Pope Francis visits the poor at mobile clinic in St Peter’s Square

November 16, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Nov 16, 2018 / 11:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis visited Friday the temporary medical clinics serving Rome’s poor and homeless in St. Peter’s Square this week.

During the Nov. 16 visit to the free mobile health clinics, which lasted about 20 minutes, the pope greeted those present, speaking with them and giving them each a rosary he had blessed.

He also greeted the volunteers and medical professionals within each of the shelters. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, accompanied the visit.

The mobile clinics, an initiative begun last year, have been open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day the week leading up to the World Day of the Poor, which will be celebrated Nov. 18.

The temporary center offers Rome’s poor and homeless free visits with doctors specializing in general medicine, cardiology, infectious diseases, gynecology, obstetrics, podiatry, dermatology, rheumatology, and ophthalmology. A laboratory for clinical analysis is also present.

Established by Pope Francis at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy, the World Day of the Poor takes its theme for 2018 from Psalm 34: “This poor one cried out and the Lord heard.”

The day will be marked by the pope with a Mass with the poor in St. Peter’s Basilica followed by lunch with around 3,000 poor men and women inside the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

Present at the tables of the lunch will also be members of the Roman community, such as volunteers from local charitable organizations, parish priests, and university students and faculty.

The evening prior a prayer vigil for charitable volunteers and others who help the poor will be held at the Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls.

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Pope Francis postpones World Youth Day and Meeting of Families due to coronavirus

April 20, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Apr 20, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has decided to postpone by one year World Youth Day and the World Meeting of Families, according to the Vatican. The events were expected to take place during the summers of 2022 and 2021.

World Youth Day, programmed for Lisbon, Portugal in August 2022, will now take place in August 2023, according to an April 20 statement from Matteo Bruni, Holy See press office director.

The World Meeting of Families, previously scheduled to be held in Rome in June 2021, will now happen in June 2022.

Both events usually include the presence of the pope and gather at least tens of thousands of people.

Bruni said Pope Francis’ decision to move the dates of the global gatherings was “due to the current health situation and its consequences on the movement and aggregation of young people and families.”

The pope made the decision together with the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, which is responsible for organizing the events.

World Youth Day, which is typically held every three years, last took place in Panama in January 2019, drawing an estimated 700,000 young Catholics. The youth gathering was started by St. Pope John Paul II in 1985. At some past World Youth Days attendance has reached into the millions.

The theme of World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023 is “Mary arose and went with haste.”

The bishops’ local organizing committee for World Youth Day in Portugal put out a statement April 20 saying it welcomes the pope’s decision to postpone the event.

The committee said it shares “with the Holy Father the call that, in the current context and in the coming time, the focus of everyone’s attention is on caring for the most vulnerable, families, and all who, for very different reasons, suffer from the effects of the pandemic caused by COVID-19.”

In 1994, St. Pope John Paul II established the World Meeting of Families, which also takes place every three years in a different country. The most recent meeting was held in Dublin, Ireland in 2018.

The event, now moved to June 2022, has the theme: “Family Love: a vocation and a path to holiness.”

 

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