Pope Francis presided over a Chrism Mass at which more than 1,880 priests, bishops, and cardinals renewed the promises made at their ordinations on April 6, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 6, 2023 / 03:50 am (CNA).
On Holy Thursday,… […]
Pope Francis delivers his Angelus reflection from the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City on March 26, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Apr 5, 2023 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday revised parts of the penal law of the Eastern Catho… […]
Pope Francis greets pilgrims from the pope mobile in St. Peter’s Square on April 5, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 5, 2023 / 09:53 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has offered advice for how to have a fruitful Holy Week, urging people to foc… […]
Archbishop Michael O. Jackels speaks to McConnell AFB airmen at the 2013 McConnell National Prayer Breakfast March 7, 2013, at the McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. / Katrina M. Brisbin/U.S. Air Force
Vatican City, Apr 4, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA)…. […]
Pope Francis meets with executives and employees of the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, Italy’s main welfare agency, April 3, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Apr 3, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has urged Italy’s main welfare agency not to forget the contribution of foreign workers.
“It should not be forgotten that foreign workers who do not yet have Italian citizenship also contribute to the pension system,” the pope said in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on April 3.
“It would be a good sign to be able to express gratitude to them for what they do,” he said. “Social security also reminds us that ‘everything is connected’ and that we are interdependent on each other.”
Francis met 400 employees of the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, better known as INPS, to mark the institution’s 125th anniversary.
INPS is the main welfare agency of the Italian public pension system. It serves more than 42 million people, providing retirement pensions and other state welfare such as social security, maternity leave, disability benefits, and workers’ compensation.
“Social life stands because of supportive community networks,” Pope Francis said. “The common good passes through the daily work of millions of people who share the principle of the bond of solidarity among workers.”
He acknowledged Italy’s aging population as he urged the agency to promote dignified, stable work and to fight illegal labor.
The pope appealed to them “to guard a welfare system that is up to the challenges of societies that, like Italy’s, are growing older and older.”
Dignified work “is always ‘free, creative, participatory, and supportive,’” he said, quoting the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
“Welfare is a form of participation in one’s own and others’ well-being,” he continued. “Setting aside economic resources and ensuring access to health care are valuable assets that can hold together the different seasons of life.”
INPS Director General Vincenzo Caridi said Monday’s meeting was a chance to listen closely to Pope Francis “at a time when the sphere of social work and closeness to the least is (in continuity with the great pontificates that have confronted the challenge of modernity) the cornerstone of his message.”
Caridi said “the tree of the welfare state is nourished by many cultural roots, among them certainly the social doctrine of the Church. His is an invitation, a spur which gives strength to all employees of the Institute — believers and nonbelievers alike — who are called to renew the spirit of service with which they carry out their daily commitment.”
In his speech, Pope Francis used two stories from the Bible to illustrate both a good and a bad model of welfare.
A “bad welfare,” the pope said, is like the greedy man in the parable from the Gospel of St. Luke who builds a bigger warehouse to hold all of his crops, planning to rest, eat, drink, and enjoy himself, “but God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’”
“Those who accumulate only for themselves end up deluding themselves,” Francis said.
An example of “good welfare,” instead, is that of the patriarch Joseph, he said.
As governor of Egypt, Joseph ordered that some grain be put aside from the abundance in order to be prepared for the future, when there may be a period of famine.
“Joseph not only trusts in God’s providence and recognizes it, but [he also] shows foresight for the good of the people,” Francis explained. “He knows how to look forward; he envisions good even when evil seems to prevail; he cares for the people entrusted to him. And this is your vocation: taking care of people in the future.”
Pope Francis greets religious sisters at the end of his general audience on Aug. 10, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Apr 3, 2023 / 05:03 am (CNA).
Pope Francis amended canon law on Monday to give members of institutes of consecrated life mo… […]
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 05:15 am (CNA).
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus voluntarily took on the pain and abandonment of his Passion and Crucifixion so that he could be with us in whatever sorrow or difficulty we might be experiencing.
Jesus “experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever,” the pope said during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 2.
“He did this for me, for you,” he said, “because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of ‘whys’ without answer, there can still be some hope…”
Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass one day after being discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The pope was admitted to the hospital for three days beginning March 29 for treatment for a bronchitis infection, the Vatican said.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
In his homily, Francis spoke in a soft voice as he emphasized that whatever situation of abandonment we find ourselves in, Jesus is at our side.
The pope also said that we will find Jesus in those who are abandoned, recalling the death in November last year of a homeless man from Germany, who was found under the colonnade of St. Peter‘s Square.
Jesus “wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude,” he said. “Today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems.”
Pope Francis said these people are “Christs” for us: “People who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves,” such as the unborn, the isolated elderly, the forgotten sick, the abandoned disabled, and the lonely young.
“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned,” he said.
Pope Francis entered St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile April 2. He was driven to the central obelisk for the blessing of the palms and the proclamation of a reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the singing of Psalm 23.
The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why…?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 04:25 am (CNA).
Pope Francis presided over Mass for Palm Sunday 2023 in St. Peter’s Square on April 2. Below is the full text of his homily:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). This is the cry that today’s liturgy has us repeat in the responsorial psalm (cf. Ps 22:2), the only cry that Jesus makes from the cross in the Gospel we have heard. Those words bring us to the very heart of Christ’s passion, the culmination of the sufferings he endured for our salvation. “Why have you forsaken me?”
The sufferings of Jesus were so man, and whenever we listen to the account of the Passion, they pierce our hearts. There were sufferings of the body: we think of the slaps and beatings, flogging and the crowning with thorns, and in the end, the cruelty of the crucifixion. There were also sufferings of the soul: the betrayal of Judas, the denials of Peter, the condemnation of the religious and civil authorities, the mockery of the guards, the jeering at the foot of the cross, the rejection of the crowd, utter failure and the flight of the disciples.
Yet, amid all these sorrows, Jesus remained certain of one thing: the closeness of the Father. Now, however, the unthinkable has taken place. Before dying, he cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus’ abandonment.
This is the most searing of all sufferings, the suffering of the spirit. At his most tragic hour, Jesus experiences abandonment by God. Prior to that moment, he had never called the Father by his generic name, “God,” never. [He uses] Father. To convey the impact of this, the Gospel also reports his words in Aramaic. These are the only words of Jesus from the cross that have come down to us in the original language. The event is real, and the Lord’s abasement extreme: It is the abandonment of his Father, the abandonment of God.
We find it hard even to grasp what great suffering he embraced out of love for us. It is not easy to understand. He sees the gates of heaven close, he finds himself at the bitter edge, the shipwreck of life, the collapse of certainty. And he cries out: “Why?” A “why” that embraces every other “why” ever spoken. But why, God, why?
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the Bible, the word “forsake” is powerful. We hear it at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness. In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others. There he tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.
But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us. Brothers and sisters, today, this is not a show. Each of us has listened to the abandonment of Jesus, say to each other — each of us say to each other — “For me. This abandonment is the price he paid for me.”
He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us. He experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever. Dear brother, dear sister, he did this for me, for you, because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of many “whys” without answer, there can still be some hope: Him, for you, for me.
It is not the end, because Jesus was there and even now, he is at your side. He has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside. And there we find him.
When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why’ and with many ‘whys’ without answer, he is there.
That is how the Lord saves us, from within our questioning “why?” From within that questioning, he opens the horizon of hope that does not disappoint. On the cross, even as he felt utter abandonment, Jesus refused to yield to despair, this limit; instead, he prayed and trusted. He cried out his “why?” in the words of the Psalm (22:2), and commended himself into the hands of the Father, despite the distance he felt (cf. Lk 23:46) or did not feel because he felt abandoned. In the hour of his abandonment, Jesus continued to trust. Even more: at the hour of abandonment, he continued to love his disciples who had fled, leaving him alone, and in the abandonment he forgave those who crucified him (v. 34). Here we see the abyss of our evil immersed in a greater love, with the result that our isolation becomes fellowship.
Brothers and sisters, a love like this, embracing us totally and to the very end, a love of Jesus like this, has the capacity to turn our stony hearts into hearts of flesh, and make them capable of mercy, tenderness and compassion. It is the style of God, this closeness, with passion and tenderness. God is like this. Christ, in his abandonment, stirs us to seek him and to love him and those who are themselves abandoned. For in them we see not only people in need, but Jesus himself, but him, he is with them, abandoned: Jesus, who saved us by descending to the depths of our human condition. He is like one of them: abandoned unto death. I think back to some weeks ago, that man, called homeless, a German man who died under the colonnade alone, abandoned. He is Jesus for each of us. Many people need our closeness, many abandoned people. I too need Jesus to caress me, to be close to me. Each of us need to find him in the abandoned, in the alone.
He wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude. They are not only those people, but today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems. But there are also many Christs, there are many, many Christs, people who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves: unborn children, the elderly who live alone — the elderly who live alone could also maybe be your dad, your mom, your grandpa, grandma, abandoned in geriatrics — the sick whom no one visits, the disabled who are ignored, and the young burdened by great interior emptiness, with no one prepared to listen to their cry of pain and who find another way toward suicide. The abandoned of today, the Christs of today.
Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned. For us, as disciples of the “forsaken” Lord, no man, woman or child can be regarded as an outcast, no one left to himself or herself. Let us remember that the rejected and the excluded are living icons of Christ: they remind us of his reckless love, his forsakenness that delivers us from every form of loneliness and isolation. Brothers and sisters, today let us implore this grace: to love Jesus in his abandonment and to love Jesus in the abandoned all around us, in the abandoned all around us. Let us ask for the grace to see and acknowledge the Lord who continues to cry out in them. May we not allow his voice to go unheard amid the deafening silence of indifference. God has not left us alone; let us care, then, for those who feel alone and abandoned. Then, and only then, will we be of one mind and heart with the one who, for our sake, “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7). Totally emptied for us.
Pope Francis celebrates Mass in St. Peter’s Square for Easter 2022 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Apr 1, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).
Palm Sunday marks the start of one of the most full and beautiful liturgical periods of the Catholic Church year.
It is also one of the busiest liturgical periods at the Vatican, where Pope Francis has been scheduled to preside over nine Masses, liturgies, and devotions between April 2 and Easter Monday, April 10.
With Pope Francis having been hospitalized on March 29 for a respiratory infection, it was unclear if he would be well enough to participate in any or some of the liturgies.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed on April 1 as Pope Francis was discharged from the hospital that the pope is still planning to be present for Palm Sunday Mass on April 2. Pope Francis will preside over the liturgies with a cardinal celebrating at the altar.
Here is the Vatican’s full schedule for Holy Week and Easter 2023:
On Sunday morning, April 2, Pope Francis is scheduled to preside over Mass for Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday or the Commemoration of the Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem.
The Mass, which will be in St. Peter’s Square at 10 a.m. local time, will kick off with a grand procession of deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals, and laypeople carrying palms.
The procession includes olive tree branches, palm fronds, and the large, weaved palms called “parmureli,” all blessed by Pope Francis.
Pope Francis is set to start Holy Thursday with a Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at 9:30 a.m. in the presence of cardinals, bishops, and priests living in Rome.
During the Mass, Pope Francis, as the bishop of Rome, will bless the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and the chrism oil to be used in the diocese during the coming year.
In the evening, the pope will offer Mass at the juvenile detention center “Casal del Marmo,” the same detention center where he offered Holy Thursday Mass in 2013, shortly after his election.
In 2022, the pope offered the Mass at a prison in Civitavecchia, a port city about 50 miles northwest of Rome. After the homily, Francis washed the feet of 12 inmates, representing the disciples.
Continuing the liturgies of the Triduum, Pope Francis is also scheduled to preside over a celebration for the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday at 5 p.m. in St. Peter’s Basilica.
During this liturgy, which is not a Mass, instead of the pope papal preacher Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa preaches on Christ’s crucifixion.
In the evening, Francis will lead the Stations of the Cross devotion at the Colosseum at 9:15 p.m.
On Holy Saturday, Pope Francis is set to preside over the Easter Vigil at 7:30 p.m. in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Easter Vigil, which takes place on Holy Saturday night, “is the greatest and most noble of all solemnities,” according to the Roman Missal.
The liturgy begins in darkness with the blessing of the new fire and the preparation of the paschal candle. At the Vatican, cardinals, bishops, and priests process through the dark basilica carrying lit candles to signify the light of Christ coming to dispel the darkness.
Pope Francis also typically baptizes new Catholics at this Mass.
The morning of Easter Sunday, Pope Francis will preside over Mass in St. Peter’s Square at 10 a.m. on a flower-decked parvise.
After Mass, he will give the annual Easter urbi et orbi blessing from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Urbi et orbi” means “to the city [of Rome] and to the world” and is a special apostolic blessing given by the pope every year on Easter Sunday, Christmas, and other special occasions.
In 2022, local authorities estimated 100,000 people were present for the blessing.
Pope Francis will mark Easter Monday, also called “Monday of the Angel,” by praying the Angelus at noon from a window of the Apostolic Palace.
The Angelus is a traditional prayer honoring the Virgin Mary. Pope Francis leads the prayer and gives a brief reflection every Sunday and on important Marian and other feast days.
Courtney Mares contributed to this report.
Pope Francis greets staff at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, July 11, 2021. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Apr 1, 2023 / 04:16 am (CNA).
Pope Francis was discharged from the hospital Saturday morning after a three-night stay in Rome’s Gemelli Hos… […]
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