Pope Francis prays during Mass on the solemnity of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2025, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
CNA Staff, Mar 4, 2025 / 13:10 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of March is for families in crisis.
“We all dream about a beautiful, perfect family but there’s no such thing as a perfect family,” Pope Francis said in a video released March 4. “Every family has its own problems as well as its tremendous joys.”
He pointed out that “every member of the family is important because each member is different than the others, each person is unique. But these differences can also cause conflict and painful wounds.”
“And the best medicine to heal the pain of a wounded family is forgiveness,” the pope added. “Forgiveness means giving another chance; God does this with us all the time. God’s patience is infinite. He forgives us, lifts us up, gives us a new start.”
The Holy Father reminded the faithful that “forgiveness always renews the family, making it look forward with hope. Even when there’s no possibility of the happy ending we’d like, God’s grace gives us the strength to forgive, and it brings peace, because it frees us from sadness and, above all, from resentment.”
He concluded with a prayer: “Let us pray that broken families might discover the cure for their wounds through forgiveness, rediscovering each other’s gifts, even in their differences.”
Pope Francis’ prayer video is promoted by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, which raises awareness of monthly papal prayer intentions.
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Vatican City, Feb 20, 2020 / 10:08 am (CNA).- Pope Francis called for an educational revolution Thursday, telling the Congregation for Catholic Education that more effort needs to be made to accelerate the inclusiveness of education.
Ecology and fraternity are an integral part of education, Pope Francis told the Catholic education leaders ahead of the pope’s Global Compact on Education taking place May 14.
“The educational pact must not be a simple order, it must not be a rehash of the positivisms we have received from an Enlightenment education. It must be revolutionary,” Pope Francis said Feb. 20.
The pope said that the purpose of an “education that focuses on the person in his integral reality” is “above all” oriented “to the discovery of fraternity that produces the multicultural composition of humanity.”
Pope Francis called for educators capable of resetting their teaching methods to form young people in an “ecological ethic.” He said education is a “dynamic reality,” which is “never a repetitive action.”
“Education is called with its pacifying force to form people capable of understanding that diversity does not hinder unity, rather they are indispensable for the richness of one’s own identity and that of everyone,” Francis said.
“As for the method, education is an inclusive movement. An inclusion that goes towards all the excluded: those for poverty, for vulnerability due to wars, famines and natural disasters, for social selectivity, for family and existential difficulties,” he said.
Educational intiativies for migrants and refugees should be put into action “without any distinction of sex, religion, or ethnicity,” the pope told the congregation.
Pope Francis said a “peace-making educational movement” is needed in light of the fractures between cultures masking a “fear of diversity and difference.”
“Inclusion is not a modern invention, but is an integral part of the Christian salvific message,” Pope Francis said.
The pope addressed the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Catholic Education. The congregation oversees 216,000 Catholic schools attended by over 60 million pupils, and 1,750 Catholic universities with over 11 million students.
The congregation devotes particular attention to institutions of Catholic higher education, which exist “by their nature aim to secure that the Christian outlook should acquire a public, stable and universal influence in the whole process of the promotion of higher culture,” according to St. John Paul II’s 1979 apostolic constitution on ecclesiastical universities and faculties, Sapientia Christiana.
Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, states that “A Catholic university’s privileged task is to unite existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the fount of truth.”
“Every human reality, both individual and social has been liberated by Christ: persons, as well as the activities of men and women, of which culture is the highest and incarnate expression…. Jesus Christ, our Saviour, offers his light and his hope to all those who promote the sciences, the arts, letters and the numerous fields developed by modern culture,” it states. “Therefore, all the sons and daughters of the Church should become aware of their mission and discover how the strength of the Gospel can penetrate and regenerate the mentalities and dominant values that inspire individual cultures, as well as the opinions and mental attitudes that are derived from it.”
Pope Francis has tasked the Congregation for Catholic Education with organizing his Global Educational Summit.
