Pope Francis / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 4, 2022 / 06:12 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has said he has no plans to resign soon and that his knee injury is healing.Reports of Francis resigning began to spread last month in light of three even… […]
Pope Francis speaks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi after Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on June 29, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Jul 4, 2022 / 03:43 am (CNA).
Pope Francis condemned abortion in new comments about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
When asked whether a Catholic politician who supports the right to choose abortion can receive the sacrament of Communion, he warned of bishops losing their “pastoral nature.”
Speaking to Reuters over the weekend, the pope said he respected the ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, though he did not know enough to speak about the juridical aspects.
The interview, published July 4, said Francis compared abortion to “hiring a hit man.”
“I ask: Is it legitimate, is it right, to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem?” Pope Francis said.
He was also asked about the debate over whether Catholic politicians who promote legal abortion should be admitted to Holy Communion.
In May, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was barred from receiving Communion in her home diocese of San Francisco by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone because of her advocacy of abortion.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) reportedly received Holy Communion at a Mass with Pope Francis at the Vatican on June 29. It is not clear if the pope was aware that Pelosi attended, though the Vatican issued a photo showing the two greeting each other in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Francis told Reuters: “When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That’s all I can say.”
The 90-minute interview in Italian took place on July 2 in a reception room on the ground floor of the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse, where the pope lives.
In addition to the abortion topic, the interview covered the pope’s health, resignation rumors, and the possibility of trips to Kyiv and Moscow.
Pope Francis prays the Angelus from the window of the Apostolic Palace on July 3, 2022. / Vatican Media/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 3, 2022 / 06:15 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Sunday that evangelization should not be seen as “personal activism,” but … […]
Pope Francis celebrated Mass for Rome’s Congolese community in St. Peter’s Basilica on July 3, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 3, 2022 / 04:10 am (CNA).
Amid singing, clapping, and dancing to traditional Congolese music, Pope Francis celebrated the Zaire Use of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday.
The pope began his homily on July 3 with the word, “esengo,” which means “joy” in Lingala, the Bantu-based creole spoken in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and by millions of speakers across Central Africa.
Pope Francis celebrated the Mass for Rome’s Congolese community on the day that he was due to offer Mass in Kinshasa before his trip to Africa was canceled at the request of the pope’s doctors.
The pope, whose mobility has been limited due to a knee injury, remained seated throughout the Mass. Francis presided over the Liturgy of the Word and gave the homily. Archbishop Richard Gallagher offered the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
“Today, dear brothers and sisters, let us pray for peace and reconciliation in your homeland, in the wounded and exploited Democratic Republic of Congo,” Pope Francis said.
“We join the Masses celebrated in the country according to this intention and pray that Christians may be witnesses of peace, capable of overcoming any feeling of resentment, any feeling of vengeance, overcoming the temptation that reconciliation is not possible, any unhealthy attachment to their own group that leads to despising others.”
The pope underlined that the Lord calls all Christians to be “ambassadors of peace.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo has experienced a wave of violence in recent years. Dozens of armed groups are believed to operate in the eastern region of DR Congo despite the presence of more than 16,000 UN peacekeepers. Local Catholic bishops have repeatedly appealed for an end to the bloodshed.
“Brother, sister, peace begins with us,” Pope Francis said.
“If you live in his peace, Jesus arrives and your family, your society changes. They change if your heart is not at war in the first place, it is not armed with resentment and anger, it is not divided, it is not double, it is not false. Putting peace and order in one’s heart, defusing greed, extinguishing hatred and resentment, fleeing corruption, fleeing cheating and cunning: this is where peace begins.”
Peace was expected to be a key theme of the pope’s canceled Africa trip. Pope Francis was planning to spend July 2-5 in the Congolese cities of Kinshasa and Goma, and July 5-7 in the South Sudanese capital Juba.
After the Vatican announced that the trip was postponed due to the ongoing medical treatment for the pope’s knee pain, Pope Franics said on June 13: “We will bring Kinshasa to St. Peter’s, and there we will celebrate with all the Congolese in Rome, of which there are many.”
About 2,000 people were present in the inculturated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on the first Sunday of July.
Women in brightly colored traditional dresses sang and danced as they prayed the Gloria. People clapped and shouted as Archbishop Richard Gallagher incensed the main altar.
The gifts were brought up to the altar in a dancing procession. Religious sisters in the pews stepped from side to side together to the music.
At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis greeted some members of the local Congolese community from his wheelchair.
“May the Lord help us to be missionaries today, going in the company of brother and sister; having on his lips the peace and closeness of God; carrying in the heart the meekness and goodness of Jesus, Lamb who takes away the sins of the world,” the pope said.
