Vatican City, May 30, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- After weeks stuck indoors, the children of Vatican employees will be able to stretch their legs, and grow in their faith, at a sports camp hosted inside the Vatican this summer.
“Estate Ragazzi in Vaticano” is a camp for the children of Vatican City State employees in the style of the oratory of St. John Bosco.
And it is not letting ongoing coronavirus safety measures get in the way of an “educational, sporty, and fun” experience for kids ages 5-14, one organizer told CNA.
“What we are trying to do is to not change the way in which kids play, but to change the games” to comply with the safety measures in place, said Pasquale Acunzo.
Acunzo works for “Tutto in una Festa” which runs children’s events and is partnering with the Vatican’s Salesian community to put on the day camp, which will take place in July.
The idea for the camp, he said, started from Pope Francis’ desire to welcome kids to the Vatican in the model of the Salesian oratory.
Salesian Fr. Franco Fontana, chaplain of the Vatican Museums and gendarmes, told Vatican News that organizers wanted a way to help parents working at the Vatican, many of whom will be back in the office this summer.
With camp activities taking place inside the Pope Paul VI hall, the Vatican Gardens, and other sport facilities inside the city state, moms and dads will be able to have their kids nearby while working.
“After months in which families have been forced to stay at home, parents will need to entrust their children to trusted people who know how to restore hope, enthusiasm, and to teach their children safely,” Fontana said.
The theme of the camp will be “happiness and the beatitudes.”
“We are all called to happiness. We look for it, we all want it even though we know that it is not easy to find or maintain it. But what is true happiness?” the camp website says.
“Almost 2,000 years ago Jesus of Nazareth gave an extraordinary answer. He used eight sentences that all begin with ‘Blessed…’ and are called the ‘Beatitudes.’”
Bishop Fernando Vergez, secretary general of the Vatican City State, wrote about the camp in a letter to parents in March, saying “summer should be, especially after these months, a beautiful and fruitful time for the growth of young people.”
The time risks being filled with television and video games, Vergez said. “A lot of free time needs to be filled with meaning.”
Activities will include prayer, workshops, group and individual sports, games, swimming, and other outdoor activities.
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Pope Francis at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 17, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, May 21, 2023 / 08:40 am (CNA).
In a letter marking the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Pope Francis asserted that the mere possession of nuclear weapons creates “a climate of fear and suspicion” and offers “only an illusion of peace.”
The Vatican released a letter on May 20 that the pope wrote to Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima assuring his prayers as “the G7 Summit meets in Hiroshima to discuss urgent issues currently facing the global community.”
“The choice of Hiroshima as the site of this meeting is particularly significant, in light of the continuing threat of recourse to nuclear weapons,” Pope Francis said.
Hiroshima is the site of the world’s first atomic attack. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city that resulted in the deaths of about 70,000 immediately after the blast and 140,000 people by the end of the year.
President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited a memorial to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima together at the start of the summit on May 19.
“Hiroshima, as ‘a symbol of memory,’ forcefully proclaims the inadequacy of nuclear arms to respond effectively to today’s great threats to peace and to ensure national and international security,” Pope Francis said.
The pope added that “nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction represent a multiplier of risk that offers only an illusion of peace.”
“We need but consider the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental impact that will result from the use of nuclear weapons, as well as the waste and poor allocation of human and economic resources involved in their development. Nor should we underestimate the effects of the continuing climate of fear and suspicion generated by their mere possession, which compromises the growth of a climate of mutual trust and dialogue,” he said.
Pope Francis recalled the “overwhelming impression” left by his visit to the same Peace Memorial recently visited by G7 leaders during the pope’s 2019 visit to Japan.
“Standing there in silent prayer and thinking of the innocent victims of the nuclear attack decades ago, I wished to reiterate the firm conviction of the Holy See that ‘the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is, today more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home,’” he said.
On Friday, G7 leaders issued their first-ever statement on nuclear disarmament, with a special focus on Russia.
“Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric, undermining of arms control regimes, and stated intent to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are dangerous and unacceptable,” in the statement released by the White House. “We reiterate our position that threats by Russia of nuclear weapon use, let alone any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in the context of its aggression against Ukraine are inadmissible.”
They also criticized efforts from North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons and warned that China’s nuclear arsenal expansion poses a threat to regional and global stability.
Russia was formerly part of the G7 Group — then known as the G8. Its membership was suspended over its military annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
In his letter, Pope Francis underlined that “global security needs to be integral, capable of embracing issues including access to food and water, respect for the environment, health care, energy sources and the equitable distribution of the world’s goods.”
“Indeed, it has become increasingly evident that in the multipolar world of the twenty-first century, the pursuit of peace is closely related to the need for security and reflection on the most efficient means for guaranteeing it,” he said.
Statuary sits before imagery of the recently canonized saints in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis canonized 14 new saints on Sunday, including a father of eight and Franciscan friars killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.
In a Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20, the pope declared three nineteenth-century founders of religious orders and the eleven “Martyrs of Damascus” as saints to be venerated by the global Catholic Church, commending their lives of sacrifice, missionary zeal, and service to the Church.
“These new saints lived Jesus’ way: service,” Pope Francis said. “They made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing good, steadfast in difficulties, and generous to the end.”
Pope Francis speaks at a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
The newly canonized include St. Giuseppe Allamano, a diocesan priest from Italy who founded the Consolata missionary orders, and St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, a Canadian nun from Montreal known for founding an order dedicated to the service of priests.
Also among the saints are St. Elena Guerra, hailed as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” and St. Manuel Ruiz López and his seven Franciscan companions, all martyred in Damascus in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.
The final three canonized are siblings, Sts. Francis, Mooti, and Raphael Massabki, lay Maronite Catholics martyred in Syria along with the Franciscans.
Thousands of pilgrims prayed the Litany of the Saints together in St. Peter’s Square before Pope Francis declared the 14 as enrolled among the saints “for the honor of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.”
“We confidently ask for their intercession so that we too can follow Christ, follow him in service and become witnesses of hope for the world,” the pope said.
In his homily, Pope Francis highlighted how service embodied the lives of each of the new saints. “When we learn to serve,” he said, “our every gesture of attention and care, every expression of tenderness, every work of mercy becomes a reflection of God’s love. And so we continue Jesus’ work in the world.”
The Gospel for the Mass was chanted in Greek in addition to Latin in honor of the 11 Martyrs of Damascus.
Pilgrims gather in St. Peter’s Square for a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Father Marwan Dadas, a Franciscan friar from Jerusalem, was among those who attended the canonization. He said that the testimony of the martyrs from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land is especially meaningful to people who are suffering due to the ongoing war and violence in the region today.
“This is a good message to say that even though we have challenges — and it seems we have death continuously — we still have the light of God that is helping us and guiding us through these difficult periods,” Dadas told CNA.
“It’s an important message for me, and I hope it will be the message for all the people of the Holy Land, not only the Holy Land, but for everybody. It is a message from God saying that He is always with us.”
St. Giuseppe Allamano: A missionary heart
One of the most celebrated figures among the new saints is St. Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926), an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters. Allamano, though he spent his entire life in Italy, left a global legacy by training missionaries who carried the Gospel to remote corners of Africa, Asia, and South America.
Allamano told the missionaries in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”
The medical miracle that led to Allamano’s canonization involved the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest. In 1996, a man named Sorino Yanomami, a member of the indigenous Yanomami tribe in the Amazon, was mauled by a jaguar and left with life-threatening injuries.
As doctors treated his skull fractures, Consolata missionaries prayed in the hospital with a relic of Allamano, seeking his intercession. Miraculously, Yanomami recovered without any long-term damage, according to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Allamano, whose spiritual director was St. John Bosco, emphasized the importance of holiness in priestly life, telling his priests, “You must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy.” His influence has endured through the orders he founded, present today in 30 countries across the globe.
