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Pope Francis: Be witnesses to the experience of God’s beauty

August 17, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Aug 17, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis invited participants in an annual Catholic festival Monday to join him “in witnessing to the experience of the beauty of God.”

In a message on behalf of the pope for this year’s Meeting for Friendship among Peoples in Rimini, Italy, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin highlighted the role of beauty in attracting people to the Christian faith.

“The Pope therefore invites you to continue to collaborate with him in witnessing to the experience of the beauty of God who became flesh so that our eyes may marvel at his face and our eyes may find in him the wonder of living,” the cardinal wrote in the message dated Aug. 5 and released by the Holy See press office Aug. 17.

Parolin noted that the theme of this year’s meeting, which takes place Aug. 18-23, is “Devoid of wonder, we remain deaf to the sublime,” taken from American Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s 1955 book “God in Search of Man.” 

The meeting, which usually attracts around 800,000 people and is organized by the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, is being held online this year because of the coronavirus crisis, which has claimed more than 35,000 lives in Italy as of Aug. 17.

According to the official program, the opening session will feature Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, who was named a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences by Pope Francis in July. The final day will include a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

The cardinal said that this year’s theme would offer “a precious and original contribution at a dizzying moment in history.” He noted that the pandemic had enabled many to rediscover wonder.

“In the past few months we have experienced that dimension of amazement that takes the form of compassion in the presence of suffering, fragility and the precariousness of existence,” he said in the message, addressed to Bishop Francesco Lambiasi of Rimini.

“This noble human sentiment has prompted doctors and nurses to face the grave challenge of the coronavirus with unwavering dedication and admirable commitment. The same sentiment, full of affection for their students, has enabled many teachers to embrace the fatigue of distance learning, ensuring the completion of the school year. And equally it has allowed many to find in the faces and in the presence of family members the strength to face discomfort and difficulties.”

Parolin described the Rimini Meeting, which has taken place annually since 1980, as a “powerful reminder” of the need to cultivate wonder.

“Amazement is the way to grasp the signs of the sublime, that is, of that mystery that constitutes the root and foundation of all things,” he wrote.

The cardinal recalled that a group of artists had written to Pope Francis, thanking him for praying for them at Mass in the chapel of his residence, the Casa Santa Marta, during the coronavirus lockdown. 

“Artists make us understand what beauty is, and without beauty the Gospel cannot be understood,” the pope had said.

Quoting Msgr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Communion and Liberation, Parolin wrote: “For this reason the theme that characterizes the meeting launches a decisive challenge to Christians, called to testify to the profound attraction that faith exerts by virtue of its beauty: ‘the attraction of Jesus,’ according to an expression dear to the Servant of God Luigi Giussani.”

The cardinal concluded by saying that the pope imparted his Apostolic Blessing to participants in this year’s meeting and asked them to continue to pray for him.

Recalling that St. John Paul II once declared that “It is worth being a man, because You, Jesus, have been a man,” Parolin said: “Isn’t this amazing discovery perhaps the greatest contribution that Christians can offer to sustain the hope of men? It is a task from which we cannot refrain, especially at this narrow hairpin bend in history. It is the call to be transparent images of the beauty that changed our lives, concrete witnesses of the love that saves, especially with regard to those who now suffer most.”

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Pope Francis meets with bishop newly consecrated to lead Mongolia’s Catholics

August 12, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Aug 12, 2020 / 03:11 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis met Wednesday with an Italian missionary who was recently consecrated a bishop to lead Mongolia’s apostolic prefecture.

Bishop Giorgio Marengo, 46, served as a Consolata missionary priest in Mongolia for 17 years before Pope Francis appointed him Prefect of Ulaanbaatar April 2.

His episcopal consecration took place in Turin Aug. 8, with Cardinal Luis Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as his principal consecrator.

“I am very grateful to the Pope for this great grace that has granted me to meet him personally and to receive a word of encouragement for this mission,” Marengo told Vatican News after his Aug. 12 meeting with the pope.

Pope Francis is “very interested in the … the Church in Mongolia and of the Mongolian people in general. We know how much the pope cares about the entire Church, even those areas where there are not large numbers, indeed precisely where the Church is more in the minority,” he said.

At the Mass of episcopal consecration, Tagle said: “May your heart, your words, your smiles whisper Jesus to the people, the poor, the suffering, the steppe, the rivers, the eternal blue skies of Mongolia.”

“A bishop can only boast of the compassionate love of Jesus,” Tagle added.

Marengo was born in northern Italy’s Piedmont region and grew up in Turin. He studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and later obtained a license and doctorate from the Pontifical Urbaniana University.

While serving as a Consolata missionary in Mongolia, Marengo established a new catechesis program. He told CNA in 2014 that the program sought to form young adults into future catechists by providing lessons in theology and the Church and its mission.

Mongolia has a population of 1,300 Catholics in a country of more than 3 million people. The Prefecture Apostolic of Ulaanbaatar serves the entire country.

“I believe being a bishop in Mongolia is very similar to the episcopal ministry of the early Church,” Marengo said. “The Church is a very small reality, it is a minority but there is this group of Mongolian faithful who have chosen, with great courage and also a sense of responsibility, to follow the Lord and become part of the Catholic Church.”

The first modern mission to Mongolia was in 1922 and was entrusted to the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But under a communist government, religious expression was soon thereafter suppressed, until 1992.

In 2002, the Ulaanbaatar mission was elevated to the present apostolic prefecture. The mission’s superior, the late Fr. Wenceslao Padilla, a priest of the Immaculate Heart congregation, was appointed prefect, and was consecrated a bishop the following year. Padilla died in September 2018. Mongolia’s first native priest was ordained in 2016.

Marengo told Vatican News that because Mongolia’s Catholic community is so small it is especially important to pay attention to interreligious dialogue and the cultural traditions of the Mongolian people.

“It means dedicating time to know and study the language, to refine those tools that allow us to enter into a true dialogue with people, to understand their points of reference, their history, their cultural and religious roots,” he said. “And at the same time, in all this, to be faithful to the Gospel itself … to offer with great humility, with great sincerity this precious pearl we have received which is the Gospel of the Lord.”

The new bishop chose “Respicite ad eum et illuminamini” as his episcopal motto, which means “Look to him and you will be radiant.”

Marengo expects to return to Mongolia in September if coronavirus restrictions allow.

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