Vatican City, May 28, 2017 / 04:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the Feast of the Ascension, Pope Francis said that when Jesus rose into heaven, he entrusted his Church with the great and dignified responsibility of spreading his Word and making it accessible to everyone.
In addition to signaling the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus’ Ascension reminds us of his constant assistance and that of his Spirit, “who gives strength and security to our Christian witness in the world,” the Pope said May 28.
The Holy Spirit “reveals to us why the Church exists: she exists to announce the Gospel” he said. “Only for that. And also, the joy of the Church is to announce the Gospel.”
Francis said the Church includes all faithful that have been baptized, who today “are invited to better understand that God has given us the great dignity and responsibility of announcing it to the world, of making it accessible to humanity.”
“This is our dignity, this is the greatest honor of the Church!” he said.
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Regina Coeli address, which is prayed during the Easter season instead of the Angelus.
In his brief speech, the Pope said Jesus’ ascension into heaven signaled the end of his own earthly ministry, and the beginning of the Church’s mission.
“From this moment, in fact, the presence of Christ in the world is mediated by his disciples, by those who believe in him and announce him,” he said, adding that this mission will last “until the end of history and will enjoy every day the assistance of the Risen Lord,” who promised to be with his disciples “until the end of the age.”
Jesus’ constant presence, he said, “brings strength in persecution, comfort in tribulation, support in situations of difficulty that the mission and the announcement of the Gospel encounter.”
As the Church throughout the world turns their gaze toward heaven, where Christ ascended and is seated at the right hand of the Father, Christians must strengthen their own steps so as “continue with enthusiasm and courage our journey, our mission of bearing witness to and living the Gospel in every environment,” the Pope said.
However, he cautioned that this mission doesn’t depend on human efforts, resources or our ability to organize, because only the “light and strength” of the Holy Spirit makes it possible to “effectively fulfill our mission of making Jesus’ love and tenderness more known and experienced.”
Pope Francis then asked for Mary’s intercession in becoming “more credible” witnesses of the Resurrection, and led pilgrims in praying the Regina Coeli.
After the prayer, voiced his closeness to Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II following the May 26 attack on buses carrying Coptic Orthodox en route to St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in Minya.
Gunmen who stopped the buses opened fire, killing 29 and injuring at least 22 others, including children. The attack marked the latest act in a string of violence against the community in recent months.
In his comments to pilgrims, Pope Francis prayed for the Coptic Orthodox community in Egypt after undergoing “another act of ferocious violence.”
“The victims, among whom were also children, are faithful who were going to the shrine to pray, and were killed after they refused to deny their Christian faith,” he said, and prayed that God would “welcome into his peace these courageous witnesses, and convert the hearts of the violent.”
He also voiced his sorrow for the May 23 terrorist attack on the Manchester Arena in England, killing some 22 people, most of whom were youth who had be enjoying a concert by popular teen artist Ariana Grande.
Francis prayed for the victims of the “horrible attack,” which left many young lives “cruelly shattered,” and voiced his closeness to the families and “all who mourn the deceased.”
Finally, the Pope noted that the day also marks World Day of Social Communications, which this year holds the theme “Fear not, for I am with you: Communicating Hope and Trust in our Time.”
Social networks, he said, “offer the opportunity to share and disseminate the news in an instant; this news can be good or bad, true or false.” He prayed that communications, in every form, would be “constructive, at the service of the truth by refusing prejudices, and spread hope and trust in our time.”
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Pope Francis with some special visitors at the general audience, Dec. 21, 2022 / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Jan 6, 2023 / 03:00 am (CNA).
On the Solemnity of the Epiphany, Pope Francis said that if the Magi had remained comfortable, they never… […]
Statuary sits before imagery of the recently canonized saints in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis canonized 14 new saints on Sunday, including a father of eight and Franciscan friars killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.
In a Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20, the pope declared three nineteenth-century founders of religious orders and the eleven “Martyrs of Damascus” as saints to be venerated by the global Catholic Church, commending their lives of sacrifice, missionary zeal, and service to the Church.
“These new saints lived Jesus’ way: service,” Pope Francis said. “They made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing good, steadfast in difficulties, and generous to the end.”
Pope Francis speaks at a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
The newly canonized include St. Giuseppe Allamano, a diocesan priest from Italy who founded the Consolata missionary orders, and St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, a Canadian nun from Montreal known for founding an order dedicated to the service of priests.
