St. Peter’s Square was illuminated by candlelight the night of Saturday, May 20, 2023, as pilgrims prayed the rosary in a procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2023 / 13:15 pm (CNA).
St. Peter’s Basilica has extended its usual hours of daily Eucharistic adoration this month as the Synod on Synodality assembly meets at the Vatican.
The Vatican announced on Oct. 4 that the basilica will hold an additional hour of adoration in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays to offer the synod delegates and the faithful the chance to pray during the XVI Ordinary Synod of Bishops Oct. 4–29.
St. Peter’s Basilica will also host weekly candlelight rosary processions at 9 p.m. each Saturday in the month of October, a month traditionally dedicated to the prayer of the rosary, as it did in May.
Cardinal Mario Grech, the general secretary of the synod, will preside over the month’s first candlelight rosary procession on Oct. 7, the Feast of the Holy Rosary. Synod delegates have been invited to take part in the processions, which will include prayers for the synod assembly.
According to St. Peter’s Basilica, the Eucharistic Holy Hours and Masses scheduled for the synod delegates in St. Peter’s Basilica are open to the general public. The synod Masses will take place in the basilica on Oct. 9, 13, 18, and 23 at 8:45 a.m.
Any Catholics who wish to attend Masses, adoration, or confession in St. Peter’s Basilica can skip the line to enter the basilica using the new prayer entrance.
St. Peter’s Basilica usually offers continuous Eucharistic adoration in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament from Monday to Saturday from about 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., as well as 10 daily Masses on most weekdays.
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The logo of the 2025 Jubilee. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization is organizing the Catholic Church’s next Holy Year around the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Sep 17, 2022 / 05:12 am (CNA).
The Vatican will hold a contest to choose the original musical composition for the official hymn of the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year.
The Dicastery for Evangelization announced the sacred music writing competition Sept. 17. The contest will open for submissions early next year.
Entries, the dicastery said, should set to music a text in Italian by the theologian Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri. After the winning music is chosen next year, the evangelization office will translate the text into other major languages.
The text is titled “Pilgrims of Hope,” after the theme of the 2025 Jubilee. The refrain, translated into English by CNA, is: “Living flame of my hope, May this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life, On my way I trust in Thee.”
According to the regulations set out by the Vatican, the musical composition should include a score for voice and organ, and be able to be sung both by church congregations and by four-part church choirs.
The competition will be open for submissions from Jan. 16 to March 25, 2023, and the winner will be chosen by a judging committee in collaboration with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. Full regulations can be found on the webpage of the 2025 Jubilee.
The logo for the 2025 Jubilee Year was also chosen after a worldwide competition, and unveiled in June.
A Jubilee is a special Holy Year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. An ordinary Jubilee typically takes place every 25 years, though a pope may call for additional Jubilees, as Pope Francis did with the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy from 2015-2016.
The last ordinary Jubilee was the Great Jubilee of 2000, which was held under Saint Pope John Paul II and had the theme “Christ Yesterday, Today, Forever.”
In its announcement of the hymn-writing competition Saturday, the Dicastery for Evangelization said that “the Sacred Scriptures are steeped in song, and the Psalms are a striking example: the prayers of the people of Israel were written to be sung, and it was in song that the most human events were presented before the Lord.”
“The tradition of the Church has continued this, making music and song one of the lungs of its liturgy,” the dicastery said.
The evangelization office, which is responsible for organizing the Jubilee, said “many themes of the Holy Year are woven into the text” of the hymn prepared by Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri, who is the former dean of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family in Rome.
“The motto, ‘Pilgrims of Hope,’” it said, “is best echoed biblically in some pages from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 60). The themes of creation, fraternity, God’s tenderness and hope in our destination resonate in a language, which although not ‘technically’ theological, is in substance and in the allusions, so that it rings eloquently in the ears of our time.”
The full lyrics of what will become the official hymn of the 2025 Jubilee can be found below. It has been translated into English from the Italian original by CNA.
Pilgrims of Hope
Living flame of my hope may this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life on the way I trust in Thee.
Every tongue, people and nation finds light in your Word. Sons and daughters scattered and fragile are embraced in your beloved Son.
Living flame of my hope may this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life on the way I trust in Thee.
God watches us, tender and patient: the dawn of a new future rises. New Heavens Earth made new: the Spirit of Life moves walls.
Living flame of my hope may this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life on the way I trust in Thee.
Lift up your eyes, move with the wind, speed up your step: God comes, in time. See the Son who became Man: thousands upon thousands find the way.
Living flame of my hope may this song reach up to Thee! Eternal womb of infinite life on the way I trust in Thee.
Bishop Yao Shun of Jining and Bishop Yang Yongqiang of Zhouchun (right) of the People’s Republic of China at the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican in October 2023. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Oct 8, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
The Synod on Synodality, meant to be a moment of encounter and dialogue for the global Church, has provided a venue for Catholic bishops from mainland China and Taiwan to meet together.
