Children (file photo) / Ben Wicks / Unsplash (CC0)
CNA Newsroom, Oct 31, 2022 / 09:01 am (CNA).
Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of November is for children who suffer, including war victims and orphans.
“There are still millions of boys and girls who suffer and live in conditions very similar to slavery,” the pontiff said in a video appeal issued Monday.
“They aren’t numbers,” he said, “they are human beings with names, with a face of their own, with an identity that God has given them.”
“Let us pray for children who are suffering, especially for those who are homeless, orphans, and victims of war,” the pope said in a video message published Oct. 31.
“Each marginalized child, abandoned by his or her family, without schooling, without health care, is a cry! A cry that rises up to God and shames the system that we adults have built,” the pope said, adding: “An abandoned child is our fault.”
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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Pope Francis greets the crowd in Bahrain’s national soccer stadium before offering Mass on Nov. 5, 2022. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Nov 5, 2022 / 05:00 am (CNA).
About 30,000 people crowded into a soccer stadium on Saturday morning to attend the first public papal Mass in the Kingdom of Bahrain, a Muslim-majority island country in the Persian Gulf.
In the crowd was Julius Rhe, who traveled with his wife and son from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where restrictions prohibit the celebration of Catholic Masses in public.
“We are very honored to be part of this very, very memorable event. . . . We are very blessed,” Rhe told EWTN on Nov. 5.
The Rhe family traveled from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to attend Mass with the pope in Bahrain. Alexey Gotovsky/EWTN
The Rhe family practices the Catholic faith at home and has attended a private Mass in an apartment while living in Saudi Arabia.
According to Bahrain’s Daily Tribune, around 2,900 of the registered attendees at the stadium Mass with Pope Francis came from neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Reuters reported that foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia were bussed in for the Mass over the King Fahd Causeway that connects the two countries.
Many of the Gulf region’s foreign workers come from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries.
Pope Francis receives the gifts during Mass in Bahrain on Nov. 5, 2022. Vatican Media
Catholic foreign workers living in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates also traveled for the Mass.
Pope Francis arrived to cheers at Bahrain’s national soccer stadium as he greeted the enthusiastic crowd from the popemobile.
In his homily, the pope repeated the words of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Pope Francis said that Jesus “suffers when he sees in our own day and in many parts of the world, ways of exercising power that feed on oppression and violence, seeking to expand their own space by restricting that of others, imposing their own domination and restricting basic freedoms, and in this way oppressing the weak.”
In the face of the oppression and enmity that exist today, the Gospel calls Christians to “love everyone, even our enemies,” the pope said.
A family waits for Pope Francis’ arrival in Bahrain’s National Stadium on Nov. 5, 2022. Alexey Gotovsky/EWTN
Christians make a small minority in Bahrain. While it is more than 70% of Bahrain’s total population of 1.5 million is Muslim, there are about 161,000 Catholics living in the country, according to 2020 Vatican statistics. The country is home to two Catholic churches and 20 Catholic priests.
Pope Francis described Bahrain as “a living image of coexistence in diversity” and “an image of our world, increasingly marked by the constant migration of peoples and by a pluralism of ideas, customs and traditions.”
He added: “It is important, then, to embrace Jesus’ challenge: ‘If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?’”
At the end of the Mass, Bishop Paul Hinder, the apostolic administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia thanked Pope Francis for showing “pastoral care for a tiny Church in a tiny country.”
The bishop said: “Like your patron Saint Francis of Assisi, you are not afraid to build bridges with the Muslim world and to show your fraternal closeness to all people of goodwill regardless of their cultural background and religious belief.”
“We Christians in the Middle East—those of ancient Oriental tradition and those who as migrants temporarily live in this part of the world—try to implement the invitation of Saint Francis to his brothers to ‘live spiritually among the Muslims … not to engage in arguments and [simply] to acknowledge that [we] are Christians.’”
Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to the Catholics who had traveled from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region to attend the Mass. He said: “I bring today the affection and closeness of the universal Church, which looks to you and embraces you, which loves you and encourages you.”
“May the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Arabia, accompany you on your journey and preserve you constantly in love towards all.”
Pope Francis’ video message to the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR) on Aug. 13, 2021. / Screenshot
Rome Newsroom, Aug 14, 2021 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis warned against misuse of the liturgy that places an emphasis on ideology in a video message sent Friday to a Latin American conference on religious life.
“Let us not forget that a faith that is not inculturated is not authentic. For this reason, I invite you to participate in the process that will provide the true sense of a culture that exists in the soul of the people,” Pope Francis said in the video sent on Aug. 13.
“When this inculturation does not take place, Christian life, and even more so the consecrated life, ends up with the oddest and most ridiculous Gnostic tendencies. We’ve seen this, for example, in the misuse of the liturgy [where] what is important is ideology rather than the reality of the people. This is not the Gospel.”
The pope’s video message was featured at a virtual conference organized by the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR).
The conference focused on inculturation, a concept which John Paul II described as the process by which “the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own community.”
Pope Francis said that many men and women in religious life can be tempted to focus on the decline in numbers of vocations in their orders. He urged them to “renounce the criterion of numbers.”
“Otherwise it can turn you into fearful disciples, trapped in the past and giving into nostalgia. This nostalgia is fundamentally the siren song of religious life,” Francis said.
Instead of focusing on numbers, religious should focus on evangelization and “leave the rest to the Holy Spirit,” the pope said.
“I would like to remind you that joy, the highest expression of life in Christ, is the greatest witness we can offer the holy people of God whom we are called to serve and accompany on their pilgrimage toward the encounter with the Father,” he said. “Peace, joy, and a sense of humor.”
“How sad it is to see consecrated men and women who have no sense of humor, who take everything so seriously … To be with Jesus is to be joyful,” Pope Francis said.
“May the Holy Virgin protect you. She knows all about encounter, fraternity, patience, and inculturation,” he said.
May each child be blessed with a healthy present, and a bright and happy future.