Pope Francis prays during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
CNA Staff, Aug 1, 2024 / 09:21 am (CNA).
Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of August is for political leaders.
“Today, politics doesn’t have a very good reputation: corruption, scandals, and distance from people’s day-to-day lives,” Pope Francis said in a video released July 30.
“But can we move ahead toward universal fraternity without good politics? No,” he continued. “As Paul VI said, politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good.”
“I’m talking about POLITICS with all capital letters, not politicking. I’m talking about politics that listens to what is really going on, that’s at the service of the poor, not the kind that’s holed up in huge buildings with large hallways.”
The Holy Father explained that he’s speaking about the politics “that’s concerned about the unemployed and knows full well how sad a Sunday can be when Monday is just one more day not being able to work. If we look at it this way, politics is much more noble than it appears.”
Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to “be grateful for the many politicians who carry out their duties with a will to serve, not of power, who put all their efforts toward the common good.”
He concluded with a prayer: “Let us pray that political leaders be at the service of their own people, working for integral human development and the common good, taking care of those who have lost their jobs and giving priority to the poorest.”
Pope Francis’ prayer video is promoted by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, which raises awareness of monthly papal prayer intentions.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
null / Credit: Screenshot of Pontifical University of Comillas website
ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 2, 2023 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
The Pontifical University of Comillas in Spain has sent a survey to its former students asking them to specify their “gender”… […]
Father Marko Rupnik’s former superior in the Society of Jesus, Father Johan Verschueren, denied that the Jesuits facilitated the incardination of the priest, who is accused of sexual abuse, in the Diocese of Koper, Slovenia, […]
Pope Francis presides at the Vatican’s chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 28, 2024 / 09:30 am (CNA).
On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis presided over a chrism Mass at which more than 1,880 priests, bishops, and cardinals renewed the promises made at their ordinations.
Pope Francis encouraged the priests to turn their gaze upon the crucified Lord and to weep over their sins in repentance, saying that tears can “purify and heal the heart.”
“Once we recognize our sin, our hearts can be opened to the working of the Holy Spirit, the source of living water that wells up within us and brings tears to our eyes,” Francis said on March 28.
Pope Francis speaks at the Vatican’s chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“The Lord seeks, especially in those consecrated to him, men and women who weep for the sins of the Church and the world and become intercessors on behalf of all,” he added.
Forty-two cardinals, 42 bishops, and 1,800 priests living in Rome concelebrated the Mass with the pope in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Holy Thursday marks the institution of the Eucharist and institution of the sacrament of the priesthood at the Last Supper. Pope Francis will also preside over a Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday evening at a women’s prison in Rome.
The 87-year-old pope arrived in St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday morning in a wheelchair. Before giving his more than 20-minute homily, the pope took a sip of water and put on his reading glasses.
Pope Francis reflected in his homily on Peter’s tears after denying the Lord three times as recorded in the Gospel of Luke: “Peter remembered the word of the Lord … and went out and wept bitterly.”
Cardinal Angelo De Donatis presides at the altar during the Vatican’s chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“Dear brother priests, the healing of the heart of Peter, the healing of the apostle, the healing of the pastor, came about when, grief-stricken and repentant, he allowed himself to be forgiven by Jesus. That healing took place amid tears, bitter weeping, and the sorrow that leads to renewed love,” he said.
Compunction
Pope Francis said that he wanted to speak to the priests about the importance of compunction — an awareness of guilt due to sin — which the pope admitted is a “somewhat old-fashioned” term and “an aspect of the spiritual life that has been somewhat neglected, yet remains essential.”
The pope added that compunction “is not a sense of guilt that makes us discouraged or obsessed with our unworthiness, but a beneficial ‘piercing’ that purifies and heals the heart.”
“Compunction demands effort but bestows peace. It is not a source of anxiety but of healing for the soul, since it acts as a balm upon the wounds of sin, preparing us to receive the caress of the heavenly physician, who transforms the ‘broken, contrite heart,’” Pope Francis said.
Clergy assembled at the Vatican’s Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The pope said that through compunction “the natural tendency to be indulgent with ourselves and inflexible with others is overturned and, by God’s grace, we become strict with ourselves and merciful toward others.”
“Weeping for ourselves … means seriously repenting for saddening God by our sins … It means looking within and repenting of our ingratitude and inconstancy, and acknowledging with sorrow our duplicity, dishonesty, and hypocrisy — clerical hypocrisy, dear brothers, that hypocrisy which we slip into so much — beware of clerical hypocrisy,” Francis said.
“How greatly we need to be set free from harshness and recrimination, selfishness and ambition, rigidity and frustration, in order to entrust ourselves completely to God and to find in him the calm that shields us from the storms raging all around us,” he added.
“Let us pray, intercede, and shed tears for others; in this way, we will allow the Lord to work his miracles. And let us not fear, for he will surely surprise us.”
During the Vatican’s chrism Mass, the pope, as the bishop of Rome, blessed the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and the chrism oil, which will be used in the diocese during the coming year. Cardinal Angelo De Donatis served as the celebrant at the altar.
The oils were processed up the main altar of St. Peter’s in large silver urns as the hymns of the Sistine Chapel Choir filled the basilica.
