Pope Francis prays for families going hungry amid pandemic

Vatican City, Jan 24, 2018 / 04:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his message for the World Day of Social Communications, published Wednesday, Pope Francis said that in a world of lightning-fast communication, there is a responsibility to combat falsehood and… […]

The logo of the 2025 Jubilee. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization is organizing the Catholic Church’s next Holy Year around the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Sep 17, 2022 / 05:12 am (CNA).

The Vatican will hold a contest to choose the original musical composition for the official hymn of the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year.

The Dicastery for Evangelization announced the sacred music writing competition Sept. 17. The contest will open for submissions early next year.

Entries, the dicastery said, should set to music a text in Italian by the theologian Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri. After the winning music is chosen next year, the evangelization office will translate the text into other major languages.

The text is titled “Pilgrims of Hope,” after the theme of the 2025 Jubilee. The refrain, translated into English by CNA, is: “Living flame of my hope, May this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life, On my way I trust in Thee.”

According to the regulations set out by the Vatican, the musical composition should include a score for voice and organ, and be able to be sung both by church congregations and by four-part church choirs.

The competition will be open for submissions from Jan. 16 to March 25, 2023, and the winner will be chosen by a judging committee in collaboration with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. Full regulations can be found on the webpage of the 2025 Jubilee.

The logo for the 2025 Jubilee Year was also chosen after a worldwide competition, and unveiled in June.

A Jubilee is a special Holy Year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. An ordinary Jubilee typically takes place every 25 years, though a pope may call for additional Jubilees, as Pope Francis did with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy from 2015-2016.

The last ordinary Jubilee was the Great Jubilee of 2000, which was held under Saint Pope John Paul II and had the theme “Christ Yesterday, Today, Forever.”

In its announcement of the hymn-writing competition Saturday, the Dicastery for Evangelization said that “the Sacred Scriptures are steeped in song, and the Psalms are a striking example: the prayers of the people of Israel were written to be sung, and it was in song that the most human events were presented before the Lord.”

“The tradition of the Church has continued this, making music and song one of the lungs of its liturgy,” the dicastery said.

The evangelization office, which is responsible for organizing the Jubilee, said “many themes of the Holy Year are woven into the text” of the hymn prepared by Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri, who is the former dean of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family in Rome.

“The motto, ‘Pilgrims of Hope,’” it said, “is best echoed biblically in some pages from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 60). The themes of creation, fraternity, God’s tenderness and hope in our destination resonate in a language, which although not ‘technically’ theological, is in substance and in the allusions, so that it rings eloquently in the ears of our time.”

The full lyrics of what will become the official hymn of the 2025 Jubilee can be found below. It has been translated into English from the Italian original by CNA.

Pilgrims of Hope

Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.

Every tongue, people and nation
finds light in your Word.
Sons and daughters scattered and fragile
are embraced in your beloved Son.

Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.

God watches us, tender and patient:
the dawn of a new future rises.
New Heavens Earth made new:
the Spirit of Life moves walls.

Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.

Lift up your eyes, move with the wind,
speed up your step: God comes, in time.
See the Son who became Man:
thousands upon thousands find the way.

Living flame of my hope
may this song reach up to Thee!
Eternal womb of infinite life
on the way I trust in Thee.

[…]

Vatican City, Jan 19, 2019 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Pope Francis issued a motu proprio Saturday ending the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei and creating an office within the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to focus on doctrinal dialogue with traditionalist groups.

For over thirty years, the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei has “facilitated the full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, communities or individual religious linked to Mgr. Marcel Lefebvre’s fraternity, who wished to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church, preserving their spiritual and liturgical traditions,” Pope Francis wrote in the apostolic letter published Jan. 19.

“The institutes and religious communities that usually celebrate in extraordinary form have found today their own stability of number and life,” the pope noted.

Pope Francis stated that the issues dealt with today by the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei are of  “a predominantly doctrinal nature,” and therefore the complete transfer of the pontifical commission’s task to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith is with the desire that “these aims become more and more evident to the conscience of the ecclesial communities.”

Established in 1988 by St. John Paul II in order to carry on a dialogue with traditionalist parties, Ecclesia Dei was reformed by Benedict XVI in 2009 with the instruction Universae Ecclesiae, linking the commission to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The closing of Ecclesia Dei is the latest step in the pope’s wider project of reform of the Roman Curia. Administrative matters, including the pontifical commission’s budget, will now be included in the ordinary accounts of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

The Ordinary Session of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith on November 15, 2017 requested that “the dialogue between the Holy See and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X be conducted directly” by their congregation, the apostolic letter explained.

In November 2018, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, the superior general of the SSPX, met with CDF Prefect Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer and Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei.

During the meeting “it was recalled that the fundamental problem is actually doctrinal … Because of this irreducible doctrinal divergence, for the past seven years no attempt to compose a draft of a doctrinal statement acceptable to both parties has succeeded. This is why the doctrinal question remains absolutely essential,” according to a SSPX statement.

The SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church after the Second Vatican Council. Its relations with the Holy See became particularly strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer consecrated four bishops without the permission of St. John Paul II.

The illicit episcopal consecrations resulted in the excommunication of the bishops involved. The excommunications of the surviving bishops were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI, and since then negotiations “to rediscover full communion with the Church” have continued between the SSPX and the Vatican.

There were indications in recent years of movement towards regularization of the priestly society, which has some 600 priest-members.

In March 2017, Pope Francis gave diocesan bishops or other local ordinaries the authorization to grant priests of the SSPX the ability to celebrate licitly and validly the marriages of the faithful who follow the Society’s pastoral activity.

And in September 2015, the pope announced that the faithful would be able to validly and licitly receive absolution from priests of the SSPX during the Jubilee Year of Mercy. This ability was later extended indefinitely by Francis in his 2016 apostolic letter Misericordia et misera.

[…]