Pope Francis: summer is an ideal time to re-focus our life on God

Vatican City, Oct 18, 2017 / 04:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis offered prayers for the more than 300 victims of a terrorist bombing in the African country of Somalia, one of the most lