Vatican City, Nov 7, 2019 / 10:39 am (CNA).- In St. Peter’s Basilica Thursday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley asked American bishops to pray for the grace to make a profession of faith, hope, and love at the tomb of St. Peter before meeting with Pope Francis.
Cardinal O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, and the other bishops from New England are in Rome for an ad limina apostolorum visit — a pilgrimage to “the threshold of the apostles” — in which they are meeting the pope and curial officials to discuss the state of their dioceses.
In his homily in the crypt of the basilica, O’Malley touched upon some of the problems currently affecting American Catholics.
“Today many people have lost hope. It is one of the reasons that people are not having children, turning to drugs, and seeking thrills,” he said.
The American cardinal said that bishops need to be evangelizers: “Jesus is our hope. He is reason we trust in his promises.”
He connected a recent Pew survey on American Catholics’ belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist to the decline in Mass attendance in the U.S.
“In today’s world, too many Catholics are quick to dismiss the hard saying about the Eucharist. and as the Pew poll indicates they do not accept the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Hence the diminished Mass attendance, and no sense of urgency to confess our sins to receive worthily,” O’Malley said.
He related this to the crowd’s reaction to Jesus’ bread of life discourse in the Gospel of John chapter 6. After many left because “this saying is hard,” Jesus turned to Peter and asked, “Are you going to abandon me too?”
Peter replied: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”
Cardinal O’Malley highlighted this as one of three key questions Christ asked Peter in the Gospels. He said that Christ’s three questions to Peter: “Who do you say that I am?”, “Are you going to abandon me too?”, and “Do you love me?” correspond to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love respectively.
“Today before Peter’s tomb, let us bishops ask for the grace to answer those questions as Peter did with a profession of faith, a profession of hope, a profession of love,” he said.
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Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on April 20, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 20, 2022 / 03:20 am (CNA).
To not honor the elderly as God commands, and to treat them as something to discard, “is a grave sin,” Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
During his weekly meeting with the public in St. Peter’s Square on April 20, the pope said “this commandment to honor the elderly gives us a blessing.”
“Please, care for old people,” he urged, “because they are the presence of history, the presence of the family. And it is thanks to them we are here. Please, do not leave them alone.”
Honoring the elderly is a form of love, giving life not only to those honored, but to those doing the honoring, he said.
For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pope’s Wednesday general audience was back in St. Peter’s Square.
The pope’s lesson focused on seven verses from the book of Sirach, including Sirach 3:12-13: “My son, be steadfast in honoring your father; do not grieve him as long as he lives. Even if his mind fails, be considerate of him; do not revile him because you are in your prime.”
“Honor is a good word to frame this aspect of returning love that concerns old age,” Pope Francis said. “We have received this love from our parents, now we return this love to our parents, to our grandparents.”
“Love for the human person that is common to us, including honoring a life lived, is not a matter for the old. Rather it is an ambition that will bring radiance to the youth who inherit its best qualities. May the wisdom of God’s Spirit grant us to open the horizon of this true cultural revolution with the necessary energy,” he stated.
Pope Francis encouraged parents to bring their children around the elderly often. And if their grandparents are in a nursing home, to bring them to visit.
He recalled that he would often visit the nursing homes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he was there. One time, he said, he spoke to a woman who had four children, and when he asked her if they came to visit, she said “yes.” But later, a nurse told Francis that in fact, it had been six months since the woman had seen her children, but she had lied because she did not want to speak badly of them.
This is treating the elderly like something disposable, he said. “This contempt, which dishonors the elderly, actually dishonors all of us.”
“Let us think carefully about this beautiful expression of love which is honor,” he urged. “Even care for the sick, the support of those who are not self-sufficient, the guarantee of sustenance, can be lacking honor.”
“This special love that paves the way in the form of honor — tenderness and respect at the same time — intended for the elderly is sealed by God’s commandment,” he continued.
We have all thought at one moment or another that our grandparents were annoying, he said. “Do not say, ‘no,’ it is ‘yes.’ We have thought that.”
“‘Honor thy father and mother’ is a solemn commitment,” he said. “It is not just about one’s own father and mother. It is about their generation and the generations before, whose leave-taking can also be slow and prolonged, creating a time and space of long-lasting coexistence with the other ages of life. In other words, it is about the old age of life.”
Vatican City, Jul 26, 2020 / 06:40 am (CNA).- Pope Francis asked young people Sunday to reach out to the elderly, especially those in nursing homes, to send a message of encouragement amid the loneliness of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bishops process into St. Peter’s Basilica for the closing Mass of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 29, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The guiding document for the final part of the Synod on Synodality, published Tuesday, focuses on how to implement certain of the synod’s aims, while laying aside some of the more controversial topics from last year’s gathering, like women’s admission to the diaconate.
“Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working tool,” says.
