Men ride mules in Via della Conciliazione as they take part in the feast of San Antonio Abate (St. Anthony the Abbot), the patron saint and protector of animals, in Piazza Pio XII in front of the Vatican, in Rome on Jan. 17, 2025. Italian farmers and member of the Coldiretti farmers association gathered in the Vatican where families and animals received a benediction from Cardinal Mauro Gambetti. / Credit: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images
Vatican City, Jan 17, 2025 / 12:50 pm (CNA).
Italian farmers, who are among this year’s pilgrims of hope for the 2025 Jubilee, brought their animals to the Vatican on Friday to be blessed by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti on the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot.
Several farmers from across the country transported horses, cattle, goats, geese, chickens, and rabbits to a makeshift stable set up in front of St. Peter’s Square to celebrate the Jan. 17 feast day of the patron saint of farmers and animals.
St. Anthony the Abbot — also known as St. Anthony of the Desert or St. Anthony the Great — was a fourth-century hermit known for his asceticism and is considered the father of Christian monasticism. His holy life in the Egyptian desert was also recorded by St. Athanasius in “The Life of St. Antony.”
Carinal Mauro Gambetti speaks to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the blessing of animals on the feast day of St. Anthony the Abbot on Jan. 17, 2025. Credit: EWTN News
Following the morning Mass celebration inside St. Peter’s Basilica, Gambetti personally greeted livestock breeders attending this year’s festival, thanking them for their care of God’s creation.
“God cherishes his creation. He cares for the animals, the plants, because these create the conditions for life to continue and flourish, especially intelligent life, the life of humankind,” Gambetti told crowds outside St. Peter’s Square.
“God cares for each of you, especially you who have responded to his original call to cultivate and care for his creation,” he continued.
Following a morning Mass celebration inside St. Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti personally greets livestock breeders attending this year’s blessing of the animals, thanking them for their care of God’s creation, on the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot, Jan. 17, 2025. Credit: EWTN News
Fulvio, a horse breeder from the northern part of the Lazio region, told EWTN News that the blessing of the animals on St. Anthony’s feast day is important for him and his family.
“This event is the blessing of the animals, and as we care for our animals it is very important for us to receive this blessing for our animals,” he shared. “St. Anthony is an inspirational figure for us — he is the protector of our farm.”
Each year, the Italian state police lead a parade down Via della Conciliazione, the main street leading toward the Vatican, to St. Peter’s Square as part of the day’s celebrations.
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Vatican City, Jan 15, 2019 / 11:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
After meeting with the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Jan. 15, the pope gave his approval to the declaration of the martyrdom of Sr. Maria del Carmen and 13 companions, all religious sisters of the Order of Franciscan Conceptionists, who were killed in Madrid in 1936.
Francis also approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Swiss laywoman Bl. Marguerite Bays, paving the way for her canonization in 2019.
Bays, who was born in La Pierraz, Switzerland in 1815, was a member of the Secular Franciscan Order. She never married but gave her life to the needs of the people of her parish and neighborhood, especially the sick and dying, children and young girls, and the poor, whom she called “God’s favorites.”
After developing intestinal cancer at the age of 35, Bays asked Our Lady to intercede that her suffering from cancer would be exchanged for a suffering more directly connected to the suffering of Christ at his Passion.
The holy woman was miraculously healed of the cancer Dec. 8, 1854, the day Bl. Pius IX declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. After the healing, Bays began to experience a sort-of ecstatic immobilization every Friday, where she would relive physically and spiritually the events of Christ’s passion. Bays also received the stigmata.
Bays’ deep devotion to prayer, which had been a focus of her life since childhood, included a strong love for the Blessed Virgin Mary and for praying the rosary. She also loved the Eucharist and spent many hours in adoration.
Bays died at 3:00pm, on Friday, June 27, 1879, and was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1995.
Two women were also declared Venerable Jan. 15: Anna Kaworek, a Pole and cofounder of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Michael the Archangel (1872-1936); Maria Soledad Sanjurjo Santos (religious name Maria Consolata), a sister of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary Ministers of the Infirm (1892-1973) from Puerto Rico.
