Pope Francis on adoption: ‘Every child that arrives is God’s gift’

Vatican City, May 9, 2018 / 02:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that nothing can take away a person’s baptism or the salvation and identity they gain as a child of God, which is why the Church only allows for the sacrament to be administered once.

“Baptism is not repeated because it imprints an indelible spiritual sign: This sign is never erased by any sin, though sin prevents baptism from bringing the fruit of salvation,” the pope said during his May 9 general audience.

Just as parents give their children earthly life, the Church gives spiritual life through baptism, making each person a son of God through Jesus Christ, he said, explaining that at the moment of baptism, God tells each person that “you are my beloved child.”

“This paternal voice, imperceptible to the ear but well audible to the heart of those who believe, accompanies us for our entire lives, without abandoning us,” he said, adding that this is why the Church believes in only one baptism for salvation.

The belonging a person obtains from baptism “is something you never lose,” Francis said, even if a person sins with something as serious as murder, their belonging to God and his Church never goes away, “he continues to be a son.”

Even though everyone is a sinner and there is a great need for conversion in life of each person, “God never rejects his children,” he said, and asked the crowd to repeat the phrase with him out loud.

Speaking to pilgrims who braved a rainy forecast to join him for the audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pope continued his catechesis on baptism, focusing this week on the moment a person is actually baptized when the priest invokes the Trinity, saying “I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

He then pointed to the biblical passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans in which the apostle asked: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

The baptismal font is the place where one actually rises with Christ, he said, adding that in baptism, “the old man is buried, with his deceptive passions, so that he is reborn as a new creature.”

“At the same time you die and are born, and the same salutary wave becomes for you tomb and mother,” the pope said, quoting St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

Man’s rebirth as a new creation, then, naturally “demands that the man corrupted by sin is reduced to dust,” he said, adding that the images of the tomb and of the maternal womb referred to by St. Cyril are “incisive” phrases which express the reality of what happens during baptism.

To be incorporated in the body of Christ through baptism means one must also conform to him, Francis said, adding that the action of the Holy Spirit during the sacrament purifies, sanctifies and justifies the person in order to bring them into one body united to Christ.

This dynamic is expressed when the priest anoints the baptized person with oil after reciting the phrase: “God himself consecrates you with the chrism of salvation so that inserted into Christ, priest, king, and prophet, you will always be members of his body for eternal life.”

Pope Francis closed his address saying the entire vocation of a Catholic can be summed up as the necessity to live united to Jesus Christ and his Church “in order to carry out the same mission in this world, bringing fruits which last forever.”

“Animated by the only Spirit, the entire People of God participate in the functions of Jesus Christ, priest, prophet and king, and carry the responsibility of the mission and service that derive from them,” he said.

To participate in the kingly and prophetic priesthood of Christ, he said, means above all “to make oneself a free offering to God, giving testimony through a life of faith and charity, putting them at the service of others in the example of the Lord Jesus.”

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Washington D.C., Mar 9, 2022 / 17:30 pm (CNA).
Masks are no longer mandatory at Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., the Archdiocese of Washington announced Wednesday.The move came in response to the city’s health departmen… […]

Vatican City, Feb 23, 2018 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis returned from his week-long Lenten spiritual exercises in Ariccia, where he and members of the Roman Curia have been on their annual retreat since Sunday afternoon.

Before boarding the bus that would take him back to Vatican City, Francis thanked the priest who preached the exercises for his reflections and for encouraging members of the Curia to be open to the Holy Spirit and not stuck in bureaucratic structures.

“Thank you, Father, for having spoken of the Church, for having made us, this small flock, feel the Church,” the Pope said Feb. 23.

He thanked Fr. José Tolentino de Mendonça for reminding them that “the Church is not a cage for the Holy Spirit,” and also voiced thanks for receiving a warning “not to shrink it with our bureaucratic worldliness!”

Fr. Tolentino is a Portuguese priest, poet, and Biblical theologian who preached during the spiritual exercises, which this year focused on the theme: “Praise of Thirst.”

De Mendonça is vice-rector of the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon and has been a consultant of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 2011. He was ordained a priest in 1990 and completed his master’s degree in Biblical Studies in Rome before later obtaining a doctorate in biblical theology from the Portuguese Catholic University, where he later taught as an assistant professor.

In his brief greeting at the end of the retreat, Pope Francis also thanked De Mendonça for helping them understand how the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of non-believers and those of other religious confessions, saying the Holy Spirit is “universal, he is the Spirit of God, who is for everyone.”

Francis noted that there are many people today like the centurions and the guards at Peter’s prison who live with an “an inner search” and who know how to tell when there is “something that calls” them.

He thanked De Mendonça for the call “to opening ourselves without fear, without rigidity, for being malleable in the Spirit and not mummified within our structures that close us off.”

The Pope also noted how he had declared Friday as a day of prayer and fasting for South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria, saying the spiritual retreat is extended through the offerings they will make on behalf of the war-torn countries.

Held Feb. 18-23, this year’s curial Lenten spiritual exercises began Sunday evening with adoration and vespers. The rest of the week followed a basic schedule beginning with Mass at 7:30 a.m., followed by the first meditation of the day.

In the afternoon, a second meditation was preached before concluding with adoration and vespers. Friday, the final day of the exercises, consisted of only a morning meditation. Pope Francis and the curia then left the retreat house, returning to the Vatican at 11:15 a.m.

The exercises took place at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, a town just 16 miles outside of Rome. Located on Lake Albano, the retreat house is just a short way from the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. It will be the fifth consecutive year the Pope and members of the Curia have held their Lenten retreat at the house in Ariccia.

While the practice of the Bishop of Rome going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago, it had been customary for them to follow the spiritual exercises on Vatican ground. Beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome.

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