Then-Vice President Joe Biden meeting Pope Francis after both leaders spoke at a conference on adult stem cell research at the Vatican April 29, 2016. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Vatican City, Sep 28, 2021 / 11:40 am (CNA).
Pope Francis is expected to receive Joe Biden on Oct. 29, in the U.S. president’s first official visit to the Vatican since his inauguration, according to sources at the Apostolic Palace.
The sources told CNA on Sept. 25 that their information came directly from the Prefecture for the Pontifical Household. Though encounters with heads of state are diplomatic occasions, the Prefecture is responsible for the organization and protocol around the meetings.
Another independent source told CNA that preparations were underway at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and the first loads of trucks and equipment for the visit were already on their way to Rome.
The White House said on Sept. 22 that Biden would meet with the French President Emmanuel Macron in Europe at the end of October.
Asked if there were plans in the works for a papal meeting, a White House spokesperson told CNA on Sept. 28 that there was “nothing to announce.”
The Vatican does not usually give advance notice of visits by heads of state. Generally, information is provided just a few days before meetings take place. The Holy See tends to confirm the visit only after the head of state makes an official announcement.
According to the sources, Biden’s trip would be an official visit. First, the president would have a meeting with Pope Francis. Then there would be bilateral talks in the Secretariat of State with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States and the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister.
Biden met Pope Francis for the first time in September 2015, when the pope attended the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. At the time, Biden was vice-president of the Obama administration.
Biden visited the Vatican on April 29, 2016, to participate in a regenerative medicine summit.
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The preparation of the crane at the Tower of Our Lady of the East to install the statue of the Virgin Mary on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2024. / Credit: Moussa Hanna Photography
ACI MENA, Aug 1, 2024 / 15:46 pm (CNA).
A new landmark honoring the Virgin Ma… […]
Pope Francis speaks during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 11, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2023 / 06:13 am (CNA).
Pope Francis appealed for the immediate release of more than 100 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza on Wednesday and expressed concern for the safety of Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip.
“I pray for those families who saw a feast day transformed into a day of mourning, and I ask that the hostages be immediately released,” Pope Francis said on Oct. 11.
Some 130 Israeli hostages were taken by the militant Islamist group Hamas during its attack on Israel last weekend. The terrorist group has threatened to kill one hostage every time that Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza “without warning,” according to the Associated Press.
Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his Wednesday morning audience, the pope underlined that “terrorism and extremism do not help to reach a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but they fuel hatred, violence, revenge, and only make both suffer.”
The pope said that he has been following “what is happening in Israel and Palestine with tears and apprehension.” After Hamas’ attack on Israel killed 1,000 people, the Israeli government vowed retaliation and launched airstrikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Francis said: “It is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves, but I am very worried about the total siege in which the Palestinians live in Gaza, where there have been many innocent victims.”
“The Middle East does not need war, but peace, a peace built on justice, dialogue and the courage of fraternity,” he added.
The appeal was the second time that Pope Francis has spoken publicly about the war in Israel since the surprise attack last weekend.
On Sunday, the pope prayed for peace between Israel and Palestine and expressed sorrow that “violence has exploded even more ferociously” between the two, words that drew criticism from Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See who issued a statement warning against “the use of linguistic ambiguities and terms that allude to a false symmetry.”
The priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who is currently stranded in Bethlehem, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Oct. 9 that the situation “continues to be very bad” and that his Gaza parish is sheltering more than 80 Christians and Muslims amid Israeli airstrikes.
Families of the victims taken hostage by Hamas are desperately waiting to find out if their missing loved ones are safe. An American woman, Abbey Onn, whose five relatives in southern Israel were taken hostage, told CBS News that she had seen a video on social media on Sunday of her 12-year-old relative in the hands of Hamas.
“These are civilians who are being terrorized and we want them brought home,” she said.
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
Vatican City, Oct 29, 2023 / 07:30 am (CNA).
At the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass, Pope Francis said that God’s love cannot be confined “to our own agenda” and that those who truly want to reform the Catholic Church should follow Jesus’ greatest commandment: to adore God and love others with his love.
