo XIV recognizing the heroic virtues of the Servant of God JULIO MARY De LOMBAERSE, making him Venerable.

He was a  Belgian Catholic missionary who became a naturalized Brazilian, of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family, founder of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary , the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacramentarian Sisters of Our Lady.

Julio Emilio was born in Beveren-Leie, Belgium in 1878. At the age of seventeen, as a boarding student at St. Joseph’s College in Torhout, he heard a bishop’s sermon about the missions in Africa. 

As soon as he finished his studies, he joined the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, known as the White Fathers, and in 1895 he left for Algeria as a lay brother. Stricken with a fever that did not subside, he felt an inner urging to become a priest, promising Our Lady that if she granted him a cure, he would enter the seminary. The fever soon left him and he returned to Europe, joining the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family in Grave, Netherlands.

He was ordained on January 13, 1908. In 1912, he was sent to Brazil, where he would spend spent 16 years in the North and Northeast, preaching missions, serving as a parish priest, and founding a religious congregation. He also dedicated himself to education and basic sanitation as a way to improve the health conditions of the local population. 

“It really is the country of dreams. “Everything grows on trees here: bread, sugar, [cane] juice and even milk. There are only two things missing, perhaps I will discover them yet: a tree that produces ham, and another that produces eggs. After all this, and despite the heat, everyone will be shouting: long live Brazil!”

In 1928, he left for Manhumirin, in eastern Minas Gerais, with the full support ofDom Carloto Fernandes da Silva Tavora, bishop pf Caratinga. There he spent the last 16 years of his life, serving as parish priest, seminary formator, and master of its religious congregations. He also dedicated himself to journalism, with his newspaper O Lutador (Fighter). 

In many areas what really worried him was the state of souls: the practice of religion was restricted to certain ceremonies and external acts, without devotion or true piety, and there was a deep corruption of customs, which had become truly pagan and even anti-Christian. Furthermore, since there were no priests to instruct the people, men appeared who offered to preside over the ceremonies and prayers, drawn by the desire to profit at the expense of the needs of the faithful, thereby diverting them even further from the truth.

Fr. Julio Maria  visited the villages, teaching catechism to the children and personally attending to the sick. To better evangelize the youths who were given over to a meaningless life, he founded a school for boys. “He was the doctor. He was the pharmacist. He was the schoolmaster par excellence,” which quickly won him not only the trust of the people, who started attending church again, but also the recognition of the public authorities.

For the young women, he decided to finally realize an inspiration that he had long cherished in his heart: the foundation  of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The new venerable died with a reputation for holiness on Christmas Eve,1944, in a car accident. His mortal remains reside in the sanctuary of Senhor Bom Jesus de Manhumir.

THE SAINT NEXT DOOR

 

Another foreign born woman, who immigrated to the USA, giving her life for the work of Christ’s people was VENERABLE SR. MARIA THERESA  of the MOST HOLY TRINITY YSSELDIJK.

Born on November in 1897 in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, Teresa was raised in a devout Catholic family and grew in her love of the Sacred Heart.

Her father died when she was young and her family moved to Germany. She wanted to enter a convent, but her frail health initially prevented her from entering.

 When her health improved, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Carmelites of the Divine Heart of Jesus, in Tilburg on October 2, 1917, at age 19, taking the name Sr. Maria Theresa of the Most Holy Trinity.

 The Carmelite convent she entered was not a cloistered one, as the sisters blended contemplative prayer with active apostolates in the world, such as teaching and caring for the sick and elderly.

 Having a zeal for missionary work, Sr. Maria Theresa gladly accepted the assignment of traveling with seven sisters to the United States in 1919, just two years after her entrance.

 When she reached the United States, her health quickly began to deteriorate again. She was diagnosed with a a severe kidney disease that was not caught in time. This led to a grueling five years of suffering in a convent in St. Charles, Missouri.

Her patience and joy in the midst of suffering was an inspiration to all her sisters. While she was never able to do any active missionary work in the United States, she united her suffering to Jesus Christ on the cross and bore everything with a smile, thereby winning untold graces for the missions.

In 1925, the year that St. Thérèse of Lisieux was canonized, the Carmelite sisters prayed a novena asking for Sister Theresia to recover. After the novena, Sister Theresia experienced, in prayer, a seemingly devastating message from the French saint: “You will only live a short time, but suffer much.” The young sister accepted the message as God’s will, saying she went “very gladly” to her father in heaven.

She died at the age of 28 on March 10, 1926 at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis. Many began to pray for her intercession shortly after her death and healings were soon reported.

Sister Theresia’s fellow Carmelites never forgot her, but the effort to officially open and advance her sainthood cause took somewhat of a back seat to the promotion of the cause of their order’s foundress, Blessed Mother Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, who died in 1938 and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. Sister Theresia’s cause was officially opened in 2010 in the Diocese of Roermond, Netherlands, the location of the order’s motherhouse. 

Pope Leo XIV recently recognized the "heroic virtue" of Sr. Maria Theresa of the Most Holy Trinity, naming her, "venerable," one of the first steps on the road to canonization. She joins a growing list of "venerables" who worked in the United States. She would become the second woman to achieve sainthood while serving in the St. Louis region, after St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.

“I think a message that a lot of us need to really see and know and believe is that our hidden sufferings really do draw us into deeper communion with the Lord and intimacy with Him, if we let Him do that in us,” said Carmelite Sister Mary Michael, provincial vicar for the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus South Central Province. ( interview with the Natl. Catholic Register)..

