SUMMARY:
-
Audience with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of the Belgians
-
Centenary of the Argentine Catholic University
-
The Pope meets the parishioners of Tor Bella Monaca; discrimination
and injustice test the goodness of the people
-
Angelus: let us build a temple to God with our lives
-
Francis' greetings on International Women's Day: “women give us to
the ability to see the world with different eyes”
-
Behaviour contrary to justice, honesty and charity cannot be covered
up with worship
-
The Pope on the sixtieth anniversary of Communion and Liberation:
“Keep alive the call of the first encounter with Christ, and be
free”
-
The Holy Father to preside at Confession in St. Peter's Basilica on
13 March
-
Oath-taking Ceremony of the Cardinal Camerlengo
-
Cardinal Orlando B. Quevedo, Pope's special envoy to Nagasaki
-
Audiences
-
Other Pontifical Acts
______________________________________
Audience
with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of the Belgians
Vatican
City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) – This morning in the Vatican Apostolic
Palace the Holy Father Francis received in audience His Majesty
Philippe King of the Belgians, and Queen Mathilde, who subsequently
met with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, accompanied by
Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for Relations with
States.
During
the cordial discussions, the good bilateral relations between Belgium
and the Holy See were confirmed. Attention was then paid to matters
of mutual interest, such as social cohesion, the education of the
young, the phenomenon of migration and the importance of
intercultural and interreligious dialogue.
Mention
was then made of various problems of an international nature, with
special reference to the future prospects of the European continent.
Centenary
of the Argentine Catholic University
Vatican
City, 9 March 2015 (VIS) – On occasion of the one hundredth
university of Faculty of Theology of the Universidad Catolica
Argentina (U.C.A.), Pope Francis has sent a letter to Cardinal Mario
Aurelio Poli, archbishop of Buenos Aires, Grand Chancellor of the
faculty. “Teaching and studying theology means living on a
frontier”, writes the Pope. “We must We must guard against a
theology that spends itself in academic dispute or watches humanity
from a glass castle. You learn to live: theology and holiness are
inseparable”. Francis adds that the theology that is developed is
therefore rooted and based on Revelation, on tradition, but also
accompanies the cultural and social processes” and “must also
take on board conflicts: not only those that we experience within the
Church, but those that concern the whole world”.
The
Pope urges all the members of the Faculty not to satisfy themselves
with a theoretical “desktop theology” and not to give in to the
temptation to “gloss over it, to perfume it, to adjust it a little
and domesticate it”. Instead, he writes, good theologians “must,
like good pastors, have the odour of the people and the street, and
through their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of men”.
Similarly, he encourages them to study how the various disciplines …
may reflect the centrality of mercy”, since “without mercy our
theology, our law, our pastoral ministry run the risk of collapsing
in petty bureaucracy or ideology”. He concludes by remarking that
the U.C.A. does not form “museum theologians who accumulate data”
or “spectators of history”, but rather people capable of building
up humanity around them, “of transmitting the divine Christian
truth in a truly human dimension”.
The
Pope meets the parishioners of Tor Bella Monaca; discrimination and
injustice test the goodness of the people
Vatican
City, 9 March 2015 (VIS) – Yesterday afternoon Pope Francis visited
the Roman parish of Santa Maria Madre del Redentore in the peripheral
suburb of Tor Bella Monaca, where he was welcomed by more than a
thousand young people. Before entering the Church, the Holy Father
visited the Caritas Centre to greet sick and disabled assisted by the
Missionaries of Charity. “Jesus never abandons us”, he said,
“because on the Cross he experienced pain, sadness, solitude and
many other things. … Never lose your trust in Him”.
Later,
in the church, he met with a group of children and young people, and
answered their questions. The first was: if God forgives everything,
why does Hell exist? The Pope replied that Hell is the desire to
distance oneself from God and to reject God's love. But”, he added,
“if you were a terrible sinner, who had committed all the sins in
the world, all of them, condemned to death, and even when you are
there, you were to blaspheme, insults... and at the moment of death,
when you were about to die, you were to look to Heaven and say, 'Lord
…!', where do you go, to Heaven or to Hell? To Heaven! Only those
who say, I have no need of You, I can get along by myself, as the
devil did, are in Hell – and he is the only one we are certain is
there”.
The
second question regarded how to live Christian morality. Francis
answered, “Christian morality is a grace, a response to the love
that He gives you first. … It is Jesus Who helps you to go ahead,
and if you fall it is He Who lifts you up again and Who lets you
carry on. But if you think and we think that moral life is just about
'doing this' and 'not doing that', this is not Christian. It is a
moral philosophy, but no, it is not Christian. Christian is the love
of Jesus, Who is the first to love us. … Christian morality is
this: you fall? Get up again and keep going. And life is this. But
always with Jesus”.
