2nd Beatified Couple Called a Gift to Spouses

Cardinal Says St. Thérèse's Parents Can Help Families

LISIEUX, France, OCT. 20, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The second married couple to be beatified together can motivate families to live Christian virtue just as they taught their daughter-saint to desire holiness, says a Vatican official.

This was affirmed by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, retired prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, when he presided over the beatification of Louis Martin and Marie-Zélie Guérin, the parents of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. The couple was beatified Sunday in Lisieux in the presence of some 15,000 people.

The first married couple to be beatified together -- Italians Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, who died in 1951 and 1965, respectively -- were beatified in 2001 by Pope John Paul II.

Martin (1823-1894) and Guérin (1831-1877) were the parents of nine children, four of whom died as children. After concluding the beatification rite, Cardinal Saraiva Martins gave "thanks to God for this exemplary testimony of conjugal love."

Their example, the prelate assured, can "motivate Christian families in the integral practice of Christian virtues, just as it stimulated in Thérèse the desire for sanctity."

Cardinal Saraiva Martins said that in the moment of the beatification, "I thought of my father and my mother, and in this moment, I would like you to also think in your fathers and mothers, and that together, we give thanks to God for having created us and made us Christians, thanks to the conjugal love of our parents."

Love and loss

The cardinal presented the Martins as "a gift for spouses of all ages because of the esteem, respect and harmony with which they loved each other for 19 years."

He said the couple is also "a gift for parents" and "for all those who have lost their husband or wife."

"Widowhood is always a difficult condition to accept," the cardinal said. "Louis lived the loss of his wife with faith and generosity, preferring the good of his children over his personal preferences."

And, Cardinal Saraiva Martins said, this couples is "a gift for those who face sickness and death. In our world, which tries to hide death, they teach us to look at it face to face, abandoning ourselves in God."

Among those who participated in the ceremony was Pietro Schiliro, an Italian child whose unexplainable cure in 2002 was attributed to the intercession of Martin and Guérin.

Pietro was born with malformed lungs and his family was told he could not survive. His mother asked God for his healing through the intercession of Thérèse's parents and the child was healed.

The Delight Of My Heart

To converse with You, O Lord, is the delight of my heart. In You I find everything that my heart could desire (Diary, 1692).

As I was meditating on the blessings of God, my heart was burning with a love so strong that it seemed my breast would burst (Diary, 1705).

Pontiff Reproaches Scientific Arrogance

Says Work Often Not Focused on Good of Humanity

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 20, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Scientists are not always governed by the pursuit of the well-being and progress of humanity, but sometimes by "easy gain" and the arrogance of taking God's place, Benedict XVI says.

The Pope made these remarks Thursday in an audience with participants from the international "Faith in Reason" conference that was held Thursday through Sunday at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.

The event was organized for the 10th anniversary of the publication of Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Fides et Ratio."

In that document, Benedict XVI explained, there is an emphasis on "the importance of joining faith and reason in their reciprocal relation while respecting the autonomous sphere of each."

The conference, which gathered philosophers, theologians and scientists, is the fruit of collaboration between the Lateran University, the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Science and the Global Conference of Catholic University Institutes of Philosophy. It touched on topics in anthropology, ethics and politics, science, metaphysics and interreligious discussion.

The Bishop of Rome observed that over the course of time there has been a shift from "predominantly speculative thought to one that is much more experiential," which has led to a divide between faith and reason.

"Research," he said, "has turned above all to the observation of nature in the attempt to discover its secrets. The desire to know nature has transformed itself into the will to reproduce it. The scientific and technological conquest […] has marginalized the reason that pursued the ultimate truth of things to make way for a reason that is satisfied with discovering the contingent truth of the laws of nature."

No fear

The Holy Father clarified that faith has no fear of the "progress of science and the developments that its conquests lead to, when these aim at benefiting man, his well-being and the progress of all humanity."

But, he said, "scientific research does not always have these as its ends."

"Easy gain or, worse still, the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator, at times play a decisive role," the Pope affirmed, emphasizing the threat that such mentalities can pose for humanity.

"But science is not competent to elaborate ethical principles; it can only accept them in themselves and recognize them as necessary for overcoming [science's] possible pathologies," he continued.

Benedict XVI affirmed that science could derive much fruit from a constructive dialogue with philosophy and theology.

"This would not at all aim at limiting scientific research or at preventing technology from producing instruments of development," he explained. "It would aim rather at keeping alive the sense of responsibility that reason and faith have for science so that science would continue to carry out its work in the service of man.

"The truth of revelation does not superimpose itself on the truth discovered by reason; rather, it purifies reason and elevates it, permitting it thus to expand its own sphere and insert itself into a field of research that is as unfathomable as the mystery itself."

The Pope said that the Word of God is the "definitive answer […] to the passion for truth." It is a "Word of revelation that becomes life and that asks that it be received as an inexhaustible source of truth."

2nd Beatified Couple Called a Gift to Spouses

Dairy from St. Faustina

On Sanctity, Holiness

The Delight Of My Heart

Pontiff Reproaches Scientific Arrogance