Pope Francis spoke about the Christian roots of Hungary during his general audience in St. Peter's Square on May 3, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, May 3, 2023 / 02:21 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Wednesday that freedom is under threat in Europe, as people choose consumerism and individualism over building families and community.
Even today, “freedom is under threat,” he said May 3. “Above all with kid gloves, by a consumerism that anesthetizes, where one is content with a little material well-being and, forgetting the past, one ‘floats’ in a present made to the measure of the individual.”
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,” he underlined.
“But when the only thing that counts is thinking about oneself and doing what one likes, the roots suffocate,” he warned. “This is a problem throughout Europe, where dedicating oneself to others, community feeling, the beauty of dreaming together and creating large families are in crisis. All of Europe is in crisis.”
Pope Francis spoke about Europe, its roots, and the problem of consumerism, during his weekly audience with the public.
Speaking about his visit to Budapest, Hungary, April 28-30, he asked those present at the audience to think about “the importance of preserving roots, because only by going deep will the branches grow upwards and bear fruit.”
He began his reflection on the three-day trip to Hungary’s capital city by recalling the European country’s Christian roots and the ways those were tested in the 20th century.
“Their faith, as we have heard from the Word of God, has been tested by fire,” he said, noting the atheist persecution in the 1900s, when “Christians were struck down violently, with bishops, priests, religious, and lay people killed or deprived of their freedom.”
“But while attempts were made to cut down the tree of faith, the roots remained intact,” he said, pointing out the steadfastness of the “hidden Church” in Hungary.
“In Hungary, this latest persecution, the Communist oppression was preceded by the Nazi oppression, with the tragic deportation of a large Jewish population,” the pope added.
“But in that atrocious genocide, many distinguished themselves by their resistance and their ability to protect the victims; and this was possible because the roots of living together were firm,” he said. “Thus the common bonds of faith and people helped the return of freedom.”
Quoting St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis also spoke about Hungary’s “many saints and heroes, surrounded by hosts of humble and hard-working people.”
He noted, in particular, the devotion of Hungary’s St. Stephen, to the Virgin Mary.
“I want to recall, at the beginning of the month of May, how very devoted the Hungarians are to the Holy Mother of God,” he said.
“Consecrated to her by the first king, St. Stephen, they used to address her without pronouncing her name, out of respect, calling her only by the titles of Queen,” Pope Francis said. “To the Queen of Hungary, therefore, we entrust that dear country; to the Queen of Peace, we entrust the building of bridges in the world; to the Queen of Heaven, whom we acclaim at this Easter time, we entrust our hearts that they may be rooted in the love of God.”
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Vatican City, May 13, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Jesus has transformed the human experience of prayer, Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednesday.
Speaking via livestream due to the coronavirus crisis, the pope said May 13 that thanks to Jesus, Christians can approach God without fear, addressing him as “Father.”
“Christianity has banished from the bond with God any ‘feudal’ relationship. In the heritage of our faith there are no expressions such as subjection, slavery or vassalage; rather words such as covenant, friendship, promise, communion, closeness,” he said.
In his address from the library of the Apostolic Palace, the pope continued his cycle of catechesis on prayer, which he began last week.
He noted that prayer is practiced by “people of every religion, and probably also to those who profess none.” It is born in what spiritual writers call “the heart,” our innermost being.
“To pray, then, in us is not something peripheral. It is not some secondary and marginal faculty of ours, but it is the most intimate mystery of ourselves. It is this mystery that prays,” he said.
Prayer, he continued, leads us beyond ourselves. It is the voice of an “I” searching for a “You”.
He said: “The prayer of the Christian is born instead from a revelation: the ‘You’ has not remained shrouded in mystery, but has entered into a relationship with us. Christianity is the religion that continuously celebrates the ‘manifestation’ of God, that is, his epiphany.”
He reflected on Jesus’ speech to his disciples at the Last Supper in which he addresses them as “friends,” saying: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you” (John 15:16).
The pope commented: “But this is a blank cheque: ‘Whatever you ask of my Father in my name, I give you’!”