Finally,
before celebrating Mass, Francis spoke with the parish pastoral
council and their collaborators who described to him the situation in
the area, in which many marginalised families live, and where there
are many problems linked to drug abuse and crime. “The people of
Tor Bella Monaca are good people”, emphasised Francis. “They had
the same flaw that Jesus, Mary and Joseph had: they are poor. With
the difference that Joseph had a job, Jesus had a job, and many
people here do not, but they still need to feed their children. And
how does one get by? You know how. Goodness is sorely tested by
injustice; the injustice of unemployment and discrimination. And this
is a sin, it is a grave sin. Many people are compelled to do things
they do not want to do, because they cannot find another way. … And
very often people, when they feel they are accompanied, wanted, do
not fall into that web of the wicked, who exploit the poor. Mafiosi
exploit the poor too, to make them do their dirty work, and then when
the police discover them, they find those poor people and not the
mafiosi who are safe, and also pay for their safety. Therefore, it is
necessary to help the people. … The first pastoral commandment is
closeness: to be close to them. … We cannot go to a house where
there are sick or hungry children and say 'you must do this, you must
do that'. No. It is necessary to go to them with closeness, with that
caress that Jesus has taught us. … This is my main pastoral advice
to you”.
In
the homily he pronounced at the church of Santa Maria del Redentore,
the Bishop of Rome commented on the passage from the Gospel according
to St. John that narrates the expulsion of the money changers from
the temple, remarking that two aspects of the text are particularly
notable: an image, and a word. “The image is that of Jesus with the
whip who chases away all those who use the temple to trade. The
temple was sacred, and this, which was unclean, was sent out. …
Jesus took the whip and cleansed the temple”.
“And
the phrase, the word”, he continued, “is where it says that many
people believed in Him, a terrible phrase: 'But Jesus on his part did
not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no
one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man'.
We cannot deceive Jesus. He knows us in depth. Before Him we cannot
pretend to be saints and close our eyes, and then lead a life that is
not what He wants. … And we all know that name that Jesus gave to
those with two faces: hypocrites”.
“It
will do us good, today, to enter into our hearts and look at Jesus.
To say to him, 'Lord, look, there are good things, but there are also
things that are not good. Jesus, do You trust in me? I am a sinner'.
… Jesus is not afraid of this. … However, he who drifts away, who
has a dual face; who lets himself be seen to be good to cover the
hidden sin... When we enter into our heart, we find many things that
are not good, just as Jesus found in the temple the dirty affairs of
trade. … We can continue our dialogue with Jesus: 'Jesus, do you
trust in me? … So, I will open the door to You, and You can cleanse
my soul”.
“And
then”, continued Francis, “we can ask the Lord, just as He came
to cleanse the temple, to come and cleanse our soul. And we imagine
Him, as He comes with a whip of ropes... No, this is not what
cleanses the soul! Do you know what the whip is that Jesus uses to
cleanse our soul? Mercy. Open your hearts to the mercy of Jesus. …
And if we open our hearts to Jesus' mercy, so that He may cleanse our
heart, our soul, then Jesus will trust in us”.
Angelus:
let us build a temple to God with our lives
Vatican
City, 8 March 2015 (VIS) – At midday today, Pope Francis appeared
at the window of his study in the Vatican Apostolic Palace to pray
the Angelus with the faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's
Square. Francis' meditation focused on the meaning of the episode of
the expulsion of the money changers from the temple, and he remarked
that this prophetic gesture made a powerful impression on the people
and on the disciples. “We have here, according to John, the first
announcement of the death and Resurrection of Christ”, said the
Pope; “His body, destroyed by the violence of sin on the Cross, in
the Resurrection, will become the meeting place between God and men.
… His humanity is the true temple, where God is revealed, speaks,
meets; and the true worshippers of God are not the guardians of the
material temple, the holders of power and religious knowledge, but
are those who worship God 'in spirit and truth'”.
“In
this Lenten period”, he continued, “we are preparing to celebrate
Easter, when we renew the promises of our Baptism. Let us walk the
world like Jesus and make of our existence We walk into the world as
Jesus did and we make of our entire existence a sign of His love for
our brothers, especially the weakest and the poorest. We build a
temple to God in our lives. And in this way, we make Him
'encounterable' to the many people we find along our path. If we are
witnesses to this living Christ, many people will encounter Jesus in
us, in our testimony”.