The six sections of the roughly 30-page document will be the subject of prayer, conversation, and discernment by participants in the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held throughout the month of October in Rome.
Instead of focusing on questions and “convergences,” as in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, “it is now necessary that … a consensus can be reached,” said a FAQ page from synod organizers, also released July 9, answering a question about why the structure was different from last year’s Instrumentum Laboris.
The guiding document for the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 covered such hot-button topics as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach.
By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects, while offering concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils.
“It is difficult to imagine a more effective way to promote a synodal Church than the participation of all in decision-making and taking processes,” it states.
The working tool also refers to the 10 study groups formed late last year to tackle different themes deemed “matters of great relevance” by the Synod’s first session in October 2023. These groups will continue to meet through June 2025 but will provide an update on their progress at the second session in October.
The possibility of the admission of women to the diaconate will not be a topic during the upcoming assembly, the Instrumentum Laboris said.
The new document was presented at a July 9 press conference by Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, together with the special secretaries of the synodal assembly: Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa and Father Riccardo Battocchio.
“The Synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said, pointing to testimonies shared in the most recent reports sent by bishops’ conferences.
The Oct. 2-27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will use the Instrumentum Laboris as a guide for their “conversations in the Spirit,” the method of discussion introduced at the 2023 assembly. They will also prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
Prominent topics
The 2024 Instrumentum Laboris also addresses the need for transparency to restore the Church’s credibility in the face of sexual abuse of adults and minors and financial scandals.
“If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming,” the document reads, “then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority.”
It recommends effective lay involvement in pastoral and economic planning, the publication of annual financial statements certified by external auditors, annual summaries of safeguarding initiatives, the promotion of women to positions of authority, and periodic performance evaluations on those exercising a ministry or holding a position in the Church.
“These are points of great importance and urgency for the credibility of the synodal process and its implementation,” the document says.
The greater participation of women in all levels of the Church, a reform of the education of priests, and greater formation for all Catholics are also included in the text.
Bishops’ conferences, it says, noticed an untapped potential for women’s participation in many areas of Church life. “They also call for further exploration of ministerial and pastoral modalities that better express the charisms and gifts the Spirit pours out on women in response to the pastoral needs of our time,” the document states.
Formation in listening is identified as “an essential initial requirement” for Catholics, as well as how to engage in the practice of “conversation in the Spirit,” which was employed in the first session of the Synod on Synodality.
Pope Francis and delegates at the Synod on Synodality at the conclusion of the assembly on Oct. 28, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
The document says the need for formation has been one of the most universal and strong themes throughout the synodal process. Interreligious dialogue also is identified as an important aspect of the synodal journey.
On the topic of the liturgy, the Instrumentum Laboris says there was “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
“It is necessary that the pastoral proposals and liturgical practices preserve and make ever more evident the link between the journey of Christian initiation and the synodal and missionary life of the Church,” the document says. “The appropriate pastoral and liturgical arrangements must be developed in the plurality of situations and cultures in which the local Churches are immersed …”
How it was drafted
Dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2,” the document released Tuesday has been in preparation since early June when approximately 20 experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law held a closed-door meeting to analyze around 200 synod reports from bishops’ conferences and religious communities responding to what the Instrumentum Laboris called “the guiding question” of the next stage of the Synod on Synodality: “How to be a synodal Church in mission?”
After the 10-day gathering, “an initial version” of the text was drafted based on those reports and sent to around 70 people — priests, religious, and laypeople — “from all over the world, of various ecclesial sensitivities and from different theological ‘schools,’” for consultation, according to the synod website.
The XVI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, together with consultants of the synod secretariat, finalized the document.
According to the working tool, soliciting new reports and feedback after the consultation phase ended is “consistent with the circularity characterizing the whole synodal process.”
“In preparation for the Second Session, and during its work, we continue to address this question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” it says.
The document says “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the ten Study Groups.”
Expectations for final session
According to the guiding document, the second session of the Synod on Synodality can “expect a further deepening of the shared understanding of synodality, a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law (there may be yet more significant and profound developments as the basic proposal is further assimilated and lived.)”
“Nonetheless,” it continues, “we cannot expect the answer to every question. In addition, other proposals will emerge along the way, on the path of conversion and reform that the Second Session will invite the whole Church to undertake.”
The Instrumentum Laboris says, “Synodality is not an end in itself … If the Second Session is to focus on certain aspects of synodal life, it does so with a view to greater effectiveness in mission.”
In its brief conclusion, the text states: “The questions that the Instrumentum Laboris asks are: how to be a synodal Church in mission; how to engage in deep listening and dialogue; how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation; how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; how to exercise power and authority as service. Each of these questions is a service to the Church and, through its action, to the possibility of healing the deepest wounds of our time.”
Rock-like Peter continues to inspire men and women of good will to aim high.