Pope Francis greets visitors at his general audience at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media
CNA Newsroom, Apr 12, 2025 / 05:34 am (CNA).
Pope Francis encouraged university students linked to Opus Dei to share “the Gospel of Jesus Christ, dead and risen” with everyone during this jubilee year in a message to participants of an international congress in Rome.
In a Spanish language letter released by the Holy See on Saturday, the pope greeted young people attending the International UNIV Congress 2025, which is taking place in Rome from April 12-20 during Holy Week.
“The International UNIV Congress that you are holding in Rome brings you together these days in the celebration of a double jubilee event: Holy Year 2025 and the centenary of the priestly ordination of St. Josemaría Escrivá,” the pope wrote in the letter dated April 8.
The Holy Father noted these occasions offer “many reasons to give thanks to God and to continue walking with enthusiasm in faith, diligent in charity and persevering in hope.”
The pope said he joins in the students’ joy and accompanies them with his prayer, “asking the Lord that this time of pilgrimage and fraternal encounter may impel you to bring to everyone the Gospel of Jesus Christ, dead and risen, as an announcement of the hope that fulfills promises, leads to glory and, founded on love, does not disappoint.”
He concluded by asking for prayers and imparting his blessing: “May Jesus bless you and Holy Virgin care for you. And I ask you, please, do not forget to pray for me.”
The UNIV Congress began in 1968, inspired by St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei. According to information from the organization, Escrivá “dreamed of an international meeting of university students from five continents who would ask themselves big questions” to help improve the world.
Each year, students participate in this experience during Holy Week in Rome, where they can “listen to experts and join problem-solving forums, as well as attend the Easter Triduum ceremonies” and meet with the Prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz.
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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.”
FIRST, in at least partly bridging between the City of God and the City of Man, St. Augustine concludes:
“To sum up. Where justice is wanting, in the sense that the civil community does not take its orders from the one supreme God, and follow them out with the help of His grace; where sacrifice is offered to any save Him alone; where, consequently, the civil community is not such that everyone obeys God in this respect; where the soul does not control the body, and reason our evil urges, as proper order and faith require; where neither the individuals nor the whole community, ‘the people,’ live by that faith of the just which works through that charity which loves God as He should be loved and one’s neighbor as oneself—where this kind of justice is lacking, I maintain, there does not exist ‘a multitude bound together by a mutual recognition of rights and a mutual co-operation for the common good'[!]. This being so, there is no proper ‘people’—if Scipio’s definition is correct—nor a commonwealth. For, where there is no ‘people,’ there is no ‘people’s’ weal” (“The City of God,” Book XIX, Ch. 23).
SECOND, related to the “people” and the “people’s’ weal,” we might recall a book review of Malichi Martin’s “The Jesuits” (1987):
“…In 1965 [Jesuit General Pedro] Arrupe decided to do battle with Pope Paul VI [….] At General Council 31 [1964-5] the Jesuits decided to transform Paul VI’s commission to fight atheism into the socio-political struggle of the masses. The spiritual and supernatural element in Jesuit Catholicism had been excised [….] General Council 32 [1974-5] converted the Society of Jesus from an arm of the Church engaged in indispensable apostolic works to ‘faith in the service of justice,’ i.e., revolution against the socio-economic-political structure of the capitalist West [….] They succeeded in amalgamating nature with revelation” [!] (Rev. Gerard Steckler, SJ, in “Faith and Reason, 1988).
QUESTION: for the perennial Catholic Church, as such and as a whole, how to encourage Escrivá’s dream “of an international meeting of university students from five continents”—without concurrently and “synodally” possibly eliding any clear memory of the role and responsibilities of each diocesan bishop, personally and institutionally–within the Eucharistic Church and its Apostolic Succession–as always irreducible [!] to diocesan and national “synods” and then “continental synods”? And, even an intercontinental “Ecclesial Assembly” announced for 2028?
Is the doctrinal role of the historic Jesuits being subliminally displaced by synodally progressive messaging, as alongside Opus Dei? How better to coherently leaven this world with the theological virtues championed by Pope Francis: Faith, Hope, and Charity?
Two points and a Question:
FIRST, in at least partly bridging between the City of God and the City of Man, St. Augustine concludes:
“To sum up. Where justice is wanting, in the sense that the civil community does not take its orders from the one supreme God, and follow them out with the help of His grace; where sacrifice is offered to any save Him alone; where, consequently, the civil community is not such that everyone obeys God in this respect; where the soul does not control the body, and reason our evil urges, as proper order and faith require; where neither the individuals nor the whole community, ‘the people,’ live by that faith of the just which works through that charity which loves God as He should be loved and one’s neighbor as oneself—where this kind of justice is lacking, I maintain, there does not exist ‘a multitude bound together by a mutual recognition of rights and a mutual co-operation for the common good'[!]. This being so, there is no proper ‘people’—if Scipio’s definition is correct—nor a commonwealth. For, where there is no ‘people,’ there is no ‘people’s’ weal” (“The City of God,” Book XIX, Ch. 23).
SECOND, related to the “people” and the “people’s’ weal,” we might recall a book review of Malichi Martin’s “The Jesuits” (1987):
“…In 1965 [Jesuit General Pedro] Arrupe decided to do battle with Pope Paul VI [….] At General Council 31 [1964-5] the Jesuits decided to transform Paul VI’s commission to fight atheism into the socio-political struggle of the masses. The spiritual and supernatural element in Jesuit Catholicism had been excised [….] General Council 32 [1974-5] converted the Society of Jesus from an arm of the Church engaged in indispensable apostolic works to ‘faith in the service of justice,’ i.e., revolution against the socio-economic-political structure of the capitalist West [….] They succeeded in amalgamating nature with revelation” [!] (Rev. Gerard Steckler, SJ, in “Faith and Reason, 1988).
QUESTION: for the perennial Catholic Church, as such and as a whole, how to encourage Escrivá’s dream “of an international meeting of university students from five continents”—without concurrently and “synodally” possibly eliding any clear memory of the role and responsibilities of each diocesan bishop, personally and institutionally–within the Eucharistic Church and its Apostolic Succession–as always irreducible [!] to diocesan and national “synods” and then “continental synods”? And, even an intercontinental “Ecclesial Assembly” announced for 2028?
Is the doctrinal role of the historic Jesuits being subliminally displaced by synodally progressive messaging, as alongside Opus Dei? How better to coherently leaven this world with the theological virtues championed by Pope Francis: Faith, Hope, and Charity?
They are in it for a long haul. Students are at the forefront in the remaking and reshaping of the world. Their best is yet to come.