Pope Francis, seated in a wheelchair, greets a child during the pope’s general audience at the Vatican on Jan. 25, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2023 / 08:57 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has been undergoing some medical checkups at one of Rome’s most prominent hospitals since Wednesday afternoon, according to a Vatican spokesman.
Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni issued a brief statement the afternoon of March 29 to say the pope was at Gemelli Hospital “for some previously scheduled checkups.”
Gemelli is the same hospital where Pope Francis was hospitalized in July 2021 when he underwent surgery on his colon for diverticulitis, or inflammation of the intestinal wall.
In an interview with the Associated Press in January, Pope Francis disclosed that the diverticulosis had “returned.”
At the same time, however, the 86-year-old pontiff — who traveled to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in late January and early February — insisted he was in relatively good condition.
“I’m in good health. For my age, I’m normal,” he told the AP on Jan. 24.
The pope has also suffered since last year from a problem with his right knee, making it necessary for him to rely on a cane and a wheelchair to move around. But Francis told the AP that a fracture had healed without surgery after laser and magnet therapy.
Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke against a comfortable Christianity that keeps Jesus at arm’s length, rather than inviting him into the heart to change it.
“If one of us says, ‘Ah, thank you Lord, because I am a good person, I do good things, I do not commit major sins…’ this is not a good path, this is the path of self-sufficiency, it is a path that does not justify you, it makes you turn up your nose,” the pope said during his weekly public audience March 29.
He called this attitude being “an elegant Catholic, but an elegant Catholic is not a holy Catholic, he is elegant.”
“The true Catholic, the true Christian is one who receives Jesus within, which changes your heart,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square.
Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“This,” he continued, “is the question I ask you all today: What does Jesus mean for me? Did I let him enter my heart, or do I keep him within reach, but so that he does not really enter within? Have I let myself be changed by him? Or is Jesus just an idea, a theology that goes ahead…”
At his Wednesday general audience, the pope continued his reflections on evangelization and apostolic zeal with a catechesis centered on St. Paul’s transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a great evangelist.
St. Paul “was a man who was zealous about the law of Moses for Judaism, and after his conversion, this zeal continued, but to proclaim, to preach Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis explained. “Paul loved Jesus. Saul — Paul’s first name — was already zealous, but Christ converts his zeal.”
To better explain zeal, the pope referenced St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that passion, from a moral perspective, is neither good nor bad: it depends on if it is used virtuously or sinfully.
Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“In Paul’s case, what changed him is not a simple idea or a conviction: it was the encounter, this word, it was the encounter with the risen Lord — do not forget this, it is the encounter with the Lord that changes a life — it was the encounter with the risen Lord that transformed his entire being,” the pope said.
“Paul’s humanity,” he added, “his passion for God and his glory was not annihilated, but transformed, ‘converted’ by the Holy Spirit.”
The pope noted that part of the change that takes place in Paul is his conversion from feeling righteous before God, and thus authorized to persecute, to arrest, and even to kill — to someone who, enlightened by God, recognizes himself to be a “blasphemer and persecutor.”
After recognizing what he had done, Paul becomes truly capable of loving, Francis said.
“If Jesus did not enter your life, it did not change,” he said. “You cannot be Christian only from the outside. No, Jesus must enter and this changes you, and this happened to Paul. It is finding Jesus, and this is why Paul said that Christ’s love drives us, it is what takes you forward.”
Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
“This is zeal, when one finds Jesus and feels the fire, like Paul, and must preach Jesus, must talk about Jesus, must help people, must do good things,” he explained. “When one finds the idea of Jesus, he or she remains an ideologue of Christianity, and this does not justify, only Jesus justifies us. May the Lord help us find Jesus, encounter Jesus, and may this Jesus change our life from within and help us to help others.”
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 05:27 am (CNA).
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A group of Traditional Latin Mass supporters in Italy posted signs as part of a billboard campaign in a neighborhood near the Vatican on March 28, 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Mar 28, 2023 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
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Pope Francis gives an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica March 27, 2020. / Vatican Media.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 27, 2023 / 10:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday will bless a satellite that will launch his words into space on June 10.
The “Spes Satelles,” Latin for “Satellites of Hope,” will be launched on a rocket taking off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
According to the Vatican, the miniaturized satellite will hold a copy of a book documenting the pope’s urbi et orbi blessing of March 27, 2020, when, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, he blessed the world from St. Peter’s Square with the words “Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies, and comfort our hearts.”
“You ask us not to be afraid,” the pope prayed. “Yet our faith is weak and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm.”
Pope Francis speaks in an empty St. Peter’s Square during a holy hour and extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing, March 27, 2020. Vatican Media/CNA
The book, “Why Are You Afraid? Have You No Faith? The World Facing the Pandemic,” has been converted into a nanobook, a 2-millimeter by 2-millimeter by 0.2-millimeter silicon plate, for transport to space.
Pope Francis will bless the satellite and the nanobook after his weekly public audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29.
The Vatican said March 27 the CubeSat, the name for miniature satellites, will travel aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX’s partially reusable two-stage launch platform. It will be hosted on the ION SCV-011ION platform, a satellite carrier developed and built by the Italian company D-Orbit.
The Italian Space Agency will operate the satellite, which was built by the Polytechnic University of Turin.
The Italian Space Agency will operate the satellite, which was built by the Polytechnic University of Turin, to be launched on a rocket taking off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on June 10, 2023. Credit: Holy See Press Office
“The satellite is equipped with a radio transmitter as well as onboard instruments to be maneuvered from the ground,” a press release stated.
While in orbit, the satellite will broadcast decipherable statements from Pope Francis on the theme of hope and peace in English, Italian, and Spanish.
The president of the Italian Space Agency, Giorgio Saccoccia, said the Holy See asked the agency to identify a way for Pope Francis’ words of hope “to cross the earth’s borders and reach from space the greatest possible number of women and men on our troubled planet.”
“For those of us who are used to seeing space as the privileged place from which to observe the world and communicate with it without borders, it was easy to imagine a quick, humble and effective solution to offer wings to the Holy Father’s message,” he added.
The Italian Space Agency will operate the satellite, which was built by the Polytechnic University of Turin, to be launched on a rocket taking off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on June 10, 2023. Credit: Holy See Press Office
The secretary of the Dicastery for Communication, Father Lucio Adrian Ruiz, said “space has a fascination for everyone, especially for young people. Space has that mystery of the universal, the deep, the magnificent, and it makes us all dream.”
By launching Pope Francis’ words of the March 27, 2020, blessing into space, the Vatican hopes to signify that the pope’s prayer, blessing, and universal call to hope continue to be relevant for men and women of goodwill today, he said.
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Pope Francis, seated in a wheelchair, greets a child during the pope’s general audience at the Vatican on Jan. 25, 2023. / Vatican Media
