Vatican City, Apr 29, 2020 / 04:05 am (CNA).- When identifying your faults, avoid being vague and tell God your sins honestly and frankly so that he can heal you, Pope Francis said at Mass Wednesday.
According to Francis, to say: “We are all sinners,” is abstract. People should instead think and say: “I am a sinner,” concretely naming what they have said, thought, and done wrong.
Like children, “we too must be simple, real,” he said April 29. “Concreteness leads you to humility.”
“It is important that within us we give names to our sins,” he stated.
Offering Mass in the chapel of his Vatican residence, the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis reflected on the day’s first reading from 1 John, the reading for the memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, a doctor of the Church.
John writes: “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say, ‘We have fellowship with him,’ while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.”
The verse continues: “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”
Pope Francis said the devil wants people to be lukewarm, to live in gray areas.
He advised people to speak with God with the forthrightness of children, who say what they think and feel without trying to hide the truth.
To illustrate this point, the pope shared about a letter he received yesterday from a boy living in northern Italy.
The boy wrote that he had watched Pope Francis’ televised Mass and “he had to ‘scold me’ about one thing,” the pope related.
The boy said that because of the coronavirus, Pope Francis should not include the sign of peace during Mass, because “with the pandemic we cannot touch each other.”
Children’s letters are beautiful for their directness, Francis commented, explaining that the boy could not see that the congregation at his morning Mass does not shake hands, but bows their heads to exchange the sign of peace.
“But he has the freedom to say things as they are,” he said.
“We too, with the Lord, must have the freedom to say things as they are,” he continued. “Lord, I am in sin: help me.”
He said God “forgives us when we are concrete. The spiritual life is so simple, so simple; but we make it complicated with these nuances, and in the end we never get there.”
“Let’s ask the Lord for the grace of simplicity and that he gives us this grace he gives to the simple, to children, to youths who say what they feel, who do not hide what they feel,” he concluded.
After Mass, the pope presided at adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Afterward, the congregation sang the Easter Marian antiphon “Regina caeli.”
At the start of Mass, Pope Francis noted the day’s feast of St. Catherine of Siena, who is the patroness of Italy and of Europe.
“Let us pray for Europe, for the unity of Europe, for the unity of the European Union, so that we can all go forward together as brothers,” he said.
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Pope Leo XIV greets pilgrims from the back of a pickup style popemobile before his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 11, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jun 11, 2025 / 05:50 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV reflected on Christian hope — one of the three theological virtues, along with faith and charity — during his general audience on Wednesday.
“There is no cry that God does not hear, even when we are unaware that we are addressing him,” the pope said, illustrating this idea with the story of Bartimaeus, described in the Gospel of Mark as a blind beggar who encountered Jesus as He was leaving Jericho.
Pope Leo explained that this story helps us understand that “we must never abandon hope, even when we feel lost.”
The Holy Father today spoke on the healings performed by Jesus and invited Catholics to bring before the heart of Christ their “most wounded or fragile parts” or those areas of life where they “feel paralyzed or stuck.”
“Let us ask the Lord with trust to hear our cry and heal us!” the pope said.
Pope Leo focused on the attitude of Jesus, who does not immediately approach Bartimaeus but instead asks him what he wants. “It is not obvious that we truly want to be healed of our illnesses — sometimes we prefer to remain as we are so as not to take on new responsibilities,” he said.
“It may seem strange that, faced with a blind man, Jesus does not immediately approach him. But if we think about it, this is how he helps reactivate Bartimaeus’ life: He prompts him to rise and entrusts him with the ability to walk,” the pope added.
Indeed, the pope said that Bartimaeus does not only wish to see again — he also “wants to regain his dignity.”
“To look upward, one must lift one’s head. Sometimes people feel stuck because life has humiliated them, and they simply want to regain their worth,” the Holy Father said.
For this reason, he called on the faithful to do everything they can to obtain what they seek, “even when others scold you, humiliate you, or tell you to give up.” “If you truly desire it, keep crying out!” he said.
The pope stressed that what saves Bartimaeus is faith. “Jesus heals us so that we may be free,” he said.
Pope Leo XIV embraces a baby during a ride around St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile before the general audience on June 11, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Exposing ourselves to Jesus with all our vulnerabilities
Leo XIV also reflected on Bartimaeus’ gesture of casting off his cloak in order to stand up.
“For a beggar, the cloak is everything: it is security, it is home, it is the protection that shields him. In fact, the law protected a beggar’s cloak and required that it be returned by evening if it had been taken as a pledge,” he explained.
