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30 Apr ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO ITALIAN CATHOLIC ACTION

Posted at 17:37h in by

[…] Expand your own hearts in order to expand the heart of your parishes.  Take your faith to the streets, meet everyone, welcome everyone, listen to everyone, embrace everyone.  Every life is a life loved by the Lord, and every face shows us the face of Christ, especially the faces of the poor, the hurting, those who feel abandoned, those fleeing death who seek refuge in our homes and towns.  “None of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice” (ibid., 201).

 

Remain open to the world around you. Engage readily in dialogue with your neighbours, even those who may have other ideas than your own, yet long, like you, for peace, justice and fraternity.  It is in dialogue that we can shape a shared future. Through dialogue, we build peace, caring for all and entering into dialogue with all. […]

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28 Apr ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES AND THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS

Posted at 17:33h in by

[…] The generous hospitality shown more than two thousand years ago remains in the collective memory of humanity and is a source of abundant blessings that continue to expand. As a result, Egypt is a land that in some sense we all feel to be our own! As you say, “Misr um al-dunya” – “Egypt is the mother of the world”. Today too, this land welcomes millions of refugees from different countries, including Sudan, Eritrea, Syria and Iraq, refugees whom you make praiseworthy efforts to integrate into Egyptian society. […]

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28 Apr ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE

Posted at 17:31h in by

[…] An education in respectful openness and sincere dialogue with others, recognizing their rights and basic freedoms, particularly religious freedom, represents the best way to build the future together, to be builders of civility. For the only alternative to the civility of encounter is the incivility of conflict; there is no other way. To counter effectively the barbarity of those who foment hatred and violence, we need to accompany young people, helping them on the path to maturity and teaching them to respond to the incendiary logic of evil by patiently working for the growth of goodness. In this way, young people, like well-planted trees, can be firmly rooted in the soil of history, and, growing heavenward in one another’s company, can daily turn the polluted air of hatred into the oxygen of fraternity. […]

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26 Apr POPE FRANCIS: GENERAL AUDIENCE

Posted at 17:30h in by

[…] Our existence is a pilgrimage, a journey. Even those who are inspired by simply human hope, perceive the allure of the horizon, which urges them to explore worlds they do not yet know. Our spirit is a migrant spirit. The Bible is filled with stories of pilgrims and travellers. Abraham’s vocation begins with this command: “Go from your country” (Gen 12:1). The patriarch left that piece of the world he knew well and which was one of the cradles of civilization of his time. Everything conspired against the wisdom of that journey. Yet Abraham set out. We do not become mature men and women if we do not perceive the allure of the horizon: that boundary between earth and sky which demands to be reached by a people that walks. […]

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24 Apr MESSAGE OF POPE FRANCIS: To the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the occasion of their Plenary Assembly

Posted at 17:21h in by

[…] Even if we live in a world where wealth abounds, a very large number of people are still victims of poverty and social exclusion. Inequalities – along with wars of domination and climate change – are the causes of the greatest forced migration in history, affecting more than 65 million human beings. Just think of the growing tragedy of the new forms of slavery such as forced labour, prostitution and organ trafficking, which are true crimes against humanity. It is alarming and symptomatic that today the human body can be bought and sold as if it were a simple currency of exchange. Almost a hundred years ago, Pius XI predicted the affirmation of these disparities and inequities as a consequence of a world economic dictatorship that he called “internationalism of finance” (Encyclical Quadragesimo anno, 15 May 1931, n. 109). And it was Paul VI who denounced, almost fifty years later, the “new and abusive form of economic domination on the social, cultural and even political level” (Apostolic Letter Octogesima adveniens, 14 May 1971, n. 44). […]

 

The fifteenth century was the century of the first humanism; at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we feel an increasingly stronger need for a new humanism. At that time, the driving force for change was the transition from feudalism to modern society; today, this transition from one era to another is just as radical: from a modern society to a post-modern society. The endemic increase in social inequalities, the question of migration, conflicts of identity, new forms of slavery, environmental issues, the challenges of bio-politics and bio-rights: these are just some of the questions that point to the distress of our times. Faced with such challenges, the simple fine-tuning of old schools of thought or the use of refined techniques of collective decision-making are not enough; we must try new paths inspired by the message of Jesus Christ. […]

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22 Apr LITURGY OF THE WORD WITH THE COMMUNITY OF SANT’EGIDIO IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE 20th AND 21st CENTURY: HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