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis: “Humble among the humble”
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840–1912), a Canadian religious sister, also took her place among the new saints. She founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, an order whose spirituality and charism is the support of priests through both prayer and by taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in rectories in “humble and joyful service” in imitation of “Christ the Servant.”
During his homily, Pope Francis praised Paradis’ faith and underlined that “those who follow Christ, if they wish to be great, must serve by learning from Him” who made himself “a servant to reach everyone with his love.”
Born in the Acadian region of Quebec, Paradis also spent eight years in New York serving in the St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage in the 1860s and taught French at St. Mary’s Academy in Indiana, before founding her religious order in New Brunswick, Canada.
Paradis’ canonization was supported by the miraculous healing of a newborn in Canada, attributed to her intercession.
St. Elena Guerra: An “apostle of the Holy Spirit”
Among the canonized was St. Elena Guerra (1835–1914), known for her ardent devotion to the Holy Spirit. Guerra, who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, was instrumental in promoting the first-ever novena to the Holy Spirit under Pope Leo XIII in 1895. Her writings and spiritual leadership inspired many, including St. Gemma Galgani, a mystic and saint who was her student.
For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.
During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.
“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”
The Martyrs of Damascus: Courageous witnesses of faith
The solemnity of the ceremony was heightened as Pope Francis canonized the Martyrs of Damascus, a group of 11 men killed in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The martyrs, including eight Franciscan friars and three laymen, were attacked in a church in the Christian quarter of Damascus during a wave of religious violence.
The canonized Franciscan friars include six priests and two professed religious — all missionaries from Spain except for Father Engelbert Kolland, who was from Salzburg, Austria.
Franciscan Father Manuel Ruiz, Father Carmelo Bolta, Father Nicanor Ascanio, Father Nicolás M. Alberca y Torres, Father Pedro Soler, Kolland, Brother Francisco Pinazo Peñalver, and Brother Juan S. Fernández were all declared saints.
The three laymen were brothers — Francis, Abdel Mooti, and Raphael Massabki — known for their deep piety and devotion to the Christian faith. Francis Massabki, the oldest of the brothers, was a father of eight children. Mooti was a father of five who visited the Church of St. Paul daily for prayer and to teach catechism lessons. The youngest brother, Raphael, was single and was known to spend long periods of time praying in the church and helping the friars.
According to witnesses, the brothers were offered the chance to live if they renounced their faith, but they refused. “We are Christians, and we want to live and die as Christians,” Francis Massabki reportedly said. All 11 were brutally killed that night, some beheaded, others stabbed to death.
“They remained faithful servants,” Pope Francis said. “[They] served in martyrdom and in joy.”
A global celebration
The canonization ceremony was attended by pilgrims from around the world, including Catholics from Kenya, Canada, Uganda, Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. More than 1,000 members of the Consolata order traveled to Rome to witness the canonization of their founder.
And bagpipers from Galicia in northern Spain played traditional music at the end of the Mass to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs.
Bagpipers play to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs at the Vatican on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares
“I thank all of you who have come to honor the new saints,” Pope Francis said. “I greet the cardinals, the bishops, the consecrated men and women, especially the Friars Minor and the Maronite faithful, the Consolata Missionaries, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family and the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, as well as the other groups of pilgrims who have come from various places.”
Pope Francis led the crowd in the Angelus prayer at the end of the Mass and asked people to pray in particular for the gift of peace for “populations who are suffering as a result of war – tormented Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, tormented Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and all the others.”
The pope also greeted a group of Ugandan pilgrims who traveled from Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs and urged people to pray for missionaries on World Mission Sunday.
“Let us support, with our prayer and our aid, all the missionaries who, often at great sacrifice, bring the shining proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the world,” he said.
“May the Virgin Mary help us to be like her and like the Saints courageous and joyful witnesses of the Gospel.”
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