The pope compared the beggar’s cloak to the illusion of security that people often cling to.
“Often what holds us back are precisely these apparent securities — the things we have wrapped around ourselves for protection, which in reality prevent us from moving forward,” he said.
Pope Leo noted that, in order to go to Jesus and be healed, Bartimaeus “must expose himself to Him in all his vulnerability” — a fundamental step on any path to healing.
Finally, the pope called on the faithful to trustingly bring to Jesus “our illnesses, as well as those of our loved ones,” and “the pain of those who feel lost and without a way out.”
“Let us cry out for them as well, and let us be certain that the Lord will hear us and will stop for us,” he said.
Pope Francis with Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery of Divine Worship and Discipline of Sacraments, at the consistory in St. Peter’s Basilica, Aug. 27, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Aug 27, 2022 / 08:31 am (CNA).
Pope Francis created 20 new cardinals for the Catholic Church during a liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica Saturday.
“Jesus calls us by name; he looks us in the eye and he asks: Can I count on you?” Pope Francis said in a homily addressed to the College of Cardinals and its new members on Aug. 27.
“The Lord,” he said, “wants to bestow on us his own apostolic courage, his zeal for the salvation of every human being, without exception. He wants to share with us his magnanimity, his boundless and unconditional love, for his heart is afire with the mercy of the Father.”
The pope’s reflection followed a reading from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verses 49-50: “In that time, Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!’”
“The words of Jesus, in the very middle of the Gospel of Luke, pierce us like an arrow,” Francis said.
“The Lord calls us once more to follow him along the path of his mission,” he said. “A fiery mission – like that of Elijah – not only for what he came to accomplish but also for how he accomplished it. And to us who in the Church have been chosen from among the people for a ministry of particular service, it is as if Jesus is handing us a lighted torch and telling us: ‘Take this; as the Father has sent me so I now send you.’”
The pope ended his homily mentioning that one cardinal-elect, Richard Kuuia Baawobr of Wa (Ghana), was not present. Francis asked for prayers for the African prelate, explaining Baawobr had been taken ill.
At the beginning of the consistory, Pope Francis pronounced the opening prayer of the ceremony in Latin.
During the ceremony, the new cardinals made a profession of faith by reciting the Creed. They then pronounced an oath of fidelity and obedience to the pope and his successors.
Each cardinal then approached Pope Francis, kneeling before him to receive the red birretta, the cardinal’s ring, and a document naming the titular church he has been assigned.
Pope Francis embraced each new cardinal, saying to him: “Pax Domini sit semper tecum,” which is Latin for “the peace of the Lord be with you always.” Each cardinal responded: “Amen.”
The new cardinals also exchanged a sign of peace with a number of the members of the College of Cardinals, representative of the whole college.
While placing the red biretta on the head of each cardinal, the pope recited these words: “To the glory of almighty God and the honor of the Apostolic See, receive the scarlet biretta as a sign of the dignity of the cardinalate, signifying your readiness to act with courage, even to the shedding of your blood, for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and tranquility of the people of God and for the freedom and growth of the Holy Roman Church.”
As he gave each new cardinal the ring, Francis said: “Receive this ring from the hand of Peter and know that, with the love of the Prince of the Apostles, your love for the Church is strengthened.”
In his homily, the pope said: “The Lord wants to bestow on us his own apostolic courage, his zeal for the salvation of every human being, without exception. He wants to share with us his magnanimity, his boundless and unconditional love, for his heart is afire with the mercy of the Father.”
He also recalled another kind of fire, that of charcoal. “This fire,” he said, “burns in a particular way in the prayer of adoration, when we silently stand before the Eucharist and bask in the humble, discreet and hidden presence of the Lord. Like that charcoal fire, his presence becomes warmth and nourishment for our daily life.”
“A Cardinal loves the Church, always with that same spiritual fire, whether dealing with great questions or handling everyday problems, with the powerful of this world or those ordinary people who are great in God’s eyes,” he said.
The pope named three men as examples for the cardinals to follow: Saint Charles de Foucauld, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, and Cardinal Van Thuân.
The consistory to create cardinals also included a greeting and thank you to Pope Francis, expressed by Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the liturgy dicastery, on behalf of all the new cardinals.
