Pope Francis blesses the ambulance that he donated in June 2024 to to treat the wounded in Ukraine’s Ternopil region. / Credit: Dicastery for the Service of Charity
Rome Newsroom, Jun 25, 2024 / 13:15 pm (CNA).
The Vatican has announced the opening of a war trauma rehabilitation center this month in Ukraine named after St. John Paul II.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner and prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Service of Charity, is traveling to Ukraine to inaugurate the clinic on the pope’s behalf.
The cardinal will also personally deliver an ambulance filled with medical supplies that was donated by Pope Francis to treat the wounded in Ukraine’s Ternopil region.
“In the Ternopil region, due to the continuing war, numerous convoys arrive daily carrying civilians and soldiers forced to flee the border area with Russia, where hostilities are most bloody,” the announcement from the Vatican’s charity dicastery said on June 24.
“This ambulance will also be a valuable tool to support relief workers treating injured people.”
It will be Krajewski’s eighth trip to Ukraine since the war broke out. On one of his prior trips, the cardinal was shot at as he delivered humanitarian aid near the city of Zaporizhzhia.
According to the Vatican’s charity dicastery, the St. John Paul II Rehabilitation Center, located in Vinnytsia in the Diocese of Kamyanets-Podilskyy, will provide both physical and psychological rehabilitation for soldiers and their families who have suffered from war trauma.
The clinic, created with contributions from the Papal Foundation and Aid to the Church in Need, will be open to all “without any distinction of faith, nationality, or exclusion,” according to Pope Francis’ wishes.
Pope Francis has already donated two other ambulances that are being used to provide medical assistance and humanitarian relief in other parts of Ukraine.
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Pope Francis waves while traveling by boat in Venice, Italy, for a meeting with young people at the Basilica della Madonna della Salute on April 28, 2024. Earlier in the day he met with inmates at a women’s prison. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Apr 28, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis opened his one-day visit to Venice on Sunday morning with a meeting with female inmates where he reaffirmed the importance of fraternity and human dignity, noting that prison can be a place of new beginnings.
“A stay in prison can mark the beginning of something new, through the rediscovery of the unsuspected beauty in us and in others, as symbolized by the artistic event you are hosting and the project to which you actively contribute,” the pope said to the female inmates gathered in the intimate courtyard of the Women’s Prison on the Island of Giudecca.
Pope Francis left the Vatican by helicopter at approximately 6:30 in the morning, arriving in the Floating City by 8 a.m. The pope’s visit, albeit short, holds a deep meaning as Francis is the first pontiff to visit the prestigious Venice Biennale art exhibition, which is marking its 60th iteration. As part of the exhibition the Holy See has erected a pavilion at the women’s prison titled “With my eyes.” The pope also spoke with artists while he visited the pavilion.
Pope Francis meets with female inmates gathered in the intimate courtyard of the Women’s Prison on the Island of Giudecca in Venice, Italy, on April 28, 2024. Credit: Vatican Media
Taking a center seat in the intimate courtyard of the 16th-century former convent, the pope opened his address by saying that he wanted it to be thought not as an “official visit” but an “encounter” centered on “prayer, closeness and fraternal affection.”
“No one should take away people’s dignity,” Pope Francis said to the inmates, volunteers, and staff, joined by the Patriarch of Venice, Archbishop Francesco Moraglia.
Drawing attention to the “harsh reality” of prison, the pope highlighted some of the problems inmates are confronted with “such as overcrowding, the lack of facilities and resources, and episodes of violence, [which] give rise to a great deal of suffering there.”
But Francis, anchoring his message on hope and mercy, implored the women to “always look at the horizon, always look to the future, with hope.”
The pope continued by noting that prison can also be a place of “moral and material rebirth where the dignity of women and men is not ‘placed in isolation’ but promoted through mutual respect and the nurturing of talents and abilities, perhaps dormant or imprisoned by the vicissitudes of life, but which can re-emerge for the good of all and which deserve attention and trust.”
Pope Francis blesses a woman during his encounter with female inmates gathered in the courtyard of the Women’s Prison on the Island of Giudecca near Venice, Italy, on April 28, 2024. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis stressed that it is “fundamental” that prisons offer inmates “the tools and room for human, spiritual, cultural and professional growth, creating the conditions for their healthy reintegration. Not to ‘isolate dignity,’ but to give new possibilities.”
“Let us not forget that we all have mistakes to be forgiven and wounds to heal and that we can all become the healed who bring healing, the forgiven who bring forgiveness, the reborn who bring rebirth,” the pope added.
At the end of the encounter there was a light-hearted exchange, when the pope, after asking the inmates to pray for him — who responded in unison “Of course” —– quipped: “But in my favor, not against.”
At the end of the address, the pope presented an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a gift to the inmates, saying: “Mary has tenderness with all of us, with all of us, she is the mother of tenderness.” In return the female inmates presented the pope with a basket of all-natural toiletries they make through a worker-training program.
Following the encounter with the inmates, the pope made his way to the prison’s chapel, where he spoke to the artists, imploring them to use their craft to envision a world based on fraternity where “no human being is considered a stranger.”
“Art has the status of a ‘city of refuge,’” the pope said to the artists, “a city that disobeys the regime of violence and discrimination in order to create forms of human belonging capable of recognizing, including, protecting and embracing everyone.”
Pope Francis gives his weekly Angelus address on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. / Vatican Media
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