Also among the saints are St. Elena Guerra, hailed as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” and St. Manuel Ruiz López and his seven Franciscan companions, all martyred in Damascus in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.
The final three canonized are siblings, Sts. Francis, Mooti, and Raphael Massabki, lay Maronite Catholics martyred in Syria along with the Franciscans.
Thousands of pilgrims prayed the Litany of the Saints together in St. Peter’s Square before Pope Francis declared the 14 as enrolled among the saints “for the honor of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.”
“We confidently ask for their intercession so that we too can follow Christ, follow him in service and become witnesses of hope for the world,” the pope said.
In his homily, Pope Francis highlighted how service embodied the lives of each of the new saints. “When we learn to serve,” he said, “our every gesture of attention and care, every expression of tenderness, every work of mercy becomes a reflection of God’s love. And so we continue Jesus’ work in the world.”
The Gospel for the Mass was chanted in Greek in addition to Latin in honor of the 11 Martyrs of Damascus.
Pilgrims gather in St. Peter’s Square for a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Father Marwan Dadas, a Franciscan friar from Jerusalem, was among those who attended the canonization. He said that the testimony of the martyrs from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land is especially meaningful to people who are suffering due to the ongoing war and violence in the region today.
“This is a good message to say that even though we have challenges — and it seems we have death continuously — we still have the light of God that is helping us and guiding us through these difficult periods,” Dadas told CNA.
“It’s an important message for me, and I hope it will be the message for all the people of the Holy Land, not only the Holy Land, but for everybody. It is a message from God saying that He is always with us.”
St. Giuseppe Allamano: A missionary heart
One of the most celebrated figures among the new saints is St. Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926), an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters. Allamano, though he spent his entire life in Italy, left a global legacy by training missionaries who carried the Gospel to remote corners of Africa, Asia, and South America.
Allamano told the missionaries in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”
The medical miracle that led to Allamano’s canonization involved the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest. In 1996, a man named Sorino Yanomami, a member of the indigenous Yanomami tribe in the Amazon, was mauled by a jaguar and left with life-threatening injuries.
As doctors treated his skull fractures, Consolata missionaries prayed in the hospital with a relic of Allamano, seeking his intercession. Miraculously, Yanomami recovered without any long-term damage, according to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Allamano, whose spiritual director was St. John Bosco, emphasized the importance of holiness in priestly life, telling his priests, “You must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy.” His influence has endured through the orders he founded, present today in 30 countries across the globe.
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis: “Humble among the humble”
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840–1912), a Canadian religious sister, also took her place among the new saints. She founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, an order whose spirituality and charism is the support of priests through both prayer and by taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in rectories in “humble and joyful service” in imitation of “Christ the Servant.”
During his homily, Pope Francis praised Paradis’ faith and underlined that “those who follow Christ, if they wish to be great, must serve by learning from Him” who made himself “a servant to reach everyone with his love.”
Born in the Acadian region of Quebec, Paradis also spent eight years in New York serving in the St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage in the 1860s and taught French at St. Mary’s Academy in Indiana, before founding her religious order in New Brunswick, Canada.
Paradis’ canonization was supported by the miraculous healing of a newborn in Canada, attributed to her intercession.
St. Elena Guerra: An “apostle of the Holy Spirit”
Among the canonized was St. Elena Guerra (1835–1914), known for her ardent devotion to the Holy Spirit. Guerra, who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, was instrumental in promoting the first-ever novena to the Holy Spirit under Pope Leo XIII in 1895. Her writings and spiritual leadership inspired many, including St. Gemma Galgani, a mystic and saint who was her student.
For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.
During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.
“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”
The Martyrs of Damascus: Courageous witnesses of faith
The solemnity of the ceremony was heightened as Pope Francis canonized the Martyrs of Damascus, a group of 11 men killed in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The martyrs, including eight Franciscan friars and three laymen, were attacked in a church in the Christian quarter of Damascus during a wave of religious violence.
The canonized Franciscan friars include six priests and two professed religious — all missionaries from Spain except for Father Engelbert Kolland, who was from Salzburg, Austria.
