Salt + Light Blog

It’s been 13 years since Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack and died at 87 years old on September 5th, 1997 in Calcutta . August 26th this year would mark her 100th birthday. The day after she died, she was set to lead an interfaith memorial prayer service in Calcutta for her friend, Diana, Princess of Wales, who had been tragically killed in a car accident one week earlier.

How well I remember those days… my own father died on August 27 that year. On the night I returned to Toronto from his funeral, the Princess was killed in the horrible car crash in Paris . One week later, Mother Teresa was called home to God. I commentated her funeral for several national television networks in Canada . The pomp, precision and somber majesty of Princess Diana’s London farewell one week earlier were hardly visible in the chaotic scenes of Mother Teresa’s simple wooden casket riding on a gun carriage through the mobbed and chaotic streets of Calcutta for her State funeral.

Mother Teresa’s life was not a sound byte, but rather a metaphor for selfless devotion and holiness. Her most famous work began in 1950 with the opening of the first Nirmal Hriday (Tender Heart) home for the dying and destitute in Calcutta . Mother’s words remain inscribed on the walls of that home: “Nowadays the most horrible disease is not leprosy or tuberculosis. It is the feeling to be undesirable, rejected, abandoned by all.”

There are critics in the Church, and not a few religious women and men, who say that Mother Teresa personified a “pre-Vatican-Council” view of faith and did not address systemic evils. They criticize her and her followers for their relentless condemnation of abortion. Some have said that in Mother Teresa, there was no element of prophetic criticism in her teachings and her lifestyle. Instead of acting sensibly by applying for government grants to create programs to eliminate poverty, Mother Teresa and her sisters moved into neighborhoods and befriended people. Their houses often become oases of hope and peace, like the ones in Canada , and especially the convent in downtown Toronto . When Mother Teresa speaks of ’sharing poverty,’ she defies the logic of institutions that prefer agendas for the poor, not communion with individual poor people. Agents and instruments of communion are often called irrelevant by the world.

Though she left this world scene thirteen years ago, this tiny nun made the news big time several years ago with the publication of her letters. Many journalists, magazine editors, television newscasters and bloggers got the story all wrong with their sensational headlines: “Mother Teresa’s secret life: crisis and darkness,” or ” Calcutta ’s Saint was an atheist,” or even “Mother and the Absent One.” Some commentators wrote: “She lost her faith and the Church rewards her for it.” These people seem unaware that those who prepared Mother’s Beatification in 2003 cited the letters as proof of her exceptional faith and not the absence of it. Read more…

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Father Thomas Rosica

On June 30, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Quebec’s Cardinal Marc Ouellet Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.  As of June 30, he is no longer the Archbishop of Quebec City and Primate of Canada but assumes his new roles in the Roman Curia.  He will move to Rome at the end of the summer.  Having spent the past week in Rome attending meetings with various communications departments of the Vatican, one could say that the “talk of the town” was the imminent appointment of this eminent shepherd from Canada to one of the highest positions at the Vatican.

I speak for myself and on behalf of all of us at Salt + Light Television when I say that we are saddened at his departure from Canada.  At the same time, we are thrilled for the universal Church and for the Vatican, that they will get to experience the great gift we have had in our midst for the past seven years in the person of Cardinal Marc Ouellet.  He has been a good friend and great supporter of Salt + Light Television, having appeared on our programs in both English and French numerous times over the past seven years.

I first met the Cardinal when he was a young priest at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal, almost twenty years ago.  We later reconnected in 2001 when he was a newly ordained bishop in Rome and Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity and I was the National Director and CEO of World Youth Day 2002.  Our first major “act” was to arrange the Palm Sunday celebrations in Rome in 2001 for the Canadian delegation of young people who journeyed with me to receive the World Youth Day Cross from the Italians who hosted the previous World Youth Day in 2000.  Then-Bishop Ouellet kindly agreed to celebrate mass for us at the tomb of Peter the day after we arrived.  It was a celebration that many of us will never forget.  Bishop Marc Ouellet traveled to Canada for World Youth Day 2002, not as a residential bishop but a guest and a Vatican Curial leader.

One of the great blessings of World Youth Day came to us in November 2002, the day of Archbishop Ouellet’s appointment to Quebec City.  From the moment he “took possession” of the Archdiocese of Quebec in January 2003, we knew that something had changed… for Quebec and for Canada.  He ruffled feathers that needed to be ruffled, issued challenges to many who had become too familiar with the status quo, and issued challenges to all of us.  He made mistakes along the way and admitted them, asking people to help this scholar and teacher to become a servant and shepherd.

