Vatican City, Dec 7, 2018 / 09:30 am (CNA).- As the Vatican illuminated its 65-foot Christmas tree in St. Peter’s Square Friday, Pope Francis shared the deeper meaning found in the traditional festive spruce.
The signs and symbols found in Christmas traditions can “help us to contemplate the mystery of God made man to be close to each one of us,” Francis said Dec. 7.
“The Christmas tree with its lights reminds us that Jesus is the light of the world, the light of the soul that drives away the darkness of animosity and makes room for forgiveness,” he continued.
The great height of this year’s Christmas tree — cut from Italy’s Cansiglio forest — symbolizes that the Son of God, who lowered himself in assuming the human condition to draw man up to himself, the pope explained.
God raises man “from the fogs of selfishness and sin” and invites him to “participate in his divine and incorruptible nature.”
The Vatican also unveiled the annual nativity scene in St. Peter’s square, this year sculpted entirely out of sand. The 52-foot-wide sand sculpture of Mary, Joseph, the Child Jesus, and an angel was created by four international artists using around 700 tons of sand brought from the Dolomites.
The concept of a sand nativity originated from a tradition from the Northern Italian beach-town of Jesolo, where professional sand sculptors from around the world create original renderings of the nativity and other Christian stories for locals and visitors to enjoy each Christmas season.
Pope Francis reflected that sand is a humble, poor material that “recalls the simplicity, the smallness with which God showed himself at the birth of Jesus in the precariousness of Bethlehem.”
“Contemplating the God child, who emanates light in the humility of the nativity scene, we can also become witnesses of humility, tenderness and goodness,” Francis said.
Pope Francis encouraged families and communities come together to reflect upon the meaning of these Christmas traditions:
“The nativity and the tree, fascinating symbols of Christmas, can bring families and meeting places a reflection of the light and tenderness of God to help everyone to live the feast of the birth of Jesus.”
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Pope Francis delivers a video message to the conference “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’” at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. / Credit: Fabio Gonnella/EWTN
Rome Newsroom, May 21, 2024 / 13:57 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis has praised the Catholic Church’s first council in China 100 years ago as “an authentic synodal journey” that opened the way for the Church in China “to increasingly have a Chinese face.”
In a video message to a conference in Rome on the Catholic Church in China, the pope noted that Chinese Catholics have endured “times of patience and trial” in the past century.
“The Lord in China has safeguarded the faith of the people of God along the way. And the faith of God’s people has been the compass that has shown the way throughout this time,” Pope Francis said in the May 21 address.
Pope Francis delivers a video message to the conference “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’” at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Credit: Fabio Gonnella/EWTN
The pope pointed to a Church council that took place in Shanghai 25 years before the Chinese Communist Revolution as an example of a moment when “the communion between the Holy See and the Church in China manifested its fruits, fruits of good for all the Chinese people.”
The 1924 council, called the Primum Concilium Sinense, brought together 105 Catholic missionaries, bishops, and Chinese Catholics to establish a framework for a native Chinese hierarchy.
“The Fathers gathered in the Concilium Sinense lived an authentically synodal experience and made important decisions together,” Pope Francis said.
“Remembering the Council of Shanghai can also suggest today new paths to the entire Church and open paths to be undertaken with boldness to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel in the present,” he added.
Among the crowd listening to the pope’s video message were representatives from the People’s Republic of China, including Bishop Shen Bin of Shanghai, who was unilaterally installed by Chinese authorities as bishop of Shanghai in April 2023 without a papal mandate, thereby breaking the terms of the Vatican-China deal. Pope Francis confirmed his appointment in July 2023.
The Holy See first entered into a provisional two-year agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in 2018, which has since been renewed twice and is again up for renewal this fall.
Pope Francis opted not to speak of the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts with Beijing or religious freedom in China in his message but said that Chinese Catholics today “bear witness to their faith through works of mercy and charity, and in their witness they give a real contribution to the harmony of social coexistence.”
A large statue of Our Lady of Sheshan stood on the pope’s desk as he spoke. The pope noted that during the month of May many Chinese Catholics usually go on pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Sheshan, located near Shanghai.
“I too ideally climb the hill of Sheshan, and let us all together entrust to Mary, Help of Christians, our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in China, all the Chinese people, and all our poor world, asking for her intercession, so that peace may always win everywhere,” Pope Francis said.
Following the pope’s message, Shen Bin delivered a 15-minute speech in Chinese to the packed auditorium of the Pontifical Urban University on the Janiculum Hill overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Chinese bishop offered a different interpretation of the 1924 council from the pope in his speech, saying that “the Council of Shanghai did not lead to an immediate and radical change in the Church in China,” adding that by the 1949 Communist Revolution “only 29 of China’s 137 dioceses had Chinese bishops, and only three of 20 archbishops were Chinese.”
“The Catholic Church in China had not really freed itself from foreign powers to become a work led by Chinese Christians and had not yet managed to shed the label of ‘foreign religion,’” he said.
Shen Bin, who has held leadership positions in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association established by the Chinese Communist Party and under the control of the United Front Work Department, went on to defend Beijing’s religious freedom record and underlined the need for the Church in China to “follow a path of sinicization.”
“The policy of religious freedom implemented by the Chinese government has no interest in changing the Catholic faith but only hopes that the Catholic clergy and faithful will defend the interests of the Chinese people and free themselves from the control of foreign powers,” Shen Bin said in his speech.
“Today the Chinese people are carrying out the great rebirth of the Chinese nation in a global way with Chinese-style modernization, and the Catholic Church in China must move in the same direction, following a path of sinicization that is in line with Chinese society and culture today,” the Shanghai bishop added.
The conference, titled “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’: Between History and the Present,” was held in Chinese and Italian in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Urban University. The Pastoral Commission for China and Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, organized the conference, which featured Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as speakers.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the conference, Parolin said the Holy See would like to increase and deepen its contacts in China.
“We have been hoping for a long time now to have a stable presence in China, even if initially it may not have the form of a papal representation of an apostolic nunciature,” Parolin said.
Vatican City, Oct 9, 2019 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Newly published manuscripts belonging to Karol Wojtyła have offered a glimpse into the future pope and saint’s deep devotion and prayer throughout his writing process.
The 39 handwritten pages contain Wojtyła’s reflections on St. Paul’s Areopagus address to the Athenians described in the Acts of the Apostles. It is believed that these meditations and catecheses were written in or shortly after 1965, while Wojtya was Archbishop of Krakow. He was made a cardinal in 1967 and elected pope in 1978.
On each page, Wojtyła wrote a little prayer in Latin on the top right corner, such as “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (Come Holy Spirit) and “Adoro te devote latens Deitas” (I devoutly adore you hidden God), a Eucharistic Hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas.
On the top of the first page he wrote, in Latin, the full quote of St. Louis de Montfort from which he had taken his episcopal motto, Totus Tuus: “I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart.”
The writings have been published in a book titled “Christ, the Church and the World: Catechesis of the Areopagus.”
Speaking at the launch of the publication, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re reflected that the inscription of a prayer on each page was a discipline Wojtyła continued as pope, even while drafting encyclicals.
“When he wrote Redemptoris Hominis, before every page, before the beginning, he wrote in Latin: ‘Totus Tuus Ego Sum,’ The second page: ‘Et omnia mea tua assunta,’ like this he continued,” Re said.
Cardinal Re worked with St. John Paul II as sostituto, or deputy, at the Secretariat of State from 1989 – 2000 and later as the prefect of the Congregation of Bishops. He said that when the Polish pope wrote Redemptoris Mater about the Virgin Mary, he wrote out the Litany of Loreto with a different title of Mary on each subsequent page.
“That’s why, in a certain sense, every page that he wrote it was an act of prayer,” Re said in Italian. “It reveals to us a little of … the great spirituality, devotion that he had.”
Re said he was always impressed with the “intensity” of St. John Paul II’s prayer: “He had a great capacity for concentration. When he gathered himself for prayer whatever happened around him did not disturb him. He was so immersed in God, so concentrated on God.”
The retired cardinal remembered that when faced with a decision or problem, the pope would respond, “We need to pray more about this.”
The manuscripts were first published in Polish in 2018 to mark the 40th anniversary of Wojtyła’s election as Archbishop of Krakow. No decision has yet been made about publication in English or Spanish.
Wojtyla began writing the meditations on St. Paul’s speech at the Areopagus following two trips to Athens in the mid-1960’s. Within the text, he references documents from Vatican Council II, including Nostra Aetate, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et Spes.
Dr. Marta Burghardt, who conducted historical and philological analysis of the original manuscripts, concluded that the Wojtyla wrote several passages of conciliar texts and Scripture from memory.
Burghardt said it is still unknown to whom, if anyone, Wojtyła was writing these reflections on St. Paul or whether they were intended for a series of speeches or publication.
“The depth of these texts perfectly reflects his extraordinary conception of the world from the point of view of communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote in the introduction to the book, published by the Vatican library. Dziwisz served as St. John Paul II’s personal secretary throught his time as a bishop and pope.
“In this particular historical moment we all feel again the need for a profound and general catechesis on the truths of the faith, of a catechesis that completely introduces us into the mystery of God’s work in our human history,” Dziwisz said.
Vatican City, Oct 16, 2019 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis voiced his concerns about the world’s approach to food, and called for a global attitude of virtue towards nutrition in his World Food Day message to the UN Food & Agriculture Organiz… […]
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