Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, SJ, takes possession of his titular church in Rome, the Church of the Gesù, on Dec. 8, 2022. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Jun 19, 2023 / 10:06 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Monday appointed Cardinal Gianf… […]
Pope Francis meets with John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, on June 19, 2023, in what was Kerry’s fourth official private meeting with the pope. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jun 19, 2023 / 07:45 am (CNA).
Pope Franci… […]
Pope Francis delivers his Angelus address on June 18, 2023/Portrait of Blaise Pascal. / Vatican Media/Public domain
Vatican City, Jun 19, 2023 / 05:45 am (CNA).
Pope Francis published an apostolic letter on Monday praising the 17th-century math… […]
Pope Francis appeared in the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Sunday, June 18 to make his first public speech since his release from the hospital. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Jun 18, 2023 / 05:25 am (CNA).
Pope Francis appeared in … […]
The family of Miguel Ángel, the child baptized by Pope Francis at Gemelli Hospital in Rome on March 31, 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/ACI Prensa
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 17, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
The story of a Peruvian immigrant family in Italy … […]
The parish of St. Josemaría in Alcorcón, Spain, was vandalized the night of June 15-16, 2023. / Credit: Parish of St. Josemaría
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 16, 2023 / 16:25 pm (CNA).
The same church where Father Javier Contreras was stabbed in 2020 … […]
Pope Francis left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital shortly before 9:00 a.m. on June 16, 2023. Before returning to the Vatican, he stopped to pray in front of the historic Marian icon of Salus Populi Romani at St. Mary Major Basilica, and made a quick visit to a group of religious sisters close to St. Peter’s Square. / Vatican Media.
Rome Newsroom, Jun 16, 2023 / 03:10 am (CNA).
Pope Francis was discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital to a round of applause on Friday, after an eight-day stay following abdominal surgery.
He greeted hospital staff and other patients as he left the hospital in a wheelchair June 16. Outside the building, the pope was asked how he was doing by media, to whom he said, “I’m still alive!”
After Francis left in his white Fiat 500, surgeon Dr. Sergio Alfieri told reporters, “The pope is well. He’s better than before,” according to the Associated Press.
According to the Vatican, Pope Francis will lead the Angelus on Sunday as usual and other audiences for the upcoming days will take place.
The pope’s Wednesday morning audience with the public in St. Peter’s Square on June 21 has been canceled, instead, “to safeguard the Holy Father’s postoperative recovery.”
Before returning to the Vatican on Friday, Francis stopped to pray in front of the Salus Populi Romani Marian icon.
The historic icon is kept in a chapel in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Pope Francis has also stopped there after previous hospitalizations and visits the icon before and after every international trip.
On his approach to the Vatican, he made a quick private visit to a group of religious sisters who run a guesthouse next to St. Peter’s Square.
The Italian Istituto Santissima Maria Bambina (“Institute of the Most Holy Child Mary”) is currently holding its general chapter meeting in Rome.
The pope also thanked the law enforcement who guard the entrance to the Vatican.
According to daily updates from the Vatican, the 86-year-old Pope Francis has been recovering normally after undergoing a three-hour surgery to repair an incisional hernia on June 7.
A team of surgeons removed scar tissue and operated on a hernia in the pope’s abdominal wall at the site of a previous surgical incision.
The June 7-16 stay was Pope Francis’ third hospitalization in the past two years.
He was hospitalized for four days in March for a lung infection and had part of his large intestine removed in July 2021 due to diverticulitis.
If there is one common denominator that links all of the various forms of Catholic progressivism together it is their allergy to the scandal of Christ’s particularity and the Christian claim that this particularity represents […]
During his last full day of hospitalization on June 15, 2023, Pope Francis visits the pediatric oncology ward of Gemelli Hospital, which is next to his own hospital suite. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jun 15, 2023 / 09:50 am (CNA).
Po… […]
Young people from around the world held hands in St. Peter’s Square during the #NotAlone human fraternity event June 10, 2023. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2023 / 08:22 am (CNA).
The U.N. Security Council convened a high-level briefing on Wednesday to discuss the role of “human fraternity” in promoting peace, inspired by the fraternity declaration co-authored by Pope Francis and a leading Sunni imam.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the council on June 14 to look to the human fraternity declaration signed by the pope and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, in Abu Dhabi in 2019 as “a model for compassion and human solidarity.”
Following the briefing on June 14, the security council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning hate speech, racism, gender discrimination, and acts of extremism that was co-authored by the United Arab Emirates and the U.K.
The resolution had originally contained a reference to Pope Francis’ human fraternity declaration, which was deleted after some members expressed concern that the use of the term “human fraternity” could be interpreted as endorsing the entire content of the 2019 document, including its condemnation of abortion, according to the Security Council Report.
France also objected that the term “fraternity” was too ambiguous and could have contradictory interpretations, adding that religious questions do not have a place in the security council and that the resolution was “too weak” on the issues of women’s rights, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Pope Francis, in a message read aloud by the Vatican’s foreign minister Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, invited the security council to “face our common problems, setting aside ideologies and narrow visions, partisan ideas and interests, and to cultivate a single purpose: to work for the good of all humanity.”
“We are suffering from a famine of fraternity, which arises from the many situations of injustice, poverty, and inequality and also from the lack of a culture of solidarity,” the pope said.
“New ideologies, characterized by widespread individualism, egocentrism, and materialistic consumerism, weaken social bonds, fueling that ‘throwaway’ mentality, which leads to contempt for and abandonment of the weakest and those considered ‘useless.’”
The UAE convened the high-level meeting on human fraternity as it holds the rotating security council presidency this month.
The meeting fell under the security council’s “maintenance of international peace and security” agenda item.
Al-Tayeb, considered the highest authority in Sunni Islam, addressed the council via video conference from Egypt.
He rejected claims that Islam is a religion of the sword and said that war is only acceptable in self-defense. Al-Tayeb urged the international community to move away from pointless wars, mentioning Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and said that the war on the eastern borders of Europe is instilling fear that humanity may regress.
The UAE and the Holy See have collaborated in promoting human fraternity in the years following the 2019 declaration.
The UAE created the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, which is co-chaired by Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue of the Holy See, and sponsors the $1 million Zayed Award for Human Fraternity.
A Vatican foundation also honored Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan with its “Man of Humanity” award in 2021.
In Guterres’ address to the security council, he said that “we are witnessing a groundswell of xenophobia, racism and intolerance, violent misogyny, anti-Muslim hatred, virulent anti-Semitism, and attacks on minority Christian communities” around the world.
The U.N. secretary general called for strengthening “the values of compassion, respect, and human fraternity anchored in international human rights norms and standards, and secure free and safe civic spaces.”
“This demands action by all of us — across international organizations, governments, civil society, and the private sector. And it requires intervention by faith leaders everywhere,” he said.
© Catholic World Report