Pope Francis greets Archbishop Rino Fisichella in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, Sept. 17, 2021. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Sep 17, 2021 / 07:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said on Friday that he instituted the new ministry of catechist with the hope that it would help to “awaken this vocation.”
Addressing participants in a meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization on Sept. 17, the pope referred to his decision to formally institute the new lay ministry in May.
Vatican Media.
He said: “We must insist on indicating the heart of catechesis: the risen Jesus Christ loves you and never abandons you! We can never tire or feel we are being repetitive about this first proclamation in the various stages of the catechetical process.”
“This is why I instituted the ministry of catechist. They are preparing the rite for the, I quote, ‘creation’ of catechists. So that the Christian community may feel the need to awaken this vocation and to experience the service of some men and women who, living the celebration of the Eucharist, may feel more vividly the passion to transmit the faith as evangelizers.”
Vatican Media.
The pope established the new ministry through the apostolic letterAntiquum ministerium (“Ancient ministry”) on May 11.
While catechists have served the Church since New Testament times, an instituted ministry is a type of formal, vocational service within the Catholic Church.
Vatican Media.
The newly instituted ministry of catechist is for lay people who have a particular call to serve the Catholic Church as a teacher of the faith.
In the apostolic letter, the pope said that the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments would “soon publish” the Rite of Institution of the new ministry.
Vatican Media.
In his address, the pope noted that last Sunday he celebrated the closing Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, Hungary.
He said that catechesis “can be effective in the work of evangelization if it keeps its gaze fixed on the Eucharistic mystery.”
“We cannot forget that the privileged place of catechesis is precisely the Eucharistic celebration, where brothers and sisters come together to discover ever more the different forms of God’s presence in their lives,” he said.
Vatican Media.
Speaking in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall to Catholics responsible for catechesis in Europe, the pope fondly recalled the two catechists who prepared him for First Communion.
“I felt a great respect, even a feeling of thanksgiving, without making it explicit, but it felt like veneration,” he said.
“Why? Because they were the women who had prepared me for my First Communion, together with a nun. I want to tell you about this experience because it was a beautiful thing for me to accompany them to the end of their lives, both of them. And also the nun who prepared me for the liturgical part of Communion: she died, and I was there, with her, accompanying her. There is a closeness, a very important bond with catechists…”
Referring to the Directory for Catechesis, released in June 2020, he said that catechesis should not be understood as “an abstract communication of theoretical knowledge to be memorized as like mathematical or chemical formulas.”
“It is rather the mystagogical experience of those who learn to encounter their brothers and sisters where they live and work, because they themselves have met Christ, who has called them to become missionary disciples,” he said.
He then referred to his address on Monday in St. Martin’s Cathedral, Bratislava, in which he encouraged Slovakian Catholics to draw inspiration from Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who translated the Bible into the Slavonic language.
He told catechists in Rome: “They beat new paths, invented new languages, new ‘alphabets,’ to transmit the Gospel, for the inculturation of the faith.”
“This requires knowing how to listen to the people, to listen to the peoples to whom one is proclaiming: listening to their culture, their history; listening not superficially, already thinking of the pre-packaged answers we carry in our briefcase, no! To truly listen, and to compare those cultures, those languages, even and above all the unspoken, the unexpressed, with the Word of God, with Jesus Christ, the living Gospel.”
“And I repeat the question: is this not the most urgent task of the Church among the peoples of Europe? The great Christian tradition of the continent must not become a historical relic, otherwise, it is no longer ‘tradition.’”
He continued: “Tradition is either alive or it is not. And catechesis is tradition, it is trador [in Latin], to hand down, but as living tradition, from heart to heart, from mind to mind, from life to life. Therefore: passionate and creative, with the impetus of the Holy Spirit.”
“I used the word ‘pre-packaged’ for language, but I fear catechists whose heart, attitude, and face are ‘pre-packaged.’ No. Either the catechist is free, or he or she is not a catechist. The catechist lets herself or himself be struck by the reality he or she finds, and transmits the Gospel with great creativity, or is not a catechist. Think about this well.”
Farmers are the backbone of our communities, nations, and the Planet. May each one of them and their loved ones be blessed.