The Zaire Use of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is an inculturated Mass formally approved in 1988 for the dioceses of what was then known as the Republic of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The only inculturated Eucharistic celebration approved after the Second Vatican Council, it was developed following a call for adaptation of the liturgy in “Sacrosanctum concilium,” Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.
In a video message in 2020, Pope Francis said: “The experience of the Congolese rite of the celebration of Mass can serve as an example and model for other cultures.”
Pope Francis recorded a video message for the people of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. / Screenshot of YouTube video
Vatican City, Jul 2, 2022 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has said that he is “greatly disappointed” that he … […]
An image of St. Peter in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on June 29, 2022. / Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 2, 2022 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose official name is the joint Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, is the commemoration of the martyrdom in Rome of the apostles Simon Peter and Paul of Tarsus, celebrated on June 29.
As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI recalled in 2012, “Christian tradition has always considered St. Peter and St. Paul as inseparable: together, in fact, they represent the whole Gospel of Christ… Although humanly very different from one another, and despite the fact that there was no lack of conflict in their relationship, they constituted a new way of being brothers, lived according to the Gospel, an authentic way made possible by the grace of the Gospel of Christ at work in them. Only the following of Jesus leads to the new fraternity.”
Elon Musk posted a photo with Pope Francis on Twitter. / null
Vatican City, Jul 2, 2022 / 01:55 am (CNA).
Elon Musk has said that he met with Pope Francis at the Vatican this week.The world’s richest man posted a photo with the pope on Twitter … […]
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square, June 25, 2022 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jul 1, 2022 / 10:26 am (CNA).
In an interview published Friday, Pope Francis said that he believes it is time to rethink the concept of “just war.”
“I believe it is time to rethink the concept of a ‘just war.’ A war may be just, there is the right to defend oneself. But we need to rethink the way that the concept is used nowadays,” Pope Francis said.
“I have said that the use and possession of nuclear weapons are immoral. Resolving conflicts through war is saying no to verbal reasoning, to being constructive. … War is essentially a lack of dialogue.”
The pope spoke in an interview that was conducted on June 20 by Télam, Argentina’s national news agency. A 1-hour video of the interview was published on July 1.
In response to a question about how the lack of dialogue is an aggravating factor in the current state of world affairs, the pope said that there is “an entire infrastructure of arms sales” that supports war today.
“A person who knew about statistics told me, I don’t remember the numbers well, that if weapons were not manufactured for a year, there would be no hunger in the world,” he said.
Pope Francis described how he cried during visits to war cemeteries in Europe, including the Redipuglia World War I memorial and Anzio World War II cemetery in Italy.
“And when the anniversary of the landing in Normandy was commemorated, I thought of the 30,000 boys who were left dead on the beach. They opened the boats and said, ‘get off, get off,’ they were ordered while the Nazis waited for them. Is that justified? Visiting military cemeteries in Europe helps one realize this,” he said.
The pope also said that the situation in Europe today shows that the United Nations “has no power” to stop a war.
“After World War II, trust was placed in the United Nations. It is not my intention to offend anybody, I know there are very good people working there, but at this point, the UN has no power to assert,” he said.
“It does help to avoid wars — and I am thinking of Cyprus, where there are Argentine troops. But to stop a war, to solve a conflict situation like the one we are living today in Europe, or like the ones lived in other parts of the world, it has no power.”
Church teaching on the morality of war is based on a theory expounded by St. Augustine in the 4th century known as just war theory and recognizes a potentially just reason to engage in war under certain conditions.
Theologians told CNA in 2019 that applying this theory to modern warfare, which often involves missile and air strikes rather than pitched battles between troops, is more complicated, yet normative.
The papal interview touched on a number of themes, including the Covid-19 pandemic, intergenerational dialogue, and climate change.
“You can rest assured that God always forgives, and we, men, forgive every now and then. But nature never forgives. It pays us back. If we use nature for our profit, it will bear down on us. A warmed-up world prevents the construction of a fraternal and just society,” the pope said.
When asked about the Catholic Church in Latin America, the pope said that it has a long history of being “close to the people.”
Pope Francis said: “In a way, this is the experience of the Latin American Church, although there have been attempts of ideologization, such as the use of Marxist concepts in the analysis of reality by Liberation Theology. That was an ideological exploitation …”
“There is a difference between the people and populisms,” he added.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, pictured in 2016. / Alexey Gotovsky/CNA.
Vatican City, Jul 1, 2022 / 09:49 am (CNA).
The Vatican has confirmed the sale of the luxury London propert… […]
Pope Francis delivers a homily from a wheelchair, June 5, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Jun 30, 2022 / 10:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis missed a meeting with a Jewish delegation on Thursday morning after experiencing a flare-up of knee pain, … […]
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