NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      DENVER, 27 (NE) More than 70,000 people gathered last Sunday at Littleton, Colorado, at the Columbine Memorial Service for the victims of the tragedy that took place last week at Columbine High School. The number of assistants -among them Vice-President Al Gore and retired general Colin Powell- surpassed all expectations.

      Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput reminded that in spite of the great suffering experienced, one must also regard that "love is stronger than death". "I believe it, he said, Love is stronger than death. In fact, after witnessing the dignity and the goodness of the parents who lost children at Columbine, we all know that love is stronger than death".

      "Perhaps, continued the Archbishop with words full of hope, beyond all this suffering, something good really will be achieved. Perhaps each of us will begin to recover the vocation for which all of us are made -the vocation to love each other, no matter what the cost".

      The Archbishop of Denver raised a prayer to God, "Father of Life, Father of Hope", asking for "light and peace" for those who died at Columbine, His "consolation and strength" for the families and friends of the victims, and forgiveness for those who originated this tragedy. He also urged all to choose "lives of conversion and sacrifice, not just in our words, but in our actions".

      Meanwhile in Mexico City, another Archbishop warned of another danger when Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Archbishop of Mexico, warned during his Sunday homily against the presence of false pastors and sects in society, asking Mexican Catholics "not to fall in the hands of these bandits and soul thieves".

      These people, stated the Archbishop "exert fraudulent manipulations" of the Gospel and announce "new and fascinating doctrines and teachings" to seduce people to exchange the rich treasure of Catholic faith for a handful of strange ideas. False pastors and their sects, he emphasized, offer new experiences and doctrines that are "softer than the exigent and comforting Gospel of Jesus Christ".

      The Archbishop of Mexico also warned that these false pastors can present themselves in explicitly anti Catholic groups, in pseudo spiritual movements, in religious currents originated in syncretism or in spiritualist groups that present themselves as philosophies that lead Catholics not only to abandon the Lord, but also try to convince them that it is possible to belong to these groups without ceasing to be Catholics.