The
Pontiff encouraged those present to “let the Lord enter with His
mercy, to bring cleanliness to our hearts”. He added, “every
Eucharist we celebrate with faith makes us grow as a living temple to
the Lord, thanks to the communion with His crucified and risen Body.
… May Mary Most Holy, the privileged dwelling of the Son of God,
accompany and sustain us on this Lenten path, so that we may
rediscover the beauty of the encounter with Christ, Who will free us
and save us”.
Francis'
greetings on International Women's Day: “women give us to the
ability to see the world with different eyes”
Vatican
City, 8 March 2015 (VIS) – After today's Angelus prayer, the Holy
Father urged, “during Lent, let us try to be closer to those who
are living through moments of difficulty; let us be closer to them
with affection, prayer and solidarity”.
He
went on to address some words to women on International Women's Day:
“a greeting to all women! To all the women who work every day to
build a more human and welcoming society. And a fraternal thank you
to those who in a thousands ways bear witness to the Gospel and work
in the Church. This is for us an opportunity to reaffirm the
importance and the necessity of their presence in life. A world where
women are marginalised is a barren world, because women not only
bring life, but they also give us the ability to see beyond – they
see beyond themselves – and they transmit to us the ability to
understand the world through different eyes, to hear things with more
creative, more patient, more tender hearts. A prayer and a special
blessing for all women present here in the square and for all women!
Greetings!”.
Behaviour
contrary to justice, honesty and charity cannot be covered up with
worship
Vatican
City, 8 March 2015 (VIS) - “Liturgy is not something exterior or
distant, so that while it is celebrated I can think of other things
or pray the rosary. No, there is a link between the liturgical
celebration and what I carry with me in my life”, said the Pope in
his homily during his pastoral visit to the Roman parish of
Ognissanti (All Saints) on the 50th anniversary of the first Mass in
Italian celebrated in the same parish by Blessed Paul VI, following
the liturgical reforms established by Vatican Council II.
Francis
commented on the Gospel reading of St. John in which Jesus drives out
the money changers from the Temple, with the exclamation, “Do not
make my Father's house a house of trade.” This expression refers
not only to the commerce in the temple courtyards, but rather
“regards a type of religiosity”. He continued, “Jesus' gesture
is one of cleansing, purification, and the attitude He condemns can
be identified in the prophetic texts, according to which God is
displeased by external worship made up of material sacrifices and
based on personal interest. His gesture is a call to authentic
worship, to correspondence between liturgy and life. … Therefore,
the Church calls us to have and to promote an authentic liturgical
life, so that there may be harmony between what the liturgy
celebrates and what we live in our existence”.
Jesus'
disciple “does not go to Church solely to observe a precept, to
make sure he is not at odds with a God he must not 'disturb' too
much. … Jesus' disciple goes to Church to encounter the Lord and to
find in His grace, working in the Sacraments, the strength to think
and act according to the Gospel. Therefore, we cannot delude
ourselves that we can enter into the Lord's house to cover up, with
prayers and acts of devotion, behaviour contrary to the demands of
justice, honesty or charity towards our neighbour. We cannot
substitute with religious homage what is due to others, deferring
true conversion. Worship and liturgical celebrations are the
privileged space for hearing the voice of the Lord, Who guides us on
the road to rectitude and Christian perfection”.
This
involves “fulfilling an itinerary of conversion and penance, to
remove the dregs of sin from our life, as Jesus did, cleansing the
temple of petty interests. And Lent is an auspicious time for this,
as it is the time of inner renewal, of forgiveness of sins, the time
in which we are called upon to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance
and Reconciliation, that enables us to pass from the shadows of sin
into the light of grace and friendship with Jesus”.
“Right
here, fifty years ago, Blessed Paul VI inaugurated, in a certain
sense, liturgical reform with the celebration of the vernacular Mass
in the language of the people. I hope that this circumstance may
revive love for God's house in all of you”.
Following
Mass, as he left the church, the Pope greeted the many faithful who
awaited him. “Thank you, thank you for your welcome”, he said.
“That you for this prayer with me during Mass; and let us thank the
Lord for what He has done in His Church in these fifty years of
liturgical reform. It was a courageous gesture of the Church, to draw
closer to the people of God so they could better understand what she
does, and this is important for us, to follow Mass in this way. And
it is not possible to step backwards, we must always move ahead,
always ahead; those who go back, err. Let us go ahead on this road”.