Urns of oil are displayed at the Vatican’s Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis prayed over the oil of the sick: “O God, Father of all consolation, who through your Son have willed to heal the infirmities of the sick, listen favorably to this prayer of faith: Send down from heaven, we pray, your Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, upon the rich substance of this oil, which you were pleased to bring forth from vigorous green trees to restore our bodies, so that by your holy blessing this oil may be for anyone who is anointed with it a safeguard for body, mind, and spirit, to take away every pain, every infirmity, and every sickness.”
The blessed oil will be used for the anointing of the sick in Rome throughout the year.
Pope Francis thanked the priests gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica for all they do to bring “the miracle of God’s mercy” to the world today.
“Dear priests, thank you for your open and docile hearts; thank you for your labors and thank you for your tears; thank you because you bring the miracle of mercy … you bring God to the brothers and sisters of our time,” he said. “Dear priests, may the Lord console you, confirm you, and reward you.”
Like all fellow mortals, politicians are human, fragile and mortal. During their brief tenure of humble service to humankind and Planet Earth, they are known to generate good and very ideas. We need to pray for their wellbeing and good health.
Yes on all points. And yet, there falls the shadow…
The problem is that even elected folks who attend to the needs of abstract “humankind” too often do not much care for real people in the concrete. The most egregious example is the Gulag. And, as for “Planet Earth,” this too has merit, but we also pray that politicians can tell the difference between responsible stewardship and an airbrush and one-world ideology.
So, too, the “service of their own people, working for integral human development and the common good.” With “integral human development” defined as the whole person [!] and all persons. And, about the elusive riddle of the rarely-defined “common good,” how to do both Solidarity AND Subsidiarity always together?
Some clues:
CLUE #1: “The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains ‘common,’ because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future” (“Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” 2004, n. 164).
CLUE #2: “Catholic political philosophy asserts that in human nature is the origin of the state. Here it must be stated that ‘human nature’ should be understood in its full philosophical meaning. Human nature does not [!] mean the empirical, psychological nature as the politician or the advertising businessman sees it. The state originates in the bodily and spiritual nature of man. Nature or essence is also the end of man’s activity and striving. Therefore the political status is necessary for the fulfillment of man’s end; the state is an intentional disposition of human nature . . . the state is not a supernatural, immediately divine establishment. Yet, as originating in human nature, divinely established, the state is part and subject of the order of the Creator” (Heinrich Rommen, LL.D., The State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder Book Co., 1945), 220-1.
CLUE #3: The common good “embraces the sum of those conditions of social life by which individuals, families, and groups can achieve their own fulfillment [!] in a relatively thorough and ready way” (Rommen).
Subsidiarity is not only the lower and more local levels of government, but also those communities and initiatives other than any level of government or within the domain of politicians.
July 25 I had called on the Holy Father in the CWR Extra, extra! feature of July 24, to condemn the abortion meeting the Jesuits and the Kennedys held between themselves back in the Sixites. See in the Comments in the CWR link.
I said “Correct and condemn it.” This month’s Papal intention could be the correction?
Do Catholics want Universal Brotherhood or Catholicism? With all due respect to the active Ministerium you occupy, you might meditate ppBXVI :
“By her nature the Church does not herself engage in politics; rather, She respects the autonomy of the state and its ordering.”
Ignatius Press, God is Love, Annexe. Introduction written by the former holder of the Papal Munus, ppBXVI.
Like all fellow mortals, politicians are human, fragile and mortal. During their brief tenure of humble service to humankind and Planet Earth, they are known to generate good and very ideas. We need to pray for their wellbeing and good health.
Yes on all points. And yet, there falls the shadow…
The problem is that even elected folks who attend to the needs of abstract “humankind” too often do not much care for real people in the concrete. The most egregious example is the Gulag. And, as for “Planet Earth,” this too has merit, but we also pray that politicians can tell the difference between responsible stewardship and an airbrush and one-world ideology.
So, too, the “service of their own people, working for integral human development and the common good.” With “integral human development” defined as the whole person [!] and all persons. And, about the elusive riddle of the rarely-defined “common good,” how to do both Solidarity AND Subsidiarity always together?
Some clues:
CLUE #1: “The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains ‘common,’ because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future” (“Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” 2004, n. 164).
CLUE #2: “Catholic political philosophy asserts that in human nature is the origin of the state. Here it must be stated that ‘human nature’ should be understood in its full philosophical meaning. Human nature does not [!] mean the empirical, psychological nature as the politician or the advertising businessman sees it. The state originates in the bodily and spiritual nature of man. Nature or essence is also the end of man’s activity and striving. Therefore the political status is necessary for the fulfillment of man’s end; the state is an intentional disposition of human nature . . . the state is not a supernatural, immediately divine establishment. Yet, as originating in human nature, divinely established, the state is part and subject of the order of the Creator” (Heinrich Rommen, LL.D., The State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder Book Co., 1945), 220-1.
CLUE #3: The common good “embraces the sum of those conditions of social life by which individuals, families, and groups can achieve their own fulfillment [!] in a relatively thorough and ready way” (Rommen).
Subsidiarity is not only the lower and more local levels of government, but also those communities and initiatives other than any level of government or within the domain of politicians.
July 25 I had called on the Holy Father in the CWR Extra, extra! feature of July 24, to condemn the abortion meeting the Jesuits and the Kennedys held between themselves back in the Sixites. See in the Comments in the CWR link.
I said “Correct and condemn it.” This month’s Papal intention could be the correction?
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/24/extra-extra-news-and-views-for-wednesday-july-24-2024/