The new leader of Opus Dei has said that he would like to further the prelature’s programmes for young people.
Mgr Fernando Ocáriz Braña told the website Crux that in many places youngsters felt “crushed, without ideals” and lacked hope.
He also said he wanted the prelature to build on its work with families and other Christians.
Since the 1950s the prelature has had cooperators who are not Catholics or even Christians. “We shouldn’t be people of confrontation but builders of bridges,” he said.
Mgr Ocáriz takes on the leadership of Opus Dei, a personal prelature that aims to help ordinary people seek holiness in everyday life, following the death of the previous prelate, last month.
Since 1994 he has been the vicar general of Opus Dei and in 2014 he was named auxiliary vicar of the prelature. Over the past 22 years he accompanied Mgr Echevarría in his pastoral trips to more than 70 countries. In the 1960s, as a theology student, he lived in Rome alongside St Josemaría, the founder of Opus Dei.
Mgr Ocáriz was born in Paris on October 27, 1944, to a Spanish family exiled to France during the Civil War (1936-1939).
He graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in physical sciences in 1966 and was ordained a priest in 1971.
He has been a consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1986 and has been a member of the Pontifical Theological Academy since 1989.
In coming days, the new prelate will propose names of vicars and other new members of Opus Dei councils who will assist him for the next eight years.
Doctor ‘asked family to hold down euthanasia victim’
Dutch prosecutors will be asked to examine the case of an elderly woman who was drugged and then pinned down while a doctor pumped lethal drugs into her body.A female doctor has been formally reprimanded for performing the act of euthanasia because the patient was suffering from dementia and could not properly consent.
When the woman was first diagnosed with dementia four years ago she had indicated that she was willing to end her life by euthanasia “but not now”.
Her nursing home decided the moment had arrived when her condition deteriorated and she began to wander the wards at night and behave aggressively.
The doctor reportedly drugged the woman’s coffee to calm her down, an act the regional euthanasia assessment committee decided was wrong. The doctor also allegedly asked the woman’s family to hold her down when she “reacted negatively” to the procedure, and ripped out the drip carrying the euthanasia drugs. The assessment committee said the doctor had “crossed a line” and has passed the case to prosecutors who will decide if a crime was committed.
Don’t wait for unity, says Pope
Divided Christians need to recognise the gifts God has given to other communities and learn from them “without waiting for the others to learn first”, Pope Francis has said.He was speaking at a service concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. Also present were Anglican Archbishop David Moxon and Orthodox Metropolitan Gennadios of Italy.