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Father Thomas Rosica

Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Eucharistic Celebration with the Board of Governors and Board of Regents of Bethlehem University
Generalate of the Christian Brothers de la Salle
Rome, Italy – June 24, 2010

It is an honor to preside and preach at this liturgy in the world headquarters of the Christian Brothers de la Salle, who have been entrusted with the prophetic mission and work of Bethlehem University in Palestine. Your important meetings in Rome with many agencies involved in the Holy Land, combined with our meeting with the Holy Father tomorrow, coincide with today’s great feast of the birth of the one who was “Precursor”, “Friend of the Bridegroom”, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” John the Baptizer. I share these reflections with you as a student of the Word of God in the very places where this Word was first spoken, as a friend of the Christian Brothers, and as the head of a Catholic television network in Canada that has been privileged to produce a documentary on the remarkable story of Bethlehem University.

Today’s first reading, the second of the four “Servant of the Lord” songs of the prophet Isaiah 49:1-6 identifies so well the role of the Baptist. He was truly the Servant made ready and fit for the preaching of God’s word. John was identified with the people of Israel and his vocation was ultimately not only the restoration of Israel, but also the conversion of the world. John was the sharp-edged sword who pointed out the true light to the nations, the one whose salvation would reach to the ends of the earth.

St. Paul, in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (13:22-26) spoke of this John who heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’

In the Gospel text for today’s feast, Luke writes in imitation of Old Testament birth stories, combining historical and legendary details, literary ornamentation and interpretation of scripture, to answer in advance the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” Luke is not only interested in the words and deeds of Jesus, but also in the larger context of the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises of God in the Old Testament. Like the Gospel according to Matthew, Luke’s Gospel opens with an infancy narrative, a collection of stories about the birth and childhood of Jesus.

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Father Thomas Rosica

Just over a week ago, Pope Benedict returned to the Vatican from his three-day trip to Cyprus. This might be news to some of you. The papal visit was the most under-reported of 2010.

Cynics might theorize that the media yawned because there was no apparent clergy sex abuse angle. Just as likely, the relative silence could be attributed to ‘papal visit fatigue’. The Pope’s flight to Malta in April was closely followed by a pilgrimage to the Shroud of Turin in May. And then, just two weeks later, he made his highly-publicized journey to Portugal.

Even the Vatican press corps — veteran reporters who fly on the Pope’s plane — were surely wearied by the schedule. While it’s no chore to jet to sun-drenched, seaside destinations, covering an apostolic voyage is no holiday. During just three days in Portugal, for example, Benedict delivered 16 separate addresses.

The Cyprus trip was laden with complex political overtones. Recently, Cypriots have resumed talks aimed at the eventual reunification of the ethnic Greek and Turkish populations. (At present, the island remains divided by a UN buffer zone.) As a Mediterranean port-of-call, Cyprus was also involved in the deadly confrontation on the Gaza flotilla. And then, just one day before the Pope arrived, a bishop was murdered in nearby Turkey. Minority Christians in Turkey fear the attack may have been religiously motivated.

The Holy Father addressed each of those issues in Cyprus. But he was also traveling, as he often does, as a pilgrim. This was, after all, the first time a pontiff had ever visited the island, on whose shores Paul and Barnabas debarked to evangelize some two-thousand year ago.

For those who missed our extensive Cyprus coverage, Fr. Thomas Rosica shared this video reflection about the biblical significance of Cyprus, and how Paul and Barnabas’ stormy friendship still speaks to us today.

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Kris Dmytrenko

This week, in addition to our regular workload, Salt + Light Television is quite busy with two major productions: the conclusion of a major cultural documentary being filmed in the historic chapel of St. Peter’s Seminary in London, Ontario, and the live coverage of Pope Benedict’s Pilgrimage to Fatima in Portugal. There is also another very important event taking place in Ottawa and in numerous cities across Canada: the 13th annual National March for Life, in Ottawa, Thursday May 13, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.

