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Pope Francis: Vulnerability threatens the ‘culture of efficiency’

January 10, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis blesses a young woman during a general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall in December 2022. / Vatican Media.

Rome Newsroom, Jan 10, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).

Sickness and vulnerability is scary because it is a threat to the culture of efficiency, Pope Francis said on Tuesday, in a message published ahead of the World Day of the Sick.

“We are rarely prepared for illness. Oftentimes, we fail even to admit that we are getting older,” the pope said Jan. 10. “Our vulnerability frightens us and the pervasive culture of efficiency pushes us to sweep it under the carpet, leaving no room for our human frailty.”

“We are all fragile and vulnerable, and need that compassion which knows how to pause, approach, heal, and raise up. Thus, the plight of the sick is a call that cuts through indifference and slows the pace of those who go on their way as if they had no sisters and brothers,” he said.

The Catholic Church will mark the 31st annual World Day of the Sick on Feb. 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southwestern France is associated with the sick because of the presence of a miraculous spring from which many people have obtained physical healing.

This year’s papal message is titled “Take care of him: Compassion as a synodal exercise of healing.”

“It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matter,” Pope Francis said. “Sick people, in fact, are at the center of God’s people, and the Church advances together with them as a sign of a humanity in which everyone is precious and no one should be discarded or left behind.”

He said it is crucial that the whole Church strive to follow the example of the Good Samaritan.

Just as the Samaritan asked the innkeeper to take care of the wounded man, “Jesus addresses the same call to each of us,” Francis said.

Pope Francis greets a woman in a wheelchair in Rome's Piazza di Spagna on Dec. 8, 2022. Vatican Media
Pope Francis greets a woman in a wheelchair in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna on Dec. 8, 2022. Vatican Media

“As I noted in Fratelli Tutti, ‘The parable shows us how a community can be rebuilt by men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, who reject the creation of a society of exclusion, and act instead as neighbors, lifting up and rehabilitating the fallen for the sake of the common good’ (No. 67),” he said.

“Indeed,” the pope continued, “‘we were created for a fulfillment that can only be found in love. We cannot be indifferent to suffering’ (No. 68).”

Pope Francis also noted that sickness and weakness are part of the human journey, thus, it can be an act of synodality to walk together in community with those who are suffering.

“I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness,” he said.

Pope Francis also addressed the role injustice plays in the lack of access to adequate medical care which many people experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, showed the limits of existing public welfare systems.

“It is no longer easy to distinguish the assaults on human life and dignity that arise from natural causes from those caused by injustice and violence,” he said.

“In fact,” he continued, “increasing levels of inequality and the prevailing interests of the few now affect every human environment to the extent that it is difficult to consider any experience as having solely ‘natural’ causes. All suffering takes place in the context of a ‘culture’ and its various contradictions.”

“Gratitude, then, needs to be matched by actively seeking, in every country, strategies and resources in order to guarantee each person’s fundamental right to basic and decent healthcare,” the pope said.

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Pope Benedict’s kiss goodbye

January 8, 2023 Catholic News Agency 2
John Paul Uebbing’s big moment. / File Photo/CNA.

Vatican City, Jan 8, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The infant son of former Catholic News Agency editor David Uebbing received a farewell kiss on his forehead from Pope Benedict XVI on Feb. 27, 2013, at the plaza of St. Peter’s Basilica before the pope’s final general audience.

“To see him today in the final hours of his papacy and to have him hold my son in his arms was a special kind of blessing, and a consolation from the Lord,” Uebbing’s wife, Jenny, the mother of the fortunate infant, John Paul, told CNA on Feb. 27, 2013.

“I asked the Lord to help me truly experience this morning, this last event with Pope Benedict, and to not be anxious about whether we would get a good spot or be able to see him drive by,” she said. “I had so much peace while we were waiting for the audience to begin, and I just prayed that if we were meant to get close to His Holiness, the Lord would arrange the details. And he did.”

Jenny Uebbing had come to the plaza at 7:30 in the morning with her sister and her two sons, John Paul — who is now almost 11 — and Joey. On her blog, “Mama needs coffee,” she described three hours of “pressing crowds and stalwartly holding our position against the barricade, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of our beloved Holy Father.”

David Uebbing, John Paul’s father and former office head of CNA’s Rome bureau, described how “a security guard offered to pass him to Archbishop [Georg] Gänswein when the popemobile came by.”

Gänswein at the time was head of the Prefecture of the Papal Household and was in the popemobile along with Benedict XVI. He supported John Paul while the pope embraced him and gave a him a fatherly kiss.

Jenny Uebbing said that after John Paul was passed back to her, the Roman pontiff passed by their spot in the crowd.

“We locked eyes for a moment and I was able to tell him ‘thank you.’ That was all I could have asked for, to personally thank him not only for the moment of grace when he kissed my little son, but for his total gift of self to the Church,” she told CNA at the time.

Her sister Christina also described her own experience of sharing a glance with the Holy Father.

“It felt like I was looking at Jesus, in a way,” she said. “When I looked into his eyes, I didn‘t see only the man, the pope, but also the One he serves. There was so much love and kindness in his eyes.”

Pope Benedict holds a special place in Jenny Uebbing‘s heart, as “the Holy Father who invited me home to the faith of my childhood. In a sense, he held open the door of the Church and welcomed me inside again,” she said.

David Uebbing told CNA that “my wife and I were overjoyed at the pope‘s kindness and the gentle love you could see on his face when he kissed John Paul.”

The Uebbings moved to Rome in early January 2013. “Before today we would have already said that Pope Benedict made our lives a lot more exciting than we thought he would, but when our youngest son was kissed by him today we were speechless,” David Uebbing said.

For a child of only 10 months, John Paul already had quite the papal connections. Aside from being kissed on the forehead by the vicar of Christ, he was named for Pope Benedict‘s predecessor. Also, he was born on April 19, 2012, the seventh anniversary of Pope Benedict‘s accession as bishop of Rome. John Paul now has four younger siblings, the youngest of whom turned 3 in November and is named Benedict. One more sibling is expected in March.

This story was originally published Feb. 28, 2013. It was updated by CNA on Jan. 4, 2023.

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How to visit the tomb of Benedict XVI

January 7, 2023 Catholic News Agency 2
The coffin of Pope Benedict XVI is prepared for interment in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 5, 2023. / Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Jan 7, 2023 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Benedict XVI was buried in the crypt under St. Peter’s Basilica after his funeral Mass on Jan. 5.

The late pope’s coffin was interred in the former burial place of both St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII, whose remains were moved to the upper part of the basilica at the time of their beatifications.

The coffin of Pope Benedict XVI is prepared for interment in the crypt of St. Peter's Basilica on Jan. 5, 2023. Vatican Media
The coffin of Pope Benedict XVI is prepared for interment in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 5, 2023. Vatican Media

After being closed for several days, from 9 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 8, the Vatican crypt, which has small chapels and the tombs of popes and royals, will reopen to the public.

To visit the tomb of Benedict XVI, first enter St. Peter’s Basilica.

Proceed to the front of the basilica and the central altar and Baldachin, a Baroque bronze canopy sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The papal altar and Baldachin as seen during Pope Francis' Mass for the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 13, 2022. Daniel Ibanez/CNA.
The papal altar and Baldachin as seen during Pope Francis’ Mass for the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 13, 2022. Daniel Ibanez/CNA.

The bones of St. Peter, the Church’s first pope, are under the papal altar in the central part of the crypt, called the Confessio.

Turn left in front of the papal altar. In front of the first column on the left, below a statue of St. Andrew, are the stairs giving access to the crypt.

Pope Francis prays at the Confessio, the place where St. Peter's bones are buried in the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica, Nov. 2, 2021. Vatican Media.
Pope Francis prays at the Confessio, the place where St. Peter’s bones are buried in the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica, Nov. 2, 2021. Vatican Media.

Benedict XVI’s tomb is on the north side of the crypt, on the other side of the Confessio from the stairs. On the marble slab covering the tomb is written: Benedictus PP. XVI.

Queen Christina of Sweden, who died on April 19, 1689, is buried in a sarcophagus immediately to the right of Benedict.

On the wall above Benedict’s tomb, there is a bas-relief sculpture of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus flanked by angels.

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