“God is the friend, the ally, the bridegroom. In prayer, one can establish a relationship of confidence with Him, so much so that in the ‘Our Father’ Jesus taught us to ask Him a series of questions,” he said.
“We can ask God everything, everything; explain everything, tell everything. It does not matter if in our relationship with God we feel at fault: we are not good friends, we are not grateful children, we are not faithful spouses. He continues to love us.”
He noted that Jesus showed this definitively at the Last Supper when he said “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Luke 22:20).
“In that gesture Jesus anticipates in the Upper Room the mystery of the Cross. God is a faithful ally: if men stop loving, He continues to love, even if love leads him to Calvary. God is always close to the door of our heart and waits for us to open it to him,” he said.
“And sometimes he knocks on the heart, but he is not intrusive: he waits. God’s patience with us is the patience of a father, of one who loves us so much. I’d say, it’s the patience of a father and a mother together. Always close to our heart, and when he knocks, he does it with tenderness and with a lot of love.”
He concluded: “Let’s all try praying like this, entering into the mystery of the Covenant. To put ourselves in prayer in God’s merciful arms, to feel enveloped by that mystery of happiness which is the Trinitarian life, to feel like guests who did not deserve so much honor. And to repeat to God, in the amazement of prayer: is it possible that you know only love?”
“He does not know hate. He is hated, but He does not know hate. He knows only love. This is the God we pray to. This is the incandescent core of all Christian prayer. The God of love, our Father who awaits and accompanies us.”
In his greetings to different language groups after his catechesis, the pope noted that May 13 is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, as well as the anniversary of the attempted assassination of St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981.
Addressing Polish Catholics, he said: “In our prayer we ask God, through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for peace for the world, the end of the pandemic, the spirit of penance and our conversion.”
A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. / Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
As war rages in Ukraine and the pandemic lingers, Michelangelo’s celebrated Vatican Pietà — and two lesser-known figures he also sculpted — can be deeply meaningful to a pain-wracked world, says a priest and art historian.
Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Pietà depicts a larger-than-life Virgin Mary as she mourns her crucified Son, Jesus, lying limp in her lap. The masterpiece, carved out of Carrara marble, was finished before the Italian artist’s 25th birthday.
Over the course of more than 60 years, Michelangelo created two more sculptures on the same theme — and a new exhibit in the Italian city of Florence brings the three works together for the first time.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The exhibit opened at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo on Feb. 24, and includes the Florentine Pietà, also called the Deposition, which Michelangelo worked on from 1547 to 1555, and exact casts, or copies, of the Vatican Pietà and Milan Pietà — which could not be moved from their locations.
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA by phone that the gallery wanted to do something to show its solidarity with a Feb. 23-27 meeting of mayors and Catholic bishops.
“The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their children not knowing if their children will survive.”
A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
The 75-year-old Verdon is an expert in art history and sacred art. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, but has lived in Italy for more than 50 years.
“So many of the issues that face the Mediterranean world today are forms of suffering,” he said, “and so this ideal series of images of the God who becomes man [and] accepts suffering, and whose Mother receives his tortured body into her arms, these are deeply meaningful.”
“All human situations of suffering and exclusion invite a comparison with the suffering of Christ, the death of Christ. And [the Pietà] condenses and concentrates a devout reflection on that,” the priest said.
The lesser-known Pietàs
Many years after Michelangelo completed the Pietà displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica, he began his Florentine Pietà, which depicts Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary receiving the body of Christ as it is removed from the Cross.
The 72-year-old Michelangelo worked on the sculpture for eight years before eventually abandoning it in 1555.
Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà, part of the permanent collection at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
He probably began the Rondanini Pietà, which is in Milan, in 1553. Michelangelo continued to work on the piece until just days before his death in 1564.
According to a press release from the city of Florence, “near his own death, Michelangelo meditated deeply on the Passion of Christ.”
One way this is known is because shortly before his death, Michelangelo gave a drawing of the Pietà to Vittoria Colonna, the Marquess of Pescara, on which he wrote: “They think not there how much of blood it costs.”