When the educational pact was first announced in September, “the most significant personalities of the political, cultural and religious world” were invited to attend.
The foundation of the pact is “openness to others,” according to the instrumentum laboris for the education summit.
The aim of the Global Education Pact is to “renew the passion for a more open and inclusive education, capable of patient listening, constructive dialogue, and mutual understanding,” Pope Francis told the congregation.
Vatican City, Apr 21, 2018 / 07:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday Pope Francis named five new consultors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, including three female academics and two priests.
The opening of the Amazon synod at the Vatican’s Synod Hall, Oct. 7, 2019. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Jul 20, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The general secretariat of the Synod of Bishops on Tuesday named the members of three groups helping to prepare the 2023 synod on synodality.
It listed the names on July 20, just three months before the start of a two-year preparatory phase involving Catholic dioceses worldwide.
A synod is a meeting of bishops gathered to discuss a topic of theological or pastoral significance, to prepare a document of advice or counsel to the pope.
The theme for the upcoming assembly is “For a synodal Church: communion, participation, and mission.”
The general secretariat listed the members of a steering committee, a commission for theology, and a commission for methodology.
The steering committee has five members: Archbishop Erio Castellucci, who leads the Italian dioceses of Modena-Nonantola and Carpi; Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J., president of the San Fedele Cultural Foundation of Milan and director of the magazine Aggiornamenti Sociali; Mgsr. Pierangelo Sequeri, president of the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family; Fr. Dario Vitali, full professor in the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University; and Myriam Wijlens, professor of canon law at the University of Erfurt, Germany.
The commission for theology has 25 members from around the world. The commission, which is coordinated by Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, one of two under-secretaries of the Synod of Bishops, assists the synod secretariat by reviewing texts, presenting theological proposals “for the development of synodality,” and creating and sharing “materials for theological deepening,” according to the synod’s website.
The commission’s members include three Jesuits: Fr. Paul Béré, from Burkina Faso, the first African to win the prestigious Ratzinger Prize for theology; Fr. Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, a professor at the Comillas Pontifical University in Spain; and Fr. Christoph Theobald, a Franco-German theologian based at the Centre Sèvres in Paris.
The commission for methodology, coordinated by Sr. Nathalie Becquart, under-secretary of the Synod of Bishops, has nine members, including four women: Cristina Inogés Sanz, from Spain, Christina Kheng Li Lin, from Singapore, Sr. Hermenegild Makoro, C.P.S., from South Africa, and Susan Pascoe from Australia.
Also among the commission’s members is Fr. David McCallum, S.J., executive director of the Discerning Leadership Program, a collaboration between Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and other institutions.
The commission’s tasks include collecting “best practices for synodal processes at all levels,” proposing “methodologies for the synodal process in all its phases,” creating a “a brochure/website on best practices,” and working on “the methodology/process for the celebration of the Synod of Bishops in October 2023.”
Earlier this month, Pope Francis named the Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich as the relator general of the synod on synodality.
Hollerich, the president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), will help to oversee the gathering of the world’s bishops in Rome.
An infographic showing the timeline for the synod on synodality. / Vatican Media.
The synod on synodality will open with a “diocesan phase” in October 2021 and conclude with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in October 2023.
Pope Francis will “inaugurate the synodal path” over the weekend of Oct. 9-10 with an opening session and a Mass. All dioceses are invited also to offer an opening Mass on Sunday, Oct. 17.
During the diocesan phase, each bishop is asked to undertake a consultation process with the local Church from Oct. 17, 2021, to April 2022.
The Vatican will then release an instrumentum laboris (working document) in September 2022 for a period of “pre-synodal discernment in continental assemblies,” which will influence a second draft of the working document to be published before June 2023.
The process will culminate in a meeting of bishops at the Vatican in October 2023.
Forgiveness is a win-win equation. It heals the forgiver and empowers the receiver of forgiveness to march together to our cherished destination.