The
Pope on the sixtieth anniversary of Communion and Liberation: “Keep
alive the call of the first encounter with Christ, and be free”
Vatican
City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) – More than seventy thousand people,
belonging to the movement Communion and Liberation (CL) participated
in a mass meeting with Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square this
morning, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the creation of
CL and the tenth of the death of its founder, the priest Luigi
Giussani. The movement was established in Italy in 1954, when
Giussani (1922-2005), on the basis of his experience in the “Berchet”
classical lyceum in Milan, developed the initiative of Christian
presence that used the already existing name of “Gioventu
Studentesca” (GS). The current name Communion and Liberation (CL),
which appeared for the first time in 1969, summarises the conviction
that the Christian event lived in communion, is the foundation of
authentic human liberation.
After
listening to greetings from the priest Julian Carron, president of
the fraternity, the Holy Father thanked all those present for their
warm displays of affection and gave the various reasons for his
gratitude to Don Giussani. “The first, and most personal, is the
good that this man has done for me and for my priestly life, through
reading his books and his articles. The other reason is that his
thought is profoundly human and reaches the deepest yearning of the
person. You are aware of how important the experience of encounter
was for Don Giussani – not with an idea, but with a person, with
Jesus Christ. So, he educated in freedom, leading to the encounter
with Christ, as Christ gives us true freedom”.
“Everything
in our life begins with an encounter”, he continued. “Let us
think of the Gospel of John, in which he narrates the disciples'
first encounter with Jesus. Andrew, John and Simon felt as if they
were seen in depth, known intimately, and this generated surprise in
them, a stupor that immediately made them feel linked to Him. …
This was the decisive discovery for St. Paul, for St. Augustine, and
many others: Jesus Christ always precedes us; when we arrive, He is
already waiting for us. He is like the flower of the almond tree, the
first to bloom and to herald the spring”.
However,
this dynamic of encounter that arouses stupor and adhesion without
mercy, as “only he who has known the tender caress of mercy truly
knows the Lord. The privileged locus of encounter is the caress of
Jesus Christ's mercy towards my sin. It is for this reason that, at
times, you have heard me say that the privileged locus of encounter
with Jesus Christ is sin. It is thanks to that merciful embrace that
the wish to respond and to change emerges, and from this there
springs a different life. Christian morality is not a titanic and
voluntary effort on the part of those who decide to be coherent and
achieve it, a sort of solitary challenge before the world. No.
Christian morality is the answer, it is the touched response when
faced with the surprising mercy, unpredictable, even 'unjust'
according to human criteria, of One who knows me, Who knows my
betrayals and loves me all the same, … who calls me again, has hope
in me. ... Christian morality is not about never falling, but about
always getting up again, thanks to His hand that reaches out to us”.
“And
the way of the Church is also this: letting God's great mercy be
shown”, he exclaimed. “The road of the Church is that of never
condemning anyone eternally; of effusing God's mercy to all those
people who ask for it with a sincere heart; the road of the Church is
precisely that of leaving behind one's own yard in order to go and
seek those in the distant peripheries of existence; that of fully
adopting God's logic. The Church too must feel the joyful impulse of
becoming almond flowers, like Jesus, for all humanity”.
Returning
to the celebration of sixty years of Communion and Liberation, the
Pope emphasised that after this time the “original charism” has
lost neither its freshness nor its vitality. “But, always remember
that there is only one centre: Jesus Christ. When I put at the centre
my spiritual method, my spiritual path, my way of putting it into
practice, I stray from the road. All the spirituality, all the
charisms in the Church must be decentred: at the centre there is only
the Lord!”.
He
continued, “Charism cannot be conserved in a bottle of distilled
water! Loyalty to the charism does not mean 'petrifying' it – it is
the devil who petrifies – does not mean writing it on parchment and
framing it. Reference to the legacy that Don Giussani has left you
cannot be reduced to a museum of memories, of decisions made, of
norms of conduct. It certainly involves faithfulness to tradition,
but as Mahler said, this means 'keeping the flame alive and not
worshipping the ashes'. Don Giussani would never forgive you if you
lost your freedom and transformed into museum guides or worshippers
of ashes. Keep alive the memory of that first encounter and be free!
In this way, centre in Christ and in the Gospel, you can be the arms,
hands, feet, mind and heart of an outbound Church. The path of the
Church takes us out in search of those who are far away, in the
peripheries, to serve Jesus in every marginalised and abandoned
person, without faith, disappointed in the Church, prisoner of his or
her own self-centredness”.