“We may have plenty of good ideas on how to reform the Church, but let us remember: to adore God and to love our brothers and sisters with his love, that is the great and perennial reform,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29.
“We are always at risk of thinking that we can ‘control God,’ that we can confine his love to our own agenda. Instead, the way he acts is always unpredictable, it goes beyond, and consequently, this action of God demands amazement and adoration,” he added.
Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Vatican Media
The pope underlined that worship of Jesus in the tabernacle “in every diocese, in every parish, in every community” is necessary in the “struggle against all types of idolatry” in today’s world.
“Let us be vigilant, lest we find that we are putting ourselves at the center rather than him. And let us return to worship. May worship be central for those of us who are pastors: let us devote time every day to intimacy with Jesus the Good Shepherd in the tabernacle. Adoration,” he said.
“Only in this way will we turn to Jesus and not to ourselves. For only through silent adoration will the Word of God live in our words; only in his presence will we be purified, transformed, and renewed by the fire of his Spirit. Brothers and sisters, let us adore the Lord Jesus!”
Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Vatican Media
“Brothers and Sisters, the General Assembly of the Synod has now concluded,” he said. “In this ‘conversation of the Spirit,’ we have experienced the loving presence of the Lord and discovered the beauty of fraternity.”
“Today we do not see the full fruit of this process, but with farsightedness, we look to the horizon opening up before us. The Lord will guide us and help us to be a more synodal and more missionary Church, a Church that adores God and serves the women and men of our time, going forth to bring to everyone the consoling joy of the Gospel,” Francis added.
Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In his homily, Pope Francis said that he believed that the conclusion of this stage in the Synod “it is important to look at the ‘principle and foundation’ from which everything begins ever anew: loving God with our whole life and loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
“Not our strategies, our human calculations, the ways of the world, but love of God and neighbor: that is the heart of everything,” he said.
Pope Francis emphasized that adoration and worship are “essential in the life of the Church.”
Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“To adore God means to acknowledge in faith that he alone is Lord and that our individual lives, the Church’s pilgrim way, and the ultimate outcome of history all depend on the tenderness of his love. He gives meaning to our lives,” he said.
“Those who worship God reject idols because whereas God liberates, idols enslave,” he added.
“We must constantly struggle against all types of idolatry; not only the worldly kinds, which often stem from vainglory, such as lust for success, self-centredness, greed for money — the devil enters through our pockets let us not forget — the enticements of careerism; but also those forms of idolatry disguised as spirituality: my own spirituality, my religious ideas, my pastoral skills.”
Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis said that being “a worshiping Church and a Church of service” entails “washing the feet of wounded humanity, accompanying those who are frail, weak and cast aside, going out lovingly to encounter the poor.”
Quoting St. John Chrysostom, he said: “The merciful man is as a harbor to those who are in need; and the harbor receives all who are escaping shipwreck, and frees them from danger, whether they be evil or good; whatsoever kind of men they be that are in peril, it receives them into its shelter. You also, when you see a man suffering shipwreck on land through poverty, do not sit in judgment on him, nor require explanations, but relieve his distress.”
Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29, 2023. Vatican Media
About 5,000 people attended the closing Mass for the Synod on Synodality’s 2023 assembly, according to the Vatican. The Mass concluded with the congregation singing the Marian hymn “Salve Regina.”
Pope Francis thanked all of the cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, and lay people from around the world who traveled to Rome to participate in the Synod. Next year, the delegates will return to the Vatican in October 2024 to take part in the second assembly to advise the pope on the theme: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.”
“In expressing my gratitude, I would also like to offer a prayer for all of us: may we grow in our worship of God and in our service to our neighbor. Worship and Service. May the Lord accompany us. Let us go forward with joy,” Pope Francis said.
An “official visit” between abortion-defender, gender-theory-promoter and head-of-state Joe Biden–and the pope. Great!
We are reminded of equally primitive times when another barbarian and cultural leader, Attila, was met by Pope Leo I in A.D. 452, in the River Mincio near Mantua, in an earlier official visit of sorts. And for some reason it was Attila who decided to reverse course, and not to sack Rome or violate the population.
It is recorded that Pope Leo came in grand procession, including a monstrance containing the Real Presence. “A procession of priests and monks…approached. It was being led by an old man with a white beard, dressed in white, upon a white steed.”
How might Catholicism be self-understood–or, instead, be compartmentalized and redefined–by the current visit? Will Eucharistic coherence be dissolved into the modernday monologue called dialogue? No record of Pope Leo giving or enabling Communion to Attila.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wasn’t going to act – but bluster only – before Pope Francis meets Biden and certainly won’t act subsequently.
Pelosi vindicated.
Meanwhile, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ continues to be received in any manner under the guise of indifferent bishops…1Cor. 11:27 be damned.
Pope Francis should be warned ahead of time That all Catholic Art,Icons,Statues,Cross’s and other images of the faithful. Be covered up or removed to the basement at wherever they meet.Nothing has changed since May 27th,2009 When Father Jenkins at Notre Dame set the templet on how Catholics behave when “The One We’ve Been Waiting For” enters the room.Obama/Biden Evil rolls on unabated.It’s how they roll.
If Pope Francis doesn’t talk to Biden about his sanctioning and funding the murders of the unborn, the Catholic Church is done. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age, and this will either signify that end or will confirm that Jesus isn’t with the Church. Please, God, even a Jesuit could understand the teaching Your Son gave us.
I can now hear the lamentations – or the silence – of the extremist rightist Catholics who feel they are the only Catholics and President Biden and Pope Francis are not.
Who are these ‘extremist rightist Catholics’ you claim in comments but don’t actually identify?
Is it extreme to demand that the Catholic president avoid the Holy Eucharist when he not only talks but uses his power to clearly destroy the Catholic Church’s infallible – by the Ordinary Magisterium-teachings on morality? Either the Church has the objective truth or it doesn’t. What of the grave sin of Scandal???
Pope Francis refuses clarity -and is proud of it- in not clarifying Church doctrine on morality. Confirmation of this is the self-determination of the Church in Germany as the most extreme example.
How about asking the Pope to be a Pope as understood in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
Optics are understood by CNA’s Gagliarducci, why his sources are necessarily secondary informants on both sides. Vatican and Washington seek to avoid an embarrassing, hypersuspect nullification of such a grand political religious encounter. Leo the Great and Attila nicely analogized by Beaulieu inspire added comment. How do they match Biden and Francis? Perhaps an answer might start with faithful Pope Francis devotees both modernist and ultramontanist, Pope Saint Francis I meets Emperor Constantine. For the devilish traditionalist [the Pope said so] devilishly rigid ideologue [similarly] we might imagine something similarly foolish, Leon Trotsky meets Martin Luther. Realistically, for those who love the Church we want, pray for a different outcome. Pope Francis today met President Biden with remarkably wonderful results. In a joint announcement to the world Francis first said due to the very favorable response to his recent comments condemning the sins of abortion and euthanasia, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to urge the President to reconsider his in effect duplicitous position on the practice of Catholicism and political expediency. After long discussion on the primacy of revealed truth compared to human law, that the inviolable sanctity of human life, a religious issue that is primarily a natural law first principle, and that the right to life is therefore a first principle justice issue and the basis of any and all jurisprudence – the President changed his previous views and agreed with the Pontiff assuring him he would no longer promote or advance abortion, euthanasia, and also transexuality [now pansexuality] since human life is sacred and inviolable. As ordained by God.
In yet another historic meeting, St. Francis confronted the Sultan Malek al-Kamil at Damietta on the Nile Delta, then under siege by an army of the Fifth Crusade. His message was the peace of Christ, more than the halfway house of humanistic fraternity…
In the Paradiso, Canto XI, Dante says that St. Francis actually sought martyrdom and, that failing this, he left. In the mid thirteenth century, fearful of the Mogul invasions, other Franciscans made their way to Mongolia in unsuccessful efforts to convert the Khan, and with the remote possibility of even joining in an alliance against Islam. One of these (John of Pian de Carpine, 1180?-1252) had been a companion of St. Francis (See Daniel Boorstin, “The Discoverers,” 1983).
But today, with the meetings of the perennial Catholic Church with Islam, China, and now the banner-carrier puppet for the abortion culture and gender theory—-already we have the betrayal of China, politic “pluralism” with Islam, and amnesiac sleep-walking with what’s left of the West.
How will any focus on such historic catastrophes—-also “seeds of truth”!—-survive the continental and yet internally fragmented note-taking of the Synod on Synodality (“walking together”)—-if the successor of the Apostles (!) remain cast only or “primarily as facilitators”?
How does a Pope confront an evil ruler who was not even elected legitimately and supports the murder of babies in the womb? We shall see, and it will tell us everything we need to know about Francis.
They are bound at the ideological hip. Tragically what is about to be boldly illustrated before our eyes will only serve to confirm what we already know. Shamelessness reigns.
The leftists are trying to use this exposure to the Pope to prove how much of a faithful Catholic Biden really is. When he is NOT. It would be smart of some Cardinal to clue in the Pope to this reality. They seek to get his approval in even a tacit way in order to move on along their own disordered agenda. This is not unlike the VERY poor deal the Vatican made with the rulers of China. This has benefited the Chinese church not at all. THIS visit will only do more damage to the Church in the US. Its a faint hope that maybe the Pope will tell Biden in no uncertain terms to shape up in regards to abortion. But I would not make any bets on that happening.
Transcript of the secret Biden – Francis Social Justice Warrior meeting:
“C’mon man! I’ve already pushed the most liberal abortion agenda, threw our borders wide open, and committed scandal in receiving the Eucharist. What more do you want?”
An “official visit” between abortion-defender, gender-theory-promoter and head-of-state Joe Biden–and the pope. Great!
We are reminded of equally primitive times when another barbarian and cultural leader, Attila, was met by Pope Leo I in A.D. 452, in the River Mincio near Mantua, in an earlier official visit of sorts. And for some reason it was Attila who decided to reverse course, and not to sack Rome or violate the population.
It is recorded that Pope Leo came in grand procession, including a monstrance containing the Real Presence. “A procession of priests and monks…approached. It was being led by an old man with a white beard, dressed in white, upon a white steed.”
How might Catholicism be self-understood–or, instead, be compartmentalized and redefined–by the current visit? Will Eucharistic coherence be dissolved into the modernday monologue called dialogue? No record of Pope Leo giving or enabling Communion to Attila.
A non-event if ever there was one.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wasn’t going to act – but bluster only – before Pope Francis meets Biden and certainly won’t act subsequently.
Pelosi vindicated.
Meanwhile, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ continues to be received in any manner under the guise of indifferent bishops…1Cor. 11:27 be damned.
Liberal meets Liberal.
Pope Francis should be warned ahead of time That all Catholic Art,Icons,Statues,Cross’s and other images of the faithful. Be covered up or removed to the basement at wherever they meet.Nothing has changed since May 27th,2009 When Father Jenkins at Notre Dame set the templet on how Catholics behave when “The One We’ve Been Waiting For” enters the room.Obama/Biden Evil rolls on unabated.It’s how they roll.
If Pope Francis doesn’t talk to Biden about his sanctioning and funding the murders of the unborn, the Catholic Church is done. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age, and this will either signify that end or will confirm that Jesus isn’t with the Church. Please, God, even a Jesuit could understand the teaching Your Son gave us.
I can now hear the lamentations – or the silence – of the extremist rightist Catholics who feel they are the only Catholics and President Biden and Pope Francis are not.
“Extremist rightist Catholics”…oh you must be referring to those who are normal and trying to survive your Woke World.
Who are these ‘extremist rightist Catholics’ you claim in comments but don’t actually identify?
Is it extreme to demand that the Catholic president avoid the Holy Eucharist when he not only talks but uses his power to clearly destroy the Catholic Church’s infallible – by the Ordinary Magisterium-teachings on morality? Either the Church has the objective truth or it doesn’t. What of the grave sin of Scandal???
Pope Francis refuses clarity -and is proud of it- in not clarifying Church doctrine on morality. Confirmation of this is the self-determination of the Church in Germany as the most extreme example.
How about asking the Pope to be a Pope as understood in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
You apparently have no idea how silly that is.
How sad.
Birds of a feather…
Optics are understood by CNA’s Gagliarducci, why his sources are necessarily secondary informants on both sides. Vatican and Washington seek to avoid an embarrassing, hypersuspect nullification of such a grand political religious encounter. Leo the Great and Attila nicely analogized by Beaulieu inspire added comment. How do they match Biden and Francis? Perhaps an answer might start with faithful Pope Francis devotees both modernist and ultramontanist, Pope Saint Francis I meets Emperor Constantine. For the devilish traditionalist [the Pope said so] devilishly rigid ideologue [similarly] we might imagine something similarly foolish, Leon Trotsky meets Martin Luther. Realistically, for those who love the Church we want, pray for a different outcome. Pope Francis today met President Biden with remarkably wonderful results. In a joint announcement to the world Francis first said due to the very favorable response to his recent comments condemning the sins of abortion and euthanasia, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to urge the President to reconsider his in effect duplicitous position on the practice of Catholicism and political expediency. After long discussion on the primacy of revealed truth compared to human law, that the inviolable sanctity of human life, a religious issue that is primarily a natural law first principle, and that the right to life is therefore a first principle justice issue and the basis of any and all jurisprudence – the President changed his previous views and agreed with the Pontiff assuring him he would no longer promote or advance abortion, euthanasia, and also transexuality [now pansexuality] since human life is sacred and inviolable. As ordained by God.
In yet another historic meeting, St. Francis confronted the Sultan Malek al-Kamil at Damietta on the Nile Delta, then under siege by an army of the Fifth Crusade. His message was the peace of Christ, more than the halfway house of humanistic fraternity…
In the Paradiso, Canto XI, Dante says that St. Francis actually sought martyrdom and, that failing this, he left. In the mid thirteenth century, fearful of the Mogul invasions, other Franciscans made their way to Mongolia in unsuccessful efforts to convert the Khan, and with the remote possibility of even joining in an alliance against Islam. One of these (John of Pian de Carpine, 1180?-1252) had been a companion of St. Francis (See Daniel Boorstin, “The Discoverers,” 1983).
But today, with the meetings of the perennial Catholic Church with Islam, China, and now the banner-carrier puppet for the abortion culture and gender theory—-already we have the betrayal of China, politic “pluralism” with Islam, and amnesiac sleep-walking with what’s left of the West.
How will any focus on such historic catastrophes—-also “seeds of truth”!—-survive the continental and yet internally fragmented note-taking of the Synod on Synodality (“walking together”)—-if the successor of the Apostles (!) remain cast only or “primarily as facilitators”?
Fraud meets fraud.
How does a Pope confront an evil ruler who was not even elected legitimately and supports the murder of babies in the womb? We shall see, and it will tell us everything we need to know about Francis.
They are bound at the ideological hip. Tragically what is about to be boldly illustrated before our eyes will only serve to confirm what we already know. Shamelessness reigns.
I already know everything that I need to know about Francis. There’s enough history already.
The leftists are trying to use this exposure to the Pope to prove how much of a faithful Catholic Biden really is. When he is NOT. It would be smart of some Cardinal to clue in the Pope to this reality. They seek to get his approval in even a tacit way in order to move on along their own disordered agenda. This is not unlike the VERY poor deal the Vatican made with the rulers of China. This has benefited the Chinese church not at all. THIS visit will only do more damage to the Church in the US. Its a faint hope that maybe the Pope will tell Biden in no uncertain terms to shape up in regards to abortion. But I would not make any bets on that happening.
Transcript of the secret Biden – Francis Social Justice Warrior meeting:
“C’mon man! I’ve already pushed the most liberal abortion agenda, threw our borders wide open, and committed scandal in receiving the Eucharist. What more do you want?”
Hoping for an on-spot excommunication. The “why” list is really long.
I am certainly glad I embraced Catholicism before reading some of these responses to this article. Sad