Franciscan Father Manuel Ruiz, Father Carmelo Bolta, Father Nicanor Ascanio, Father Nicolás M. Alberca y Torres, Father Pedro Soler, Kolland, Brother Francisco Pinazo Peñalver, and Brother Juan S. Fernández were all declared saints.
The three laymen were brothers — Francis, Abdel Mooti, and Raphael Massabki — known for their deep piety and devotion to the Christian faith. Francis Massabki, the oldest of the brothers, was a father of eight children. Mooti was a father of five who visited the Church of St. Paul daily for prayer and to teach catechism lessons. The youngest brother, Raphael, was single and was known to spend long periods of time praying in the church and helping the friars.
According to witnesses, the brothers were offered the chance to live if they renounced their faith, but they refused. “We are Christians, and we want to live and die as Christians,” Francis Massabki reportedly said. All 11 were brutally killed that night, some beheaded, others stabbed to death.
“They remained faithful servants,” Pope Francis said. “[They] served in martyrdom and in joy.”
A global celebration
The canonization ceremony was attended by pilgrims from around the world, including Catholics from Kenya, Canada, Uganda, Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. More than 1,000 members of the Consolata order traveled to Rome to witness the canonization of their founder.
And bagpipers from Galicia in northern Spain played traditional music at the end of the Mass to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs.
Bagpipers play to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs at the Vatican on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares
“I thank all of you who have come to honor the new saints,” Pope Francis said. “I greet the cardinals, the bishops, the consecrated men and women, especially the Friars Minor and the Maronite faithful, the Consolata Missionaries, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family and the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, as well as the other groups of pilgrims who have come from various places.”
Pope Francis led the crowd in the Angelus prayer at the end of the Mass and asked people to pray in particular for the gift of peace for “populations who are suffering as a result of war – tormented Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, tormented Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and all the others.”
The pope also greeted a group of Ugandan pilgrims who traveled from Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs and urged people to pray for missionaries on World Mission Sunday.
“Let us support, with our prayer and our aid, all the missionaries who, often at great sacrifice, bring the shining proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the world,” he said.
“May the Virgin Mary help us to be like her and like the Saints courageous and joyful witnesses of the Gospel.”
Vatican City, Apr 17, 2017 / 05:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Easter Monday, Pope Francis said how it is Christ’s resurrection that calls each of us to bring the message of Easter – a message of hope and life – to the world.
“There is life!” the Pope said April 17. Now, following the Resurrection, “we will be resurrection men and women, men and women of life.”
We are called to show solidarity, welcoming, and peace to people “in the midst of events that afflict the world – there are many today – in the midst of worldliness that is distant from God,” he said.
These are only human signs that we can give, he continued, but “inspired and sustained by faith in the Risen Lord,” we can gain effectiveness “well beyond our capacity.”
Pope Francis gave his message Easter Monday before leading pilgrims in the Regina Coeli prayer from a window overlooking St. Peter’s square.
It is customary for the Pope to lead this traditional Marian prayer on the Monday following Easter Sunday, also sometimes called the “Monday of the Angel” for the angel which announced Christ’s resurrection to the women at the tomb.
During the fifty days of Easter, the Regina Coeli will replace the usual recitation of the Angelus on Sundays.
In the message of the Angel to the women on Easter morning, “Go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead,’” we hear our directions as well, he said. The angel invites us as well to “act quickly” and to “go” to “proclaim to the men and women of our time this message of joy and hope.”
This message is hopeful because on the dawn of the third day, Jesus was risen from the dead, therefore “the last word is not death, but life! And this is our certainty. The last word is not the grave, is not death, it is life!”
And our Mother Mary can help us to live this out, Francis said.
“The Virgin Mary, silent witness of the death and resurrection of her son Jesus, helps us to be clear signs of the risen Christ among the events of the world.”
“Those who are in distress and difficulties,” he explained, can “find in us so many brothers and sisters who offer them support and consolation.”
“And this is so because Christ is alive and active in history through his Holy Spirit, redeems our miseries, reaches every human heart and gives hope to anyone who is oppressed and suffering,” he said.
“Our Mother, help us to believe strongly in the resurrection of Jesus: Jesus is risen, he is alive here, among us, and this is a wonderful mystery of salvation with the ability to transform hearts and lives,” he prayed.
“And intercede in a particular way for the Christian communities persecuted and oppressed as they are today, in many parts of the world, called to a difficult and courageous witness.”
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