Thousands will gather once again on Parliament Hill and in several Canadian cities to stand up in defense of the unborn. Last year, despite the inclement weather, we provided all-day coverage of the Ottawa March. This year, we will cover the event from another angle. Our camera crew will board the bus with the Salesian parish community of St. Benedict in Etobicoke, Ontario, and journey to Ottawa with Fr. Michael Pace, SDB and his flock! This will allow us to document the 2010 March for life through the eyes of a vibrant parish community committed to the cause of life

In 2010 we have allocated our budget to co-sponsoring with our partners at EWTN a special memorial mass from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City last week to commemorate the tenth anniversary of death of Cardinal John O’Connor, a great witness to life. We also produced several new episodes of our Perspectives series on topics of life, as well as featuring Witness interviews of great agents and witnesses of life, marriage and family. Such programs will last long beyond one day, and serve as teaching instruments for many in Canada and far beyond.

What does it mean to be pro-life?

To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. There can be no true peace unless life is defended and promoted. Remember the prophetic words of Pope Paul VI:

Every crime against life is an attack on peace, especially if it strikes at the moral conduct of people…But where human rights are truly professed and publicly recognized and defended, peace becomes the joyful and operative climate of life in society.

Abortion is without a doubt the most serious wound inflicted not only on individuals and their families who should provide the sanctuary for life, but inflicted as well on society and its culture, by the very people who ought to be society’s promoters and defenders. We must never lose sight of the atrocities against the unborn, the untold and too-seldom spoken of pain and lingering anguish experienced by those who have been involved in abortions.

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Father Thomas Rosica

Today, April 28th, we celebrate the feast of St. Gianna Molla. The following letter was written to the members of Catholic Christian Outreach who were part of the pilgrimage in the footsteps of the Saints and Blesseds following World Youth Day 2005. It was given to Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB to be read to the CCO pilgrims at the end of the visit to the Molla home in Mesero on August 25, 2005. The English translation of the original Italian text was done by Fr. Rosica. The letter is from Mr. Pietro Molla, the husband of St. Gianna. He passed away on Holy Saturday of this year, April 3rd 2010.

Mesero, Italy
August 25, 2005

My Dear Young Friends,

My cordial and affectionate greetings to dear Fr. Thomas Rosica, his colleagues and young friends who have just returned from the World Youth Day in Cologne and who have just come from your pilgrimage to the important places in the life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.

I thank you with all my heart for having come to Magenta, Ponte Nuovo and Mesero to honor my dearest wife Gianna. I am particularly grateful to all those who today gave testimony to her life, and have assisted you in making this pilgrimage such a magnificent success.

And now if you permit me, I would like to turn to my beloved Gianna, whose presence is still so deeply a part of my life.

You, Gianna were a splendid person, you were “my beloved… the beloved of my heart… the love of my soul.” in the words of the Song of Songs; the happy and wise mother of our children, and you always sought in every decision and every work the will of the Lord with prayer and the Eucharist.

Remember, Gianna, the evening of December 31, 1954? I still remember it so well as you certainly do. Together we enjoyed the ballet performance at the Scala Theater in Milan and then we welcomed the New Year in your home. In my diary entry that day I wrote: “This evening can be for me a decisive date for my life and my aspirations. I entrust myself to Our Lady of Good Counsel.”

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Father Thomas Rosica

Canadian Catholic News’ Deborah Gyapong interviewed Salt + Light Television CEO Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB, regarding the recent clergy sexual abuse scandal.  See the article below:

Don’t allow focus on sexual abuse to “imprison us in the past” —Fr. Rosica

By Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News
April 13, 2010

OTTAWA (CCN)—As new revelations about old cases of priestly sexual abuse dominate the news, Basilian Fr. Thomas Rosica urges Catholics not to forget the Church’s Gospel message.

“We must address these issues but we cannot and must not become imprisoned in the past,” the CEO of the Salt and Light Media Foundation said in an email interview. “We cannot allow the freshness, newness and reconciliation of the Gospel message to be anesthetized.”

“We must recognize the wounds and be about the work of healing and reconciling,” he said. “Recognizing our woundedness will become our great strength if we witness authentically and transparently to Jesus who heals and raises the dead to life.”

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Early on Holy Saturday morning, April 3, 2010, Mr. Pietro Molla, husband of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, died in his family home in Mesero, near Milan in Italy, surrounded by his daughter Gianna Emanuela and his other children, Pierluigi and Laura. Mr. Molla was 97 years old and had been in failing health for several years. Pierluigi contacted me this morning to let me know of the sad news of Pietro’s death.

I have been good friends with the Molla family since 1999 and St. Gianna is the Patron Saint of the Salt and Light Catholic Television Network in Canada. My friendship with the Molla family grew from our first meeting in 1999 in Mesero. I have been blessed with the gift of their friendship these past eleven years and accompanied the Molla Family in the years leading up to the 2004 canonization of St. Gianna, a great, contemporary woman saint, wife, mother of a family, medical doctor and lover of life.

I discovered a pillar of faith, courage, and devotion in the person of Mr. Pietro Molla, husband of St. Gianna. During our first meeting, Pietro shared with me dozens of photos in family albums, regaling me with stories of Gianna’s interests in music, opera, theater, mountain hikes, skiing. He also shared with me in great detail the final months and weeks of Gianna’s earthly existence in 1962. At her death Pietro would become a single parent with four young children. He never remarried.

The Molla children are all very close to me in age, and we struck up a wonderful friendship that has lasted to this day. Pierluigi and his family welcomed me as one of their own. Laura, my contemporary is a very intelligent, warm professional woman, now happily married to Giuseppe Pannuti.

When Pierluigi and Dr. Gianna Emanuela came to visit me in Toronto in 1999, while I was still chaplain of the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto, Gianna asked me to accompany her to visit two Toronto hospitals that specialize in the care and treatment of those who suffer with Alzheimer’s Disease. Gianna is a specialist in that area. I watched her in action among her medical peers and colleagues in Toronto, sharing stories and research about Alzheimers disease and her love of the elderly. Dr. Gianna Emanuela was continuing the healing mission of her mother.

Over the past eleven years, I visited numerous times with Pietro at his home in Mesero, shared meals with him in little restaurants in town, and spoke many times with him by phone. In September 2003, shortly after the Molla family was informed that the required miracle had been approved by the Vatican for Blessed Gianna’s canonization, Pietro phoned me in Toronto and invited me to make the “official” documentary of St. Gianna Beretta Molla’s life. It was an extraordinary privilege for us at Salt and Light Television in Canada to be entrusted with that task. Our film on St. Gianna’s life, “Love is a Choice,” is an award-winning documentary now in numerous languages.

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Father Thomas Rosica

In addition to being Good Friday tomorrow, April 2nd is also the fifth anniversary of the death of John Paul II.  Yesterday, we published an article from Salt + Light CEO Fr. Thomas Rosica remembering the Polish pontiff.  The Knights of Columbus’  Headline Bistro has an extended version of the article, along with video clips of Fr. Rosica reflecting on the Pontiff.

Remembering a Universal, Spiritual Father
On the Fifth Anniversary of the Death of the Venerable John Paul II
by Father Thomas Rosica, CSB

April 2005. They were incredible scenes that I shall never forget, almost like a spontaneous World Youth Day that erupted in Rome. Hundreds of thousands of young people streamed into St. Peter’s Square and wept openly before the body of an old man who was not a rock star, Olympic medalist nor Hollywood icon. He was an elderly pope who had just endured a public death before the eyes of the world.

On April 8, 2005, millions of people gathered in churches, halls, fields, public venues and schools across the face of the earth – many well before the crack of dawn – to watch the funeral of someone who told them to serve others before satisfying themselves.

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CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano

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[The following article was originally written by Father Rosica for the March 26th edition of Canada's Catholic Register.]

April 2, 2005. They were incredible scenes that I shall never forget. Hundreds of thousands of young people streamed into St. Peter’s Square . . . and wept openly before the body of an old man who was not a rock star, Olympic medalist or Hollywood icon. He was an elderly Pope who had just endured a public death before the eyes of the world.

On April 8, millions of people gathered in churches, halls, fields, public venues and schools across the Earth — many well before the crack of dawn — to watch the funeral of someone who told them to serve others before satisfying themselves.

That unforgettable week was filled with memories of the previous 26 years of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. The theme of “opening doors” and “crossing thresholds” hasn’t left me nor will those extraordinary moments in St. Peter’s Square ever be forgotten. They made me recall another evening when the eyes of the world were fixed on St. Peter’s Square, the night of Oct. 16, 1978.

I was a 19-year-old university student when the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as the 264th Successor to the Apostle Peter. Something new was happening on the world scene and I can still see that radiant smile and hear that booming voice filling St. Peter’s Square. They called to Rome a man from a distant country, a youthful athlete who took the world and the church by storm. His refrain would become: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ!” Those words were to mark my life and my priesthood.

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Father Thomas Rosica