Pope Francis appoints bishops of Memphis, Fresno, names new auxiliary for LA

Pope Francis’ general audience in St. Peter’s Square, May 25, 2022. / Vatican Media.

Vatican City, May 25, 2022 / 04:35 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said on Wednesday that Catholics today are living in an “age of fake news, collective superstitions, … […]

Vatican City, Aug 27, 2017 / 04:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis made a fresh appeal on behalf of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority, voicing his closeness to those suffering from recent violence, and asking that members of the ethnic group be given full rights.

During his Aug. 27 Sunday Angelus address, the Pope said he is following the “sad news of the religious persecution of our brother and sister Rohingya.”

“I would like to express all of my closeness to them,” he said, and asked pilgrims to pray for “the Lord to save them, to arouse men and women of goodwill to help them, who give them full rights.”

The Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group largely from the Rakhine state of Burma, in west Myanmar. Since fighing began in 2012 between the state’s Buddhist community and the long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been displaced, while similar numbers have fled Myanmar by sea.

In order to escape forced segregation from the rest of the population inside rural ghettos, many of the Rohingya – who are not recognized by the government as a legitimate ethnic group or as citizens of Myanmar – have made perilous journeys by sea in hope of evading persecution.

Just since last year, around 87,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh amid a military crackdown on insurgents in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, giving way to horrifying stories of rapes, killings and arson by security forces.

However, in Bangladesh the Rohingya have had little relief, since they are not recognized as refugees in the country. Since last October, many who had fled to Bangladesh have been detained and forced to return to the neighboring Rakhine state.

The Pope’s appeal Sunday comes as the number of new deaths continues to rise amid renewed clashes between the Rohingya and the Myanmar army, which sprung up Friday on the outskirts of the large city of Maungdaw.

The spat, which is the worst since last October, has prompted the government to evacuate staff and non-Muslims from the area. According to the Guardian, nearly 100 have died and thousands have been evacuated as fighting goes into it’s third day.

The death toll from the renewed spat of violence has climbed to 98, including 80 from among Rohingya insurgents and 12 Myanmar security forces.

So far, the government has reportedly evacuated at least 4,000 villagers, with nearly 2,000 Rohingya Muslims, mostly women and children, fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, where they are now living as refugees in makeshift camps along the border.

Pope Francis, who is expected to make a trip to both Myanmar and Bangladesh sometime before Christmas, has spoken out on the behalf of the Rohingya frequently, and their plight – rights included – is likely to be a key talking point during his visit to the Asian nations.

In his Angelus address Sunday, Pope Francis focused on the Gospel passage from Matthew, in which Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus in turn tells Peter that “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.”

When Jesus asks his disciples, “who do you say that I am?” he understands from Peter’s response that “thanks to the faith given by the Father, there is a solid foundation on which to build his community, his Church.”

Jesus, he said, wishes to continue building his Church today, which is a house “with solid foundations, but where cracks are not lacking, and which needs to be continually repaired, as in the time of St. Francis of Assisi.”

We typically don’t feel the big rocks, only the small stones, he said, but stressed that “no small stone is useless.”

“Rather, in the hands of Jesus it becomes precious, because he picks it up, looks at it with tenderness, works it with his Spirit and puts it in the right place, where he has always thought and where it can be most useful to the whole building.”

Each of us, no matter how small, “have become living stones of his love, and so we have a place and a mission in the Church,” Francis said, explaining that “this is a community of life, made by many stones, all different, which form a single building in a sign of brotherhood and communion.”

Pope Francis then led pilgrims in praying the traditional Angelus prayer, and offered prayers for the victims of recent flooding in Bangladesh, Napal and India.

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Vatican City, Nov 19, 2017 / 05:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Sunday cautioned against having a “mistaken” idea of God as harsh and punishing, saying this fear will end up paralyzing us and preventing us from doing good, rather than spreading his love and mercy.

“Fear always immobilizes and often leads us to make bad choices,” the Pope said Nov. 19. “Fear discourages us from taking the initiative, and encourages us to seek refuge in safe and guaranteed solutions, and so we end up doing nothing good.”

To go forward and grow on the path of life, he said, “we must not be afraid, but we have to trust.”  

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his Sunday Angelus address on the first-ever World Day for the Poor, which he implemented at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy.

In his speech, the Pope turned to the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, which recounts the parable of the talents. In the passage, a master goes on a long trip and entrusts three servants with different talents, but when he returns, only two have gained profit from it, while the third buried his out of fear.

This parable “makes us understand how important it is to have a true idea of God,” Francis said, noting that the third servant didn’t really trust his master, but but feared him, and this fear prevented him from acting.

We shouldn’t think that God is “an evil, harsh and severe master who wants to punish us,” the Pope said, explaining that if we have this “mistaken image of God, then our lives cannot be fruitful, because we will live in fear and this will not lead us to anything constructive.”

Fear, he said, paralyzes us and so is self-destructive. So when faced with the unfaithful servant in this parable, each of us is called to reflect on what our idea of God really is.

Turning to the Old Testament, Francis noted how in Exodus God is described as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

Even in the New Testament, Jesus always demonstrated that God is not “a severe and intolerant master,” but a father full of “love and tenderness, a father full of goodness,” Francis said, and because of this, “we can and must have immense trust in him.”

Jesus, he said, shows us his generosity in various ways, through his words, actions, and his welcome towards all, especially toward sinners and the poor and vulnerable. But also with his admonishments, “which show his interest in us so that we do not waste our lives uselessly.”

This, the Pope said, is a sign of the great esteem God has for us, and having this knowledge ought to help us to take responsibility for our every action.

Concluding, Pope Francis said parable invites us to have “a personal responsibility and fidelity which become capable of continually placing ourselves on new roads, without burying the talent, which is are the gifts that God has entrusted to us and of which he will ask us to account for.”

After leading pilgrims in the Angelus prayer, the Pope made a series of appeals, the first of which was for the World Day for the Poor. He prayed that the poor and disadvantaged would be “the center of our communities” not just on special occasions, but always, “because they are the heart of the Gospel, in them we encounter Jesus who speaks to us and challenges us through their sufferings and their needs.”

He also drew attention to beatification of Fr. Solanus Casey yesterday in Detroit, saying the friar was “a humble and faithful disciple of Christ, who distinguished himself with an untiring service to the poor.”

“May his witness help priests, religious and laity to live with joy the link between the announcement of the Gospel and the love for the poor.”

Francis also offered special prayers for those living “a painful poverty” due to war and conflict, and renewed his appeal to the international community “to commit every possible effort in favor of peace, especially in the Middle East.”

He prayed especially for Lebanon, particularly for the country’s stability, “so that it may continue to be a message of respect and sharing for every religion and for the entire world.”

A final appeal he made was for the crew of an Argentine military submarine, who have been missing for several days without a trace.

After concluding the Angelus, Pope Francis made his way to the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, where he had lunch with some 1,500 poor and needy in town for the World Day of the Poor.

Before the meal, Francis said a blessing for the food and for everyone there, asking the Lord “to bless us, to bless the meal, to bless those who prepared it, to bless all of us, our hearts, our families, our desires and our lives, that he give us health and strength. Amen.”

He also offered a blessing for all those eating in other soup kitchens throughout Rome. “Rome is full of these today,” he said, and asked for “a greeting and an applause” for the thousands of others participating in the event.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PopeFrancis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#PopeFrancis</a> says blessing before eating lunch, prays for the cooks, the guests, their families &amp; charity organizations in <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rome?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Rome</a>: asks that they receive &quot;health &amp; strength&quot; <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/WorldDayofthePoor?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#WorldDayofthePoor</a> <a href=”https://t.co/jRrW0dN3xc”>pic.twitter.com/jRrW0dN3xc</a></p>&mdash; Elise Harris (@eharris_it) <a href=”https://twitter.com/eharris_it/status/932212710749691905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 19, 2017</a></blockquote>
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