UPDATE- AMERICAN HOLY PEOPLE

 

Father Philip Nolan, editor of Magnificat, says,"If you want to understand Scripture, look to the saints; if you want to understand tthe saints, look to Scripture."  This is very true of the American women whose path to sainthood has been furtheed along .

Today, June 18, Pope Leo XIV declared American religious SISTER MARY TERESA TALLON venerable ( Blog 7/30/2017). She was the foundress of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in New York.

The new venerable was born in 1867, in Hanover, New York, as the daughter of Irish immigrants.

In 1887, at the age of 19, Tallon joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross, despite her family’s disapproval. She remained part of the congregation for the next 33 years, teaching in Catholic schools in South Bend, Indiana.

She went on to establish a new congregation dedicated to contemplation and to preaching the Gospel to the neglected. In 1920, she left the Sisters of the Holy Cross and, on Aug. 15, established the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate (PVMI). She gave it the motto “Make every soul count.”

A gifted scholar, Venerable Tallon authored a report documenting the first decade of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in New York for the National Catechetical Congress in 1936.

She died on Feb. 10, 1954, after a prolonged illness.

PERU IN NOVEMBER

 

My Peruvian friends in Piura are ecstatic, as they have just learned that the Holy Father will visit their city in the first half of November of this year.  He will also visit Lima, Chiclayo, Pucallpa, and Cusco.  He will land in Lima and from there fly north to Chiclayo, from Chiclayo to Piura, from Piura to Pucallpa, in the jungle, and finally head south to Cusco. There is also a possibility of a stop in Arequipa.

The Pope met with Peruvian President José María Balcázar June 18. The president offered the pontiff several suggestions. Among them, he proposed that after his visit to Chiclayo, he could travel by helicopter “to the Andean area of Incahuasi and Cañaris, which is a very poor, Quechua-speaking region that he knows very well.

“We have offered him a helicopter to reach any place he wishes quickly, because he wants to cover as many small towns as possible in the north and also in the jungle and Cusco.”

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the canonization of Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo who served as Archbishop of Lima from 1579 until his death in 1606.

MANIFESTING COMPASSION

 

Another American woman is up for canonization, having lived in a very hard time in the United States. SERVANT OF GOD MARGARET MARY HEALY-MURPHY was born  in 1833, to Jane Murphy Healy and Richard Healy in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, Ireland. When she was only five years old her mother died in childbirth, and over the next few years, Margaret watched her family and the rest of Ireland struggle to survive the ravages of famine.

Amazingly, Margaret Mary was a relative of Daniel O'Connell, who worked politically to end slavery through the British Parliament system, as her own family would later own slaves in America. Her father was a doctor who helped the poor in the neighboring regions of Cahirciveen.

Margaret immigrated to America with her father when she was 12. Her father died shortly after their arrival. She accompanied her brothers, aunts, and uncles when they made their way across several southern states and eventually to Mexico, where they operated a hotel.

 She met John Bernard Murphy in Matamoros, Mexico. He had been stationed there while working as a volunteer in General Zachary Taylor's army. They married in Matamoros in 1849 in the Matamoros Cathedral. In 1850 the couple settled in Corpus Christi, where John owned a ranch and worked as a lawyer. The Murphys also owned slaves who worked on the ranch. 

 While her husband was traveling for business, Margaret Mary ministered to the pastoral and material needs of her neighbors, reportedly even riding 35 miles on horseback to secure medicine for Yellow Fever victims.

 With the Civil War brewing and her husband away, most likely for safety, Margaret moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, helping her neighbors with chores and cooking meals for those in need. After the war, Margaret volunteered at St. Patrick’s Parish, even as the Yellow Fever epidemic reached the city. She worked alongside the pastor, Reverend John Gonnard, who later died from the illness. 

One of the patients Margaret tended to was Mrs. Delaney who entrusted her daughter, Minnie, to Margaret’s care. Margaret and John Bernard adopted Minnie and sent her to a boarding school in New York with the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur. They also adopted Margaret’s goddaughter, Lizzie, who had lost her mother as well. Upon graduation, both girls entered the religious life with the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament Sisters. 

 In 1875, John was invited as a representative at the First Constitutional Convention for Texas, held in Austin. When he returned, he was persuaded to run for mayor of Corpus Christi, which he held from 1880 to 1884.

When John died in1884, he left Margaret Mary with a fortune, which she decided to put to good use, helping others. She started a tuberculosis hospital in Corpus Christi. After a few years, she moved to San Antonio. In 1887, responding to a plea from the bishops during the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, she was inspired to use her own finances to build the first black Catholic Church and school in the city.

With racial prejudice prevalent, she struggled with securing finances to sustain her project and maintain a stable faculty. In 1893, with the blessing of Bishop John C. Neraz, Margaret founded a new religious congregation, the Sisters of the Holy Ghost, now known as the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate. These sisters supported Margaret’s mission of working with the poor and people of color.

Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy died on August 7, 1907, leaving behind 15 sisters, two postulants and three missions. Even today, her congregation continues “manifesting the compassion of Jesus to the poor” in the United States and Zambia.

On June 28, 2022, Archbishop García-Siller announced his intention to formally open the diocesan phase of investigation into the life of Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy.