Pope Francis considers it an ‘incoherence’ that President Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights

Pilgrims pray in front of St. Peter’s Basilica / Hannah Brockhaus/CNA

Rome, Italy, May 26, 2022 / 08:37 am (CNA).

When St. Philip Neri came to Rome from Florence in 1533, he encountered a city in upheaval. The Sack of Rome six years prior had left famine and plague in its wake. The Protestant Reformation was in full swing and the Church was rife with corruption.

The young Philip, who would spend around 16 years in Rome as a layman before becoming a priest, soon dedicated himself to caring for the city’s sick and poor.

The saint, whose feast day falls on May 26, also realized that Rome’s people were suffering from a spiritual sickness and tiredness as well, and so he set out to reinvigorate Catholics with the joy of the faith through song and dance — and jokes.

Part of St. Philip’s outreach was the revival of the Seven Churches visit. He may not be the originator of the idea of the pilgrimage to some of Rome’s most important churches, but he is credited with renewing its popularity.

After it fell out of use once again, St. Philip’s congregation of secular priests, the Oratory, revived it in the 1960s, including holding the walk one night each year, as close as possible to the way the saint would have done it.

After a two-year pause, on the evening of May 13 into the morning of May 14, around 800 people walked 15 and a half miles in the footsteps of the saint and his followers.

Police officers in cruisers drove ahead of the urban pilgrimage to block traffic as a sea of Catholics from around Italy crossed busy intersections and passed Friday night diners while praying the rosary in unison and singing the Taizé chant “Laudate Dominum,” whose words say in Latin, “Praise the Lord, all people, Alleluia.”

The rosary was prayed four times during the pilgrimage, which took almost 10 hours to complete, including stops for a sack dinner at midnight and short lessons on the virtues led by priests of the Oratory.

The seven basilicas were chosen by the saint for their importance to Christianity, and the walk on May 13-14 followed the path laid out in a 16th-century document almost certainly seen and used by St. Philip — and likely even written by him.

This document, recreated and printed into a booklet for use on the annual pilgrimage today, gives St. Philip’s guidance for those making the Seven Churches visit.

“Before setting out to make this holy Pilgrimage, each of the Brethren must lift up his mind to God, offering him the sincerity of his heart, with the purpose of desiring the sole glory of his divine Majesty in all actions, and especially in this one,” it says.

Those participating can also earn an indulgence under the usual conditions, and are asked to pray for specific intentions. These include praying for the penance of sins, the amendment of lukewarmness and negligence in the service of God, in thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins, for the pope and the Church, for sinners still in the darkness of an evil life, for the conversion of heretics, schismatics, and infidels, and for the holy souls in purgatory.

The pilgrimage began at Chiesa Nuova, the church built by St. Philip for the Oratory, and proceeded to St. Peter’s Basilica, reaching the site of St. Peter’s martyrdom at sunset.

From there, the group of 800 people followed a path along the Tiber River to stop at the Basilica of St. Bartholomew on the Island (not one of the official seven churches) on the way to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

Each of the seven churches is associated with a moment of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. At each stop, an Oratory priest preached on a virtue and its opposing vice, before everyone joined in a prayer for an increase in that virtue and for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The virtues and vices were abstinence against gluttony, patience against ire, chastity against lust, generosity against avarice, fervor of spirit against acedia, charity against envy, and humility against pride.

After the Basilica of St. Paul, the pilgrimage followed an ancient street still called Seven Churches Way to arrive at the catacombs and the Basilica of St. Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr.

As a layman in Rome, St. Philip Neri used to visit the catacombs of St. Sebastian to pray. One night in the catacombs, about 10 years after moving to Rome, as he prayed, a mystical ball of fire entered his mouth and went down into his chest, exploding his ribs and doubling the size of his heart with love of God.

St. Philip was changed, both physically and spiritually, by this event, which he only revealed shortly before his death.

Pilgrims next arrived at the Domine Quo Vadis Church after a silent, moonlit walk through the ancient Appian Way Park, flanked by the silhouettes of Italian cypress trees.

The small church of medieval origin marks the spot where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to St. Peter as he was fleeing Rome to avoid martyrdom.