The line, from Canto 29 of Paradiso, one of the books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, is also the subtitle of the Florence exhibition.
A perfect cast of Michelangelo’s unfinished Rondanini Pietà, on display at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Bringing the three Pietàs together into one exhibit gives the viewer the chance to see “the full range of Michelangelo’s reflection on this subject across 60-some years,” Verdon explained.
Not only is the Renaissance artist’s stylistic evolution on display, but also his spiritual development.
“We know that [Michelangelo] was a religious man,” Verdon said. “His interpretation of religious subjects, even in his youth, is particularly sensitive and well informed.”
According to the priest, Michelangelo seems to have had a range of theological influences.
“His older brother was a Dominican friar and in Michelangelo’s old age we’re told that he could still remember the preaching of Savonarola,” Verdon said.
Girolamo Savonarola was a popular Dominican friar, preacher, and reformer active in Renaissance Florence. He spoke against the ruling Medici family and the excesses of the time, and in 1498 he was hanged and his body burned after a trial by Church and civil authorities.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In the beginning Savonarola was filled with zeal, piety, and self-sacrifice for the regeneration of religious life. He was led to offend against these virtues by his fanaticism, obstinacy, and disobedience. He was not a heretic in matters of faith.”
“That’s an interesting page in cultural history,” Verdon said, “because the early Pietà is done in effect shortly after the Savonarola period, or in the Savonarola period.”
“So we’re talking about an artist to whom this subject means a great deal, and which he is also equipped to treat.”
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The artist’s last Pietàs were created, instead, in the context of the Counter-Reformation.
The council, he explained, “had to rebut the heretical ideas of Protestant reformers, and so it insists, in a decree on the Eucharist published in 1551, that indeed in the bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present.”
“So Michelangelo, who was personally religious, and who, especially in his later period, worked exclusively for the Vatican, was therefore very close to the changes occurring in Catholic thought, Catholic theology, Catholic devotion,” Verdon said.
The exhibit “really gives us the opportunity to gauge the evolution of a theme from one time to a very different one, from the end of the 15th, to the mid- 16th century.”
The St. Peter’s Basilica Pietà
Verdon said that the Vatican Pietà is the only one of the three to remain in the place it was intended for — above an altar in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The sculpture was originally created for the 4th-century Constantinian basilica, the “Old St. Peter’s Basilica,” which was replaced by the Renaissance basilica standing today.
In Michelangelo’s Pietà, the Virgin Mary holds her Son as she did at his birth. . Paweesit via Flickr.
Viewing art in a church is not the same as viewing it in a museum, the art historian noted.
“Obviously it is different, especially for the fact that the Vatican Pietà has remained on an altar, above an altar, and so the body of Christ depicted by Michelangelo would have been seen in relation to the sacramental body of Christ in the Eucharist.”
“This was true of the first situation in the Old St. Peter’s, the work was on an altar, and it’s true of the present collocazione [position],” he said.
“And actually,” the priest continued, “the same thing was true of both of the other Pietàs. They were intended by Michelangelo to go on an altar in a chapel in a Roman church where he expected to be buried. We think the church was Santa Maria Maggiore.”
“So the relationship of the image of Christ’s body with the Eucharistic Corpus Christi is very important,” he said.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The copies of the Vatican and Milan Pietàs are on loan from the Vatican Museums, and will be in Florence for the Three Pietàs exhibit through Aug. 1.
“And in our museum, in the Florence Opera del Duomo Museum, we have put the Pietà, our Pietà, on a base that evokes an altar, as the very specific Church meaning [of an altar] has to do with the Sacrament,” Verdon said.
Vatican City, Feb 28, 2025 / 13:20 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis on Friday urged liturgists to accompany bishops and the faithful communities of their dioceses with humility and discretion.In a Feb. 28 message sent from Ge… […]
14 Comments
“Freedom is under threat in Europe.” He just noticed that? It’s under threat EVERYWHERE.
I’m sorry to be so sarcastic but with every passing day it becomes increasingly difficult for me to take this man seriously.
