A priest at the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization has said Sister Cristina Scuccia, who recently won The Voice Italy, is an example of how the Church must go out to the existential peripheries. "What Sister Cristina has done can be considered going out to the peripheries, because she has gone to a different stage to bear witness to her choice of life, and in this sense I think she has hit the target," Father Alejandro Diaz, a Colombian, said in a recent interview with CNA. Like Sister Cristina, he explained, "we have to come out ourselves to speak of God to others, not in the abstract, but about what God has done in our lives." At the beginning of June, the 25 year-old religious won The Voice Italy and gained world-wide acclaim for her charisma and ability to bring share the Word of God with the public. "I have a dream, which is to hold hands and pray together the Our Father," she told the studio audience when she won. "I want Jesus to enter into here." Sister Cristina "sings but she also talks about God and invites people to pray,” the priest noted. “She said she wanted to transmit a gift, and to me it was not only the gift of her singing ability but also the gift of her vocation, because she is a young religious who went on this stage without fear and said, 'I am a religious, I believe in God.'” He said Sister Cristina should not be made into an idol but should be seen as a means of reaching God, because "the Holy Spirit will always be the great evangelizer, and he doesn't have only one method or stage for bring people close to Christ. There are many ways to evangelize and Sister Cristina has shown us one of them.” In accord with the synod for the new evangelization in 2012, which recognized that beauty is a means of evangelization, Fr. Diaz said Sister Cristina's example shows that it is possible to be a witness to the faith in the media and through art. Music can be a channel for speaking of God and conveying an explicit message based on the Gospel, "and it is certainly one of the many ways through which we can bring the person of Jesus to the people," he explained. In her first statements to the media after her win, Sister Cristina Scuccia said she would now "return to my priorities, which are Jesus and prayer." Since then, she has made only two public appearances, one on June 14 on the TV2000 program "Good News Festival," and another on June 27 on the Rai2 program "Donne ad alta quota.
Kurt Hilgefort, is a Catholic father of six who publishes his thoughts on his blog Shadows of Augustine . He responded to my seven question survey with the following answers. Kurt is the first layperson to respond to the seven question survey and I think that his experience is extremely relevant to me personally and I hope that you are inspired by his thoughts as well. If you would like to respond, please send an email to fellmananthony@gmail.com with your thoughts and I will be happy to publish them as well. 1. What is the biggest challenge to your faith that you have faced so far? The biggest challenge for me has been the whole dying to self thing. On an intellectual level, there are no barriers. It comes down to a matter of accepting the authority of the Church that Christ founded upon Peter. My challenge is not in the intellect, but rather in the will. The challenge for me has always been to continually seek conversion. I want to be transformed, but I want it to be over all ...