Posted at 17:19h in by

[…] Today, I would like to add one more icon, in this Church. A woman. I do not know her name. But she is watching us from heaven. I was in Lesvos; I was greeting the refugees and I found a 30-year-old man, with three children. He looked at me and said: “Father, I am a Muslim. My wife was Christian. Terrorists came to our country, they looked at us and asked us our religion and saw her with the Crucifix, and they asked her to throw it on the ground. She did not do so and they cut her throat in front of me. We loved each other so much!”. This is the icon that I bring here today as a gift. I do not know if that man is still in Lesvos or has managed to go elsewhere. I do not know if he was able to get out of that concentration camp, because refugee camps — so many — are like concentration camps, because of the crowd of people who are left there. And the generous people who welcome them must also continue to bear this burden, because it seems that international agreements are more important than human rights. And this man did not have rancour: he, a Muslim, had this painful cross, carried on without rancour. He took refuge in the love of his wife, graced with martyrdom. […]

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16 Apr MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS: EASTER 2017

Posted at 17:17h in by

[…]He takes upon himself all those victimized by old and new forms of slavery, inhuman labour, illegal trafficking, exploitation and discrimination, and grave forms of addiction. He takes upon himself children and adolescents deprived of their carefree innocence and exploited, and those deeply hurt by acts of violence that take place within the walls of their own home.

 

The Risen Shepherd walks beside all those forced to leave their homelands as a result of armed conflicts, terrorist attacks, famine and oppressive regimes. Everywhere he helps these forced migrants to encounter brothers and sisters, with whom they can share bread and hope on their journey.

 

Especially in these days, may he sustain the efforts of all those actively engaged in bringing comfort and relief to the civil population in beloved Syria, so greatly suffering from a war that continues to sow horror and death. Yesterday saw the latest vile attack on fleeing refugees, resulting in the death and injury of many. May he grant peace to the entire Middle East, beginning with the Holy Land, as well as in Iraq and Yemen. […]

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16 Apr MASS OF THE DAY: HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

Posted at 17:14h in by

[…] It is the first announcement: “He is Risen”. And then the confusion, the closed hearts, the apparitions. But the disciples stayed locked in the Upper Room the entire day because they were afraid that what happened to Jesus would happen to them. The Church does not cease to say before our losses, our closed and fearful hearts: “Stop, the Lord is Risen”. But if the Lord is Risen, why is it that these things happen? Why is it that there is so much adversity: illness, human trafficking, human slavery, war, destruction, mutilation, vengeance, hatred? Where is the Lord then? […]

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16 Apr LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER TO THE BISHOP OF ASSISI TO MARK THE INAUGURATION OF THE SHRINE OF RENUNCIATION

Posted at 17:09h in by

[…] When I came to visit the Room of Renunciation, you asked me to meet primarily with a representative group of the poor. In this most eloquent Room, they bore witness to the scandalous reality of a world that is still deeply marked by the divide between an endless number of the poor who often lack the basic necessities, and the miniscule number of the wealthy who possess the greatest part of the wealth and who presume to determine the destiny of all of humanity. Unfortunately, after 2,000 years since the proclamation of the Gospel and after eight centuries since Francis’ witness, we are faced with a phenomenon of “global inequity” and an “economy that kills” (cf. Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, 52-60). The very day before my arrival in Assisi, many migrants lost their life in the waters of Lampedusa. Speaking in this place of “renunciation”, affected also by the emotion caused by such a tragic event, I felt the whole truth of what young Francis had testified to: only by reaching out to the poor, in his time represented especially by those suffering from leprosy, by practicing mercy toward them, could he experience that “sweetness of soul and body” (Testament, ff 110).

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15 Apr HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

Posted at 17:13h in by

[…] If we try to imagine this scene, we can see in the faces of those women any number of other faces: the faces of mothers and grandmothers, of children and young people who bear the grievous burden of injustice and brutality. In their faces we can see reflected all those who, walking the streets of our cities, feel the pain of dire poverty, the sorrow born of exploitation and human trafficking. We can also see the faces of those who are greeted with contempt because they are immigrants, deprived of country, house and family. We see faces whose eyes bespeak loneliness and abandonment, because their hands are creased with wrinkles. Their faces mirror the faces of women, mothers, who weep as they see the lives of their children crushed by massive corruption that strips them of their rights and shatters their dreams. By daily acts of selfishness that crucify and then bury people’s hopes. By paralyzing and barren bureaucracies that stand in the way of change. In their grief, those two women reflect the faces of all those who, walking the streets of our cities, behold human dignity crucified. […]