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,”
This is the most nonsensical statement ever made by any human being in human history. An evil result “persecutes” a presumed good, subsequently described as an evil for promoting the evil that gave rise to the evil that performed the persecution in the first place.
Francis refuses to understand how evil exists in the human experience because his ego is so consumed with ignoring how the moral absolutes he often trivializes despite their origins from the mind of God. He is a secular elitist at heart and believes the world’s progressives can engineer evil out of existence with enough attacks on impersonal forces requiring structural reforms rather than personal redemptive actions.
Contemplating the rising storm clouds in 1940, the Anglo-Catholic T.S. Eliot already mourned over the loss of freedom–and truth–across what had once been Christendom. He made some initial proposals for a “Community of Christians” buoyed in part of Education. He wrote:
“[in this essay] I was less concerned with the more superficial, through important differences between the regimens of different nations [Britain contrasted with Germany and Russia], than with the more profound differences between pagan and Christian society [….]
“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion [….]
“It is not enthusiasm [he cites a flicker of Anglican “revivalism” in 1938], but dogma [!], that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society” (“The Idea of a Christian Society,” 1940).
In our now more septic state of paganism, wondering here if progressive and big-tent Synodality in 2023 (where even rudimentary sexual morality is up for grabs) will even try to catch up with Eliot in 1940?
I suppose we need to credit Pope Francis for finally recognizing that freedom is under threat in Europe (and not just there!) He does need to investigate the source a little more rigorously. It comes not from some abstract consumerism, however evil and empty that theory is. Rather it originates from the ideas and actions of his friends and allies in the EU, the Democrat Party, the international banking cartels, the tech and pharmaceutical industries, and other pillars of the Great Reset for which he serves as chaplain.
Materialism/consumerism is responsible for Ireland losing its Catholic soul & it set the stage for outside interests to successfully lobby for the acceptance of feticide, homosexual unions, & the rest of it. “Hate” laws are just the next chapter.
Sadly, the Protestant North has held on to their traditional views on family & marriage a whole lot better than the Catholic South has. I never thought I’d be praising Ian Paisley, but that sort of stubbornness has its virtues.
Well, yes, I can sort of see the progression of regressions you delineate here, although consumerism by itself did not bring Ireland or us to this unhappy place. A large dose of cultural Marxism it its many versions – feminism, multiculturalism, critical race theory and others – was added to the mix to make that happen. I will grant that consumerism helped to weaken resistance to this posion.
Freedom is realized in the exercise of our human rights, faith, family, sufficient and secure living conditions. Pope Francis’ policy on migration, largely from Muslim Africa and the Near East, described by Vat Secy of State Card Parolin to Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni as, Welcome, Protection, Promotion and Integration – are antithetical to those rights. As they are to the rights of Americans with Pres Biden’s open border policy promoted by our USCCB in fealty to Pope Francis. The open border EU policy and the Biden administration’s policy is highly favored by Francis and actually defines his definition of Modernism.
Giorgia Meloni is strongly opposed to this policy which puts her at odds with Vatican policy. She argues we’re stripping Africa of its geological resources and leaving little in terms of development, while simultaneously stripping Africa of its vital human resources, causing irreparable damage to migrants exploited by Mafia, [in America by the Mexican drug cartels] unable, unwilling to integrate, hostile to Christianity [actually polls indicate most S American migrants renounce their Catholicism].
If the Vatican were prepared to alleviate the human misery of world migration Pope Francis should use his influence with his friends George Soros, Bill Gates to foster investment in the impoverished, exploited areas of Africa and the Near East. Then ‘consumerism’ might become a blessing for those peoples.
“Freedom is under threat in Europe.” He just noticed that? It’s under threat EVERYWHERE.
I’m sorry to be so sarcastic but with every passing day it becomes increasingly difficult for me to take this man seriously.
Sarcasm is likely the most polite response possible, especially in reply to one who is very much at the heart of the problem.
“This is the dangerous persecution of modernity that advances consumerism,”
This is the most nonsensical statement ever made by any human being in human history. An evil result “persecutes” a presumed good, subsequently described as an evil for promoting the evil that gave rise to the evil that performed the persecution in the first place.
