Vatican City, Sep 11, 2017 / 04:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On his return flight from Colombia, Pope Francis said that seeing parents’ devotion for their children gives him hope for the country’s future.
Concluding his press conference aboard the papal flight back to Rome, Pope Francis said, “I would like to conclude with an image. What most struck me about the Colombians in the four cities were the people in the streets, greeting me. What most struck me is that the father, mother, raised up their children to help them see the Pope and so the Pope could bless them, as if saying, ‘This is my treasure, this is my hope. This is my future’.”
“This struck me,” he continued. “The tenderness. The eyes of those fathers, of those mothers. Precious, precious.”
Seeing this devotion of parents for the children, he said, is “a symbol of hope, of future.”
“A people that is capable of having children and then showing them to you, helping them see as well, as if saying, ‘This is my treasure,’ is a people that has hope and future.”
The Pope spoke aboard the papal plane Sunday evening on the return flight from Colombia. He visited the country Sept. 6-11 to promote peace and reconciliation in the country, which has suffered from the violence of a decades-long civil war.
During his trip, Pope Francis met with religious and civil leaders, visited a children’s home and a homeless shelter, and spoke at a prayer gathering for national reconciliation. He visited the Colombian cities of Bogota, Villavicencio, Medellín and Cartagena.
In the 40-minute long press conference aboard the papal flight, the Pope also spoke about the phasing out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), corruption, climate change, and whether Colombia could provide a model of the peace process for other countries.
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Pope Francis stops for a brief prayer in front of the Bethlehem Nativity in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall during its presentation and a meeting with some of the people involved in its creation on Dec. 7, 2024. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 13, 2024 / 12:50 pm (CNA).
A Nativity scene made by artisans from Bethlehem was the source of controversy this week for including a Palestinian keffiyeh with the child Jesus in the manger — but according to the project’s organizer, the headscarf was a last-minute decision meant only to represent Palestinians.
The keffiyeh was visible during the presentation of the Bethlehem Nativity to Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Dec. 7. By Dec. 11, four days later, the headscarf, manger, and Jesus sculpture had been removed from the scene without explanation.
Amid the Israel-Hamas war, the black-and-white checkered keffiyeh has become a symbol for the Palestinian cause. But Johny Andonia, a 39-year-old artist from Bethlehem who led the project, said it is just a symbol to represent or show the “existence” of Palestinians.
Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told CNA the Vatican follows the tradition of placing the infant Jesus in the Nativity scene on the night of Christmas Eve. It is typical for the whole scene to be first presented to the pope before the Jesus statue is then removed, leaving behind the empty manger until the official start of Christmas.
Speaking to CNA by phone from Cyprus, where he has an art residency until May, Andonia said he did not expect the scale of the reaction to the keffiyeh, which he also signed off on, after it was approved by people at the Vatican during the Nativity’s installation on Dec. 5.
Johny Andonia. Credit: Beata Michalska
“It came about in a spontaneous way, actually, because we learned that the child baby Jesus has to be covered or even absent until the 24th of December, and [the on-the-ground coordinator] suggested to cover it with a keffiyeh,” the artist said on Dec. 13.
“And they said no, no, not to cover him. And then he asked, can I put it then under [the child Jesus] and the people … in charge at that time accepted laying the keffiyeh under the baby Jesus, and this is how it came about.”
Andonia said he does not agree with commentary from some quarters that the keffiyeh indicates violence or the eradication of others. “It’s only about recognition,” he said. “This keffiyeh represents the people who had presented the Nativity scene.”
He added that he does not think the Vatican will put the keffiyeh back when the manger and child Jesus are returned on Christmas Eve.
The Associated Press reported that the Israeli Embassy to the Holy See had declined to comment on whether it had complained about the keffiyeh or had asked for it to be removed.
Andonia, who is a physical artist and painter, was born in Jerusalem but has lived all his life in Bethlehem. He is a teacher at Dar al-Kalima University College of Art and Culture in Bethlehem.
After being contacted in April 2023 by the Palestinian Embassy to the Holy See in Rome about the idea for a Nativity from Bethlehem to be featured at the Vatican, Andonia said he decided to reach out to local artisans to create the structure from traditional materials, which he said have deep roots in the area, especially olive wood and mother-of-pearl.
The round, almost 10-foot-high installation, the work of over 30 artisans from Bethlehem, also incorporates stone, ceramics, glass, felt, and fabric.
Some evidence shows that the use of olive wood in Bethlehem dates back to the fourth century during the construction of the Basilica of the Nativity, Adonia said. And Franciscan monks introduced the use of mother-of-pearl in craftmaking to the area in the 17th century.
The Nativity is “a gift from the Bethlehemites,” he said.
Though not a religious person himself, the artist said being the bridge between the Vatican and the Bethlehem artisans has, nonetheless, been deeply meaningful for him.
“Most of [the people involved] were people of faith, and having their work at the Vatican with the pope, that was something [significant] for them,” he said.
“I’ve lived my life looking at people creating Nativity scenes, and they are proud of it, so it also meant something to me to be a part of it and give that opportunity to the individuals, and to support them even financially. The project was funded by the Palestinian Authorities, so it was also kind of a [financial] help, in this current situation, for them.”
Vatican City, Mar 3, 2018 / 01:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to a group of nurses on Saturday, Pope Francis thanked them for their valuable work and paid a tribute to the Dominican nun who saved his life when he was a young man.
“[She was] a good woman, even brave, to the point of arguing with the doctors. Humble, but sure of what she was doing,” he said March 3.
Francis told a brief story from when he was just 20 years old in Argentina. He was ill and close to dying, he said, when Sr. Cornelia Caraglio, who was a nurse from Italy working in Argentina, argued with the doctors about his treatment, “and thanks to those things [she suggested], I survived.”
The pope told the story to help illustrate the importance of the profession of nursing, saying “many lives, so many lives are saved thanks to you!”
“The role of nurses in assisting the patient is truly irreplaceable,” the pope said. “Like no other, the nurse has a direct and continuous relationship with patients, takes care of them every day, listens to their needs and comes into contact with their very body, that he tends to.”
Pope Francis spoke to members of the Federation of Professional Nursing Colleges, Health Assistants, and Child Wardens in the Pope Paul VI hall at the Vatican.
Nurses, he said, are constantly engaged in the act of listening, in order to understand the needs of their patient, no matter what he or she is going through.
He reminded them that it isn’t enough to merely rely on protocol, but that their job requires “a continuous – and tiring! – effort of discernment and attention to the individual person.”
This makes the profession “a real mission,” and nurses “experts in humanity,” he said. This is particularly important in a society which often leaves weaker people on the margins, only giving worth to people who meet certain criteria or level of wealth, he noted.
The pope also told them that the sensitivity they acquire through their daily contact with patients makes them “promoters of the life and dignity of people.”
“Be attentive,” he continued, “to the desire, sometimes unexpressed, of spirituality and religious assistance, which represents for many patients an essential element of sense and serenity of life, even more urgent in the fragility due to illness.”
He also acknowledged the difficulty of the profession with its risks and tiring shifts. Because of the demands on nurses, he encouraged patients to have patience with them, making requests without demanding, and also offering a smile.
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