Peter asked Jesus, “Domine quo vadis?” (“Lord, where are you going?”), to which Christ said, “Venio Romam iterum crucifigi,” (“I am coming to Rome to be crucified again.”) This rebuke caused Peter to turn around and face his own martyrdom.

The next official pilgrimage church was the Basilica of St. John Lateran, followed by a 10-minute walk to the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

The Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls was the penultimate stop. The church, which has the tomb of St. Lawrence, is located next to Rome’s Verano Monumental Cemetery, and was included among the Seven Churches by St. Philip Neri, Father Botta said, as a reminder of mortality.

The final stretch of the walk passed through Rome’s main train station, Termini, where pilgrims sang the Marian antiphon “Salve Regina.”

The pilgrimage finished shortly before 6:00 a.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the traditional end of the walk, where the “Salve Regina” hymn was sung again in honor of the Virgin Mary.

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The artist Yan Pei-Ming was photographed in his Paris studio in 2016. / Credit:Alfred Weidinger|Flickr|CC BY 2.0

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2025 / 14:20 pm (CNA).
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Pope Francis blesses the faithful at the Jubilee of the Sick in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, on April 6, 2025, as his personal nurse, Massimo Strappetti, assists him in the wheelchair. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Vatican City, Apr 23, 2025 / 10:30 am (CNA).

Having cared for the aging Pope Francis as his personal nurse since 2022, Italian nurse Massimiliano Strappetti was among the few people who saw the Holy Father moments before his death on Easter Monday.

Before being appointed Pope Francis’ personal nurse in August 2022, Strappetti was the nursing coordinator for the Vatican’s health department. He started working in the Vatican in 2002 after having worked eight years in the intensive care unit of Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

Strappetti’s appointment came very soon after he accompanied the Holy Father on a difficult apostolic journey to Canada from July 24–30, 2022. Throughout 2022, the Holy Father struggled with knee problems.

From August 2022 onward, Strappetti would be seen by the pope’s side at almost every one of the pontiff’s public appearances, including his weekly Wednesday general audiences and Sunday Angelus addresses in Rome and the Vatican as well as on his several apostolic journeys abroad.  

The pope’s last words and final greetings were reportedly addressed to Strappetti, the man he trusted to care for him throughout the multiple illnesses and health emergencies he endured in the last years of his life. 

“Thank you for bringing me back to the Square,” the pope is reported to have told the nurse. Stappetti, a husband and father known for his generosity toward others, brought the Holy Father in a wheelchair to the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to deliver his final Easter Sunday urbi et orbi address on April 20.

After the blessing, the pope turned to Strappetti for his opinion, asking: “Do you think I can manage it?” before going down to the square to greet the 50,000 people from his popemobile, Vatican News reported. 

The next day, the pope’s health began to deteriorate at around 5:30 a.m. on Easter Monday morning. An hour later, the Holy Father made a “gesture of farewell with his hand” to Strappetti before falling into a coma, after suffering a stroke, in his bed in his Casa Santa Marta apartment, Vatican News reported. 

Strappetti closely accompanied the 88-year-old pope during his convalescence in the Vatican by providing round-the-clock care for the pope in his home following his March 23 release from the hospital after 38 days in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Dr. Sergio Alfieri, head of the Gemelli Hospital’s medical team that cared for the pope, said they followed the pope’s clear order, through Strappetti, to “try everything, let’s not give up” during two critical moments when they needed to decide whether to continue or stop treatment.  

Prior to working more closely with the Holy Father as his personal health care assistant, Strappetti was among the medical staff who, in the summer of 2021, advised the pope to undergo testing regarding issues with his colon. On July 4 of that year, the Holy Father underwent a three-hour operation that removed part of his colon. 

Later in 2021, following the colon operation and 11-day hospitalization in Gemelli, Pope Francis praised Strappetti as “a man with a lot of experience” who “saved my life,” in an interview with Spanish radio station COPE.

“Now I can eat everything, which was not possible before with the diverticula. I can eat everything. I still have the postoperative medications, because the brain has to register that it has 33 centimeters [12 inches] less intestine,” the pope quipped in the interview.

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