Francis refuses to understand how evil exists in the human experience because his ego is so consumed with ignoring how the moral absolutes he often trivializes despite their origins from the mind of God. He is a secular elitist at heart and believes the world’s progressives can engineer evil out of existence with enough attacks on impersonal forces requiring structural reforms rather than personal redemptive actions.
May the Almighty have mercy on us. I’ll pray today for unity in the Church from one of the seven images of Fatima’s Madonna, in Venice.
Conversion is an ongoing and a never-ending opportunity. “Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Contemplating the rising storm clouds in 1940, the Anglo-Catholic T.S. Eliot already mourned over the loss of freedom–and truth–across what had once been Christendom. He made some initial proposals for a “Community of Christians” buoyed in part of Education. He wrote:
“[in this essay] I was less concerned with the more superficial, through important differences between the regimens of different nations [Britain contrasted with Germany and Russia], than with the more profound differences between pagan and Christian society [….]
“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion [….]
“It is not enthusiasm [he cites a flicker of Anglican “revivalism” in 1938], but dogma [!], that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society” (“The Idea of a Christian Society,” 1940).
In our now more septic state of paganism, wondering here if progressive and big-tent Synodality in 2023 (where even rudimentary sexual morality is up for grabs) will even try to catch up with Eliot in 1940?
I suppose we need to credit Pope Francis for finally recognizing that freedom is under threat in Europe (and not just there!) He does need to investigate the source a little more rigorously. It comes not from some abstract consumerism, however evil and empty that theory is. Rather it originates from the ideas and actions of his friends and allies in the EU, the Democrat Party, the international banking cartels, the tech and pharmaceutical industries, and other pillars of the Great Reset for which he serves as chaplain.
So this explains a lot! You know how Bergoglio always seems to be trying to destroy the Church?
That’s not what he’s doing at all!
He’s just trying to give Catholics enough adversity to shake us out of our lethargy!
Makes perfect sense!
LOL!
Is consumerism to blame for the unbelievable new “hate speech” law in Ireland? Try harder, Holy Father!
Materialism/consumerism is responsible for Ireland losing its Catholic soul & it set the stage for outside interests to successfully lobby for the acceptance of feticide, homosexual unions, & the rest of it. “Hate” laws are just the next chapter.
Sadly, the Protestant North has held on to their traditional views on family & marriage a whole lot better than the Catholic South has. I never thought I’d be praising Ian Paisley, but that sort of stubbornness has its virtues.
Well, yes, I can sort of see the progression of regressions you delineate here, although consumerism by itself did not bring Ireland or us to this unhappy place. A large dose of cultural Marxism it its many versions – feminism, multiculturalism, critical race theory and others – was added to the mix to make that happen. I will grant that consumerism helped to weaken resistance to this posion.
Freedom is realized in the exercise of our human rights, faith, family, sufficient and secure living conditions. Pope Francis’ policy on migration, largely from Muslim Africa and the Near East, described by Vat Secy of State Card Parolin to Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni as, Welcome, Protection, Promotion and Integration – are antithetical to those rights. As they are to the rights of Americans with Pres Biden’s open border policy promoted by our USCCB in fealty to Pope Francis. The open border EU policy and the Biden administration’s policy is highly favored by Francis and actually defines his definition of Modernism.
Giorgia Meloni is strongly opposed to this policy which puts her at odds with Vatican policy. She argues we’re stripping Africa of its geological resources and leaving little in terms of development, while simultaneously stripping Africa of its vital human resources, causing irreparable damage to migrants exploited by Mafia, [in America by the Mexican drug cartels] unable, unwilling to integrate, hostile to Christianity [actually polls indicate most S American migrants renounce their Catholicism].
If the Vatican were prepared to alleviate the human misery of world migration Pope Francis should use his influence with his friends George Soros, Bill Gates to foster investment in the impoverished, exploited areas of Africa and the Near East. Then ‘consumerism’ might become a blessing for those peoples.
It’s true that Latin American immigrants are increasingly non Catholic but many are Pentecostal rather than non believers.
From this man, a hymn to freedom rings hollow.