“Reaching
out also means rejecting self-referentiality, in all its forms; it
means knowing how to listen to those who are not the same as us,
learning from all, with sincere humility. When we are slaves to
self-referentiality we end up cultivating a sort of branded
spirituality: 'I am CL'. This becomes your label. And in this way we
fall into the myriad traps set by self-referential complacency, that
gazing at oneself in the mirror that leads to disorientation and our
transformation into mere impresarios of NGOs”.
The
Pope concluded his discourse with the words of Don Giussani, from one
of his first writings, in which he affirmed that Christianity cannot
be realised in history as fixed position to defend, that relate to
the new in terms of pure antithesis, and from his letter to John Paul
II in 2004 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation
of Communion and Liberation: 'I never intended to “found”
anything. I believe that the genius of the movement that I have seen
come into being is that of having grasped the urgency of proclaiming
the need to return to the elementary aspects of Christianity, meaning
passion for Christianity as such, in its original elements, and
nothing more'.”
The
Holy Father to preside at Confession in St. Peter's Basilica on 13
March
Vatican
City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) – The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of
the Supreme Pontiff today announced that the Holy Father will preside
at the rite of the reconciliation of penitents, with individual
confession and absolution, on Friday 13 March at 5 p.m in St. Peter's
Basilica.
Oath-taking
Ceremony of the Cardinal Camerlengo
Vatican
City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) – At 9.30 this morning, in the Chapel of
Urban VIII, in the presence of the Holy Father, Cardinal Jean-Louis
Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious
Dialogue, took his oath as Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.
Cardinal
Orlando B. Quevedo, Pope's special envoy to Nagasaki
Vatican
City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) – In a letter published today, written in
Latin and dated 15 February, the Holy Father appoints Cardinal
Orlando B. Quevedo, O.M.I., archbishop of Cotabato, Philippines, as
his special envoy to the celebration of the centenary of the
discovery of the “hidden Christians of Japan”, to be held in
Nagasaki, Japan from 14 to 17 March.
The
mission accompanying the cardinal will be composed of Rev. Peter
Sakae Kojima, vicar general, member of the college of consultors and
parish priest of the Cathedral of Nagasaki, and Fr. Joseph Pasala,
S.V.D., missionary from India and parish vicar of Nishimachi.
Audiences
Vatican
City, 9 March 2015 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father received in
audience:
-
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church;
-
Fourteen prelates of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, on
their “ad Limina” visit:
-
Archbishop Hyginus Kim Hee-joong of Gwangju, with his auxiliary,
Bishop Simon Ok Hyun-jin;
-
Bishop Peter Kang U-il of Cheju;
-
Bishop Vincent Ri Pyung-ho of Jeonju;
-
Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, archbishop of Seoul, apostolic
administrator “sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis” of
P’youg-yang with his auxiliaires, Bishop Basil Cho Kyu-man,
BishopTimothy Yu Gyoung-chon, and Bishop Peter Chung Soon-taek;
-
Bishop Luke Kim Woon-hoe of Ch’unch,?n, apostolic administrator
“sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis” of Hamh?ng;
-
Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik of Daejeon, with his auxiliary, Bishop
Augustinus Kim Jong-soo;
-
Bishop Boniface Choi Ki-san, with his auxiliary, Bishop John Baptist
Jung Shin-chul; and
-
Dom Blasio Park Hyun-dong, O.S.B., apostolic administrator “ad
nutum Sanctae Sedis” of the dell’Abbazia di T?kwon
On
Saturday, 7 March, the Holy Father received in audience Cardinal Marc
Ouellet, P.S.S., prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
Other
Pontifical Acts
On
Saturday, 7 March, the Holy Father:
-
appointed Rev. Fr. David Macaire, O.P., as archbishop of
Fort-de-France (area 1,080, population 390,371, Catholics 312,296,
priests 54, permanent deacons 12, religious 151), Martinique, France.
The bishop-elect was born in Nanterre, France in 1969, gave his
perpetual vows in 1998 and was ordained a priest in 2001. He holds a
licentiate in theology and canon law from Tolosa, and has served in a
number of pastoral roles, including chaplain of various schools,
lecturer in theology at the major seminary of Bordeaux, spiritual
adviser of the Equipe Notre Dame, master of Dominican students, prior
of the Dominican convent in the archdiocese of Bordeaux, and member
of the presbyteral council of the same local Church. He is currently
prior of the Dominican convent of La Sainte-Baume, Tolone, and member
of the provincial council.
-
accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese
of Rome presented by Bishop Paolo Schiavon, upon reaching the age
limit.
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