Vatican

Vatican City, Mar 22, 2020 / 07:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has asked Christians around the world to unite in praying the Our Father prayer at noon on March 25 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“In these days of trial, while humanity trembles at the threat of the pandemic, I would like to propose to all Christians to unite their voices to heaven,” Pope Francis said March 22.

“I invite … the leaders of all Christian communities, together with all Christians of various confessions, to invoke the Most High, Almighty God, while simultaneously reciting the prayer that Jesus Our Lord has taught us,” he said following the Angelus prayer.

March 25 is the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the date “when many Christians remember the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary of the Incarnation of the Word,” the pope said.

“May the Lord hear the unanimous prayer of all his disciples who are preparing to celebrate the victory of the Risen Christ,” he said.

More than 311,900 people have contracted COVID-19 as of March 22, according to Johns Hopkins University. The respiratory disease, which originated in Wuhan, China, has spread to 157 countries, and has led to the deaths of 13,407 people worldwide.

Pope Francis announced on Sunday that he will also preside over a moment of prayer with Eucharistic Adoration in an empty St. Peter’s Square on Friday, March 27 at 6pm in Rome in which he will give the Urbi et Orbi blessing, usually preserved for Christmas, Easter, or other special occasions.

He invited all Catholics to participate spiritually through the media and noted that all who join in this prayer will have the possibility of receiving a plenary indulgence if they meet the obligations laid out in the decree issued March 20.

The Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary has granted a plenary indulgence for people who pray for an end to the pandemic, healing for the sick, and the eternal repose of the dead. Plenary indulgences, which remit all temporal punishment due to sin, must be accompanied by full detachment from sin.

In this case, the person must also fulfill the ordinary conditions of an indulgence, which are sacramental confession, reception of the Eucharist, and prayer for the intentions of the pope, by having the will to satisfy the conditions as soon as possible for them.

To receive the indulgence, may offer at least a half hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament or a half hour of prayer with scripture, or the recitation of the rosary or chaplet of divine mercy “to implore from the Almighty God an end to the epidemic, relief for those who are suffering, and eternal salvation of those whom the Lord has called to himself.”

“We want to respond to the pandemic of the virus with the universality of prayer, compassion, tenderness. Let us stay united,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus broadcast on March 22.

Reminding people to pray for the lonely, the elderly, doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers, the pope said it is also important to pray for government authorities and the police, who are trying to maintain order.

Pope Francis said he would like all Catholics to take time today to meditate on Sunday’s Gospel reading from chapter nine of the Gospel of John.

“At the heart of the liturgy of this fourth Sunday of Lent is the theme of light. The Gospel tells the episode of the blind man from birth, to whom Jesus gives the sight. This miraculous sign is the confirmation of Jesus’s claim about himself: ‘I am the light of the world,’ the light that illuminates our darkness,” Pope Francis said.

The beggar’s healing is a metaphor for the liberation from sin that Christ offers, he explained.

“Sin is like a dark veil that covers our face and prevents us from seeing ourselves and the world clearly. The forgiveness of the Lord removes this veil of shadow and darkness, and gives us new light. The Lent that we are living is an opportune and precious time to approach the Lord, asking for his mercy, in the different forms that Mother Church offers us,” Francis said.

“Most Holy Mary help us to imitate the blind man of the Gospel, so that we can be flooded with the light of Christ and walk with him on the path of salvation,” Pope Francis prayed.

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Vatican City, Mar 21, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- As more Catholics around the world find themselves unable to receive the Eucharist due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis provided an example of a spiritual communion prayer that can be said from home.

“My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart … I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You,” Pope Francis prayed March 21 in his televised daily Mass from his residence in Vatican City.

Pope Francis invited those viewing the livestreamed Mass to find the Lord in prayer. He recited the spiritual communion prayer and then exposed the Blessed Sacrament for Eucharistic Adoration at the end of the Mass.

A spiritual communion is a uniting of oneself to the Sacrifice of the Mass through prayer, and can be made whether one is able to receive Communion or not.

“Let us pray to the Lord, let us return to Him,” the pope said in his homily.

He said that the Gospel parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee provides a lesson in how to pray. While the Pharisee was proud, the tax collector said: ‘‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

“The Lord teaches us how to pray … how we must approach the Lord: with humility,” Francis said.

“When we begin praying with our own justifications with our securities, that’s not prayer. That is like speaking to a mirror. Instead when we begin praying with our true reality – I’m a sinner – this is a good step forward in allowing the Lord to look at us. May Jesus teach us this,” he said.

Pope Francis prayed at the beginning of Mass for families who cannot leave their homes due to quarantine.

“Perhaps the farthest they can go is their balcony,” he said. “May they know how to find a way of communicating well, of building loving relationships within the family. And that they might know how to conquer the anguish of this moment together as a family.”

“We pray for peace in families today during this crisis, and for creativity,” Pope Francis said.

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Vatican City, Mar 21, 2020 / 12:19 am (CNA).- Cardinal Joseph Zen published Saturday a blog post accusing the Vatican’s secretary of state of manipulating Pope Francis, and continuing his ongoing criticism of the Holy See’s approach to the Catholic Church in China.

“My personal impression is that [Cardinal Pietro] Parolin manipulates the Pope, at least in things regarding the Church in China,” Zen, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, wrote in a post published on his personal blog.

The post “Supplement to my answer to Cardinal G.B. Re,” was dated March 10, although it was actually published March 21. It seemed to be an addendum to a March 3 open letter Zen wrote to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

Zen’s March 21 and March 3 letters came in response to a Feb. 26 letter from Re, dean of the Church’s College of Cardinals, to the Church’s cardinals, which claimed that that the China-Vatican deal represents the minds of St. John Paul II and of Benedict XVI, and that Zen’s opposition to the deal is misguided.

Even before it was signed, Zen has been a zealous critic of the Vatican’s 2018 provisional agreement with the People’s Republic of China. He says the agreement, which has not been publicly released, concedes a deliberative role to the Chinese government in the selection of bishops, and puts at risk of persecution many of the Catholics in China.

In his March 3 letter, Zen wrote to Re that “if you want to prove to me that the recently signed agreement was already approved by Benedict XVI, you just have to show me the text of the agreement, which I am barred from seeing till now, and the archival evidence which you say you could verify.”

Zen’s more recent post claimed that while he has been critical of Re over the China deal, “The Problem is not between me and Re. The problem is with Cardinal Parolin.”

“It’s difficult to understand how this man has become so powerful to dominate the whole Roman Curia. He could dismiss the Commission for Church in China without a word and nobody stood up to protest against such impoliteness.”

Zen has previously alleged that Parolin closed the Vatican’s commission on the Church in China, which was established under Benedict XVI and included Vatican officials and Church leaders from the region, in order to silence criticism from Zen about the Church’s engagement with the Chinese government.

The cardinal’s March 21 post also criticized Parolin for assigning Archbishop Savio Hon, formerly the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the only high-ranking Chinese cleric in the curia, to a diplomatic post in Greece.

Those moves, Zen has claimed, made it easier for Parolin to execute the 2018 agreement with Beijing.

While Zen’s March 21 post criticized that agreement, calling it “immoral” and “against the Catholic conscience,” the cardinal reserved his most stringent criticism for a set of June 2019 “pastoral guidelines” issued by the Vatican, regarding the responsibilities of Chinese priests to the country’s government.

That document, Zen said, is “blatantly evil, immoral, because it legitimizes a schismatic Church!”

The Church in mainland China has been divided for some 60 years between the underground Church, which is persecuted and whose episcopal appointments are frequently not acknowledged by Chinese authorities, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a government-sanctioned organization.  

Zen argued that the 2019 “pastoral guidelines” legitimize the false notion of a specifically “Chinese” Catholic Church “independent” from the oversight of the pope.

“Parolin has repeatedly affirmed that the word ‘independent’ should today no more be understood as “absolutely independent”, because in the Agreement the Pope is recognized as the Head of the Catholic Church (I cannot believe this, until they show me the Chinese text of the agreement),” Zen wrote.

After outlining the cardinal’s criticism, Zen’s March 21 blog post, expressed that “during the last 20 years, because of the wrong policy of the Holy See in dealing with the Church in China, pursued by a group of people who dared even not to follow the line of the Pope, the underground community was more and more like abandoned, considered inconvenient, almost as an obstacle to unity, while in the community officially recognized by the Government the “opportunists” grow more and more numerous, fearless and defiant because encouraged by people inside and around the Vatican, intoxicated by their illusions of the Ostpolitik.”

“Are we going towards the unity of the Church in China?” Zen asked. “What kind of unity? Which kind of Church?”

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Vatican City, Mar 20, 2020 / 05:03 pm (CNA).- The pontifical science academies issued a health statement Friday encouraging world leaders to make adjustments to short- and long-term responses to the coronavirus.

The statement was released March 20 by … […]

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2020 / 11:05 am (CNA).- Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, has said that the coronavirus pandemic may justify the use of general absolution, in extraordinary circumstances, for Catholics unable to go to i… […]

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2020 / 06:41 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary has granted a plenary indulgence for people with COVID-19 and for those who care for them, including medical staff and family members, and for those who pray for t… […]

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2020 / 05:01 am (CNA).- Pope Francis spoke Friday about the importance of returning to God, the loving Father, in the sacrament of reconciliation.

“But think of this: to return to God is to return to the embrace, the embrac… […]

Vatican City, Mar 19, 2020 / 02:17 pm (CNA).- The prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life on Wednesday encouraged religious to intensify their prayer during the coronavirus outbreak, and to obey requests of religious and civil authorities for health’s sake.

“The most effective testimony we can provide is, in first place, the serene and convinced serenity to what we are requested from those who govern us, both at the state and church level, to everything that is requested to the protection of our health, as private citizens and as communities,” read a March 18 letter to consecrated men and women signed by Joao Cardinal Braz de Aviz and Archbishop José Rodriguez Carballo, the prefect and secretary, respectively, of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

“It is a duty of both charity and gratitude that each one of us, individually and as a community, may intensify constant prayer for all those who are helping us overcome this difficult moment. Authorities, members of government, health professionals at all levels, volunteers, all those who offer their valuable work for this calamity may be object of our prayer and the offering of our sacrifices!”

Cardinal Braz de Aviz noted that we are living this Lent “in a very particular manner,” that “no one could have thought of or imagined, and that really requires each day from each one of us a change in our style and way of living.”

“Normally during Lent we multiply charitable initiatives and intense moments of prayer and meditation to prepare ourselves with a renewed and purified spirit for the Easter celebrations, and in our communities the times of celebration and gathering become also more intense. Nevertheless, this year we are called to live the intense time of faith, always with the same intensity, but in a completely different manner.”

Addressing contemplative communities, he urged them to intensify their prayer “even with greater energy … with the certainty that the Lord will not take longer to listen and in his infinite mercy will push away this grave scourge.”

Those who cannot assist at Mass he urged to “offer up to the Lord with joy” this “great sacrifice,” and to live it “in communion with all those who cannot attend regularly because of the lack of priests.”

“For those who can, please do not stop providing concrete signs of closeness with our people, always in conformity with the norms established by the authorities and in full fidelity to our own charisms.”

The cardinal recalled that “the means at our disposal to eradicate misfortunes and calamities in our highly technologically advanced times are the same that were used by our forefathers” Prayer, sacrifice, penance, fasting, and charity; powerful weapons to obtain from the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus the grace of full healing from such a devastating disease.”

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Vatican City, Mar 19, 2020 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Pope Francis suspended Thursday non-urgent trials in the Vatican City State’s judicial system until after April 3.

The suspension was made at the request of the sosti… […]

Bergamo, Italy, Mar 19, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Italian dioceses surrounding Milan have reported the deaths of 30 priests during the coronavirus outbreak.

Avvenire, the Italian newspaper owned by the Italian bishops conference, attributes at least 28 … […]