Cardinal Arthur Roche speaking on behalf of the new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica, Aug. 27. 2022. Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
“All of us, coming from different parts of the world, with our personal stories and different life situations, carry out our ministry in the vineyard of the Lord. As diocesan and religious priests, we are at the service of preaching the Gospel in many different ways and in different cultures, but always united in the one faith and the one Church,” Roche said.
“Now, in manifesting your trust in us, you call us to this new service, in an even closer collaboration with your ministry, within the broad horizon of the universal Church,” he continued. “God knows the dust of which we are all made, and we know well that without Him we are capable of falling short.”
Roche quoted Saint Gregory the Great, who once wrote to a bishop: “We are all weak, but he is weakest of all who ignores his own weakness.”
“However, we draw strength from you, Holy Father,” he said, “from your witness, your spirit of service and your call to the entire Church to follow the Lord with greater fidelity; living the joy of the Gospel with discernment, courage and, above all, with an openness of heart that manifests itself in welcoming everyone, especially those who suffer the injustice of poverty that marginalizes, the suffering of pain that seeks a response of meaning, the violence of wars that turn brothers into enemies. We share with you the desire and commitment for communion in the Church.”
At the end of the consistory to create cardinals, Pope Francis convened a consistory for the cardinals to give their approval to the canonizations of Blessed Artemide Zatti and Giovanni Battista Scalabrini.
The new cardinals are:
— Cardinal Arthur Roche, 72, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and former Bishop of Leeds (England);
— Lazarus You Heung-sik, 70, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy and former Bishop of Daejeon (South Korea);
— Jean-Marc Noël Aveline, 63, Archbishop of Marseille, the first French diocesan bishop to get the honor during Pope Francis’ pontificate;
— Peter Ebere Okpaleke, 59, Bishop of Ekwulobia in the central region of Nigeria, who was created bishop in 2012 by Benedict XVI;
— Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, 77, Archbishop of Manaus, in Brazil’s Amazon region, a Franciscan who played a leading role during the Amazon Synod and as Vice President of the recently created Amazonian Bishops’ Conference;
— Filipe Neri António Sebastião do Rosário Ferrão, 69, Archbishop of Goa (India), appointed bishop by St. John Paul II in 1993;
— Robert McElroy, 68, Bishop of San Diego (United States), whose diocese is suffragan to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, led by the President of the USCCB, Archbishop José Gomez;
— Virgilio do Carmo Da Silva, 68, a Salesian, since 2019 the Archbishop of Dili (East Timor);
— Oscar Cantoni, 71, Bishop of Como (Italy), appointed in January 2005 by St. John Paul II, who is suffragan to Milan;
— Archbishop Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, L.C., 77, president of the Governorate of the Vatican City State and of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State; the Spaniard is the first Legionary of Christ to become a cardinal;
— Anthony Poola, 60, Archbishop of Hyderabad (India), a bishop since 2008 and the first dalit to become a cardinal;
–Paulo Cezar Costa, 54, Archbishop of Brasilia (Brazil), the fourth archbishop of the Brazilian capital to become a cardinal;
— Richard Kuuia Baawobr, 62, Bishop of Wa (Ghana), former Superior General of the White Fathers, and bishop since 2016;
— William Goh Seng Chye, 65, Archbishop of Singapore since 2013;
— Adalberto Martinez Flores, 71, Archbishop of Asunción (Paraguay) and the first Paraguayan cardinal;
— Giorgio Marengo, 47, Italian Missionary of the Consolata and Apostolic Prefect of Ulan Bator in Mongolia, the youngest cardinal in recent history, along with Karol Wojtyla, who also was created a cardinal at 47, during the consistory of June 26, 1967.
Furthermore, Pope Francis appointed the following prelates over the age of 80, who are therefore excluded from attending a future conclave.
Jorge Enrique Jiménez Carvajal, 80, Archbishop Emeritus of Cartagena (Colombia); Arrigo Miglio, 80, Archbishop Emeritus of Cagliari (Italy); Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a Jesuit and former rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, who extensively collaborated in the drafting of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium; and Fortunato Frezza, 80, (Italy) currently a Canon at the Basilica of St. Peter, who collaborated for several years at the Secretariat General for the Synod of the Bishops.
Pope Francis had originally also nominated Ghent Bishop Luc Van Looy, 80, who later declined to accept the post because of criticism of his response to clergy abuse cases.
Vatican City, May 12, 2020 / 10:55 am (CNA).- On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pope St. John Paul II on May 18, Pope Francis will offer his morning Mass at the Polish pope’s tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica, according to the Vatican.
In the task of world rebuilding, Europe has an important role to play.