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Pope Francis condemned euthanasia and abortion as actions that “play with life” and said there is such a thing as “bad compassion” during a press conference aboard the papal plane from Marseille to Rome on Saturday. Aboard the plane, Pope Francis was asked by a French journalist whether he had spoken about euthanasia in his private conversation with France’s President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the day. Francis said he did not address the topic of euthanasia with Macron on Saturday but that he had expressed himself “clearly” on the issue when the French president visited him at the Vatican last year. “Whether it is the law not to let the child grow in the mother’s womb or the law of euthanasia in disease and old age,” he said, “I am not saying it is a faith thing, but it is a human thing: There is bad compassion.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255459/you-don-t-play-with-life-pope-francis-condemns-euthanasia-abortion-on-papal-plane
In Marseille on Friday, before a memorial to people lost at sea, Pope Francis said humanity is at a crossroads between fraternity and indifference regarding the migrant crisis. “We can no longer watch the drama of shipwrecks, caused by the cruel trafficking and the fanaticism of indifference,” he said September 22. “People who are at risk of drowning when abandoned on the waves must be rescued. It is a duty of humanity; it is a duty of civilization.” “On the one hand, there is fraternity, which makes the human community flourish with goodness; on the other, indifference, which bloodies the Mediterranean. We find ourselves at a crossroads of civilization.” The pope spoke during a meeting with local religious leaders at a memorial dedicated to sailors and migrants lost at sea on the first of a two-day visit to Marseille. The day after the pope’s visit — and the concluding day of the encounter, Sunday, September 24 — is the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The first quarter of 2023 was the deadliest since 2017 in the Central Mediterranean, with at least 441 people dying, though that’s considered an undercount.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255451/pope-francis-in-marseille-it-s-a-duty-of-humanity-to-save-migrants-abandoned-at-sea
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the woman twice arrested for silent prayer outside UK abortion clinics, has received a police apology and confirmation that she will not face charges for violating a local “buffer zone” protection order. Vaughan-Spruce is the director of March for Life UK and helps support women in crisis pregnancies. She has regularly prayed near abortion clinics for 20 years.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255453/woman-arrested-for-silent-prayer-at-uk-abortion-clinics-gets-police-apology
Today, the Church celebrates Saint Hermann Contractus. He was born crippled and unable to move without assistance. It was an immense difficulty for him to learn to read and write, however he persisted and his iron will and remarkable intelligence were soon manifested. Upon discovering the brilliance of his son’s mind, his father, Count Wolverad II, sent him at the age of seven to live with the Benedictine monks on the island of Reichenau in Southern Germany. He lived his entire life on the island, taking his monastic vows in 1043. Students from all over Europe flocked to the monastery on the island to learn from him, yet he was equally as famous for his monastic virtues and sanctity. Hermann chronicled the first thousand years of Christianity, was a mathematician, an astronomer, and a poet and was also the composer of the Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris Mater – both hymns to the Virgin Mary. He died on the island on September 21, 1054.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-hermann-contractus-372