Bishop Norbert Pu is the Catholic Church’s first bishop born in Taiwan. The 66-year-old bishop of Chiayi is a delegate in the nearly monthlong synod assembly as a representative of the Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference of Taiwan.
In an interview with CNA, Pu said he is most looking forward to getting to know the different bishops, cardinals, and synod delegates from other parts of the world gathered at the Vatican for the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of Bishops.
Bishop Norbert Pu speaks to CNA at the Vatican, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. Credit: EWTN News
Pu noted that he had already met with the two bishops from mainland China taking part in the synod and plans to meet with them again.
“It’s very important to dialogue with them, to respect each other. I think it’s good … not only for the Chinese, for the whole Church,” the Taiwanese bishop said.
Bishop Antonio Yao Shun of Jining, the first bishop consecrated in China under the terms of the Sino-Vatican agreement, represented the Church in China at the synod assembly in October 2023 along with Chinese Archbishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang before the two suddenly departed early without explanation.
Yao has said that many of the participants in last year’s synod assembly “showed interest in the development of the Church in China, eager to know more and to pray for us.”
The synod also provided an opportunity for the bishops from the People’s Republic of China to spend time with the bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Stephen Chow.
During last year’s synod assembly, the cardinal and the two bishops even took a brief trip together to Naples where they offered Mass at the Chiesa della Sacra Famiglia dei Cinesi (Church of the Holy Family of the Chinese), a church built in 1732 as part of an institute founded by Pope Clement XII to train Chinese seminarians and teach missionaries the Chinese language to help with the evangelization of China.
A new synod delegate from China
For this year’s assembly, Yao has been replaced by Chinese Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu of Mindong diocese in China’s southern Fujian province.
Zhan Silu, 63, was formerly excommunicated for having been ordained a bishop without a papal mandate in Beijing in 2000. His excommunication was lifted in 2018 when the Vatican signed a historic provisional agreement with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops.
When Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich was asked why Yao had been replaced by Zhan Silu, the relator general of the synod replied: “The Secretariat of State communicated the names to us, but we have no other information on the matter,” according to Asia News.
Without Yao, Archbishop Yang, 54, is the synod veteran among the two Chinese bishops. Since participating in last year’s synod assembly, Yang has been transferred to the Archdiocese of Hangzhou, a move that took place “within the framework of dialogue” of the provisional agreement with China, according to the Vatican. The change elevated him to the rank of archbishop.
Yang was ordained a bishop with Vatican approval in 2010 and served as the bishop of Zhoucun in mainland China’s Shandong Province from 2013 to June 2024.
He participated in the 2023 National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body that is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s united front system, where it was decided that the Catholic Church should integrate its thought with the party and unite more closely to Xi Jinping, according to the official website of the Catholic Patriotic Association.
Zhan Silu and Yang are among the 368 voting delegates taking part in the second synod assembly at the Vatican Oct. 2–27.
The synod is taking place amid the ongoing dialogue between Beijing and Rome on the appointment of bishops. The Vatican has yet to announce if it renewed its provisional agreement with China, which is expected to have been renewed this fall for the third time since it was first signed in 2018.
Vatican-Taiwan relations
During the first week of the assembly, some synod delegates took a break from the day’s meetings to join in the celebration of Taiwan’s 113th National Day at a reception organized by the Embassy of the Republic of China to the Holy See just down the street from St. Peter’s Basilica.
Cardinals and others enjoy a celebration of Taiwan’s 113th National Day at a reception organized by the Embassy of the Republic of China to the Holy See in Vatican City, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. Credit: Embassy of the Republic of China to the Holy See
Vatican City State is the only remaining country in Europe that recognizes Taiwan as a country.
The Holy See has had formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, formally called the Republic of China (ROC), since 1922, while the Church has not had an official diplomatic presence on the mainland People’s Republic of China (PRC) since it was officially expelled by Beijing in 1951.
The island of Taiwan, fewer than 110 miles off the coast of China and home to a population of more than 23 million people, has maintained a vibrant democracy with robust civil liberties despite increased pressure from Beijing regarding the island’s status.
Unlike mainland China — where images of Christ and the Virgin Mary have been replaced with images of President Xi Jinping, according to a report released last week — Catholics in Taiwan enjoy religious freedom, which is enshrined in its constitution.
More than 10,000 people attended the National Eucharistic Congress in Taiwan last weekend, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Pope Francis sent a message to the congress, writing that he hoped it would “arouse in the hearts of the Christian faithful a true worship and love of the Eucharist.” The congress in the Diocese of Kaohsiung was the fifth Eucharistic congress held in Taiwan since 2011.
Bishop Pu told CNA that the congress presented an opportunity to let more people in Taiwan know about the Eucharist and its central importance to the Catholic faith.
“We hope we can always maintain this formal and good relationship with the Vatican. Because for Taiwan, this is very important. We hope that the world will see this because Taiwan is a democratic and free country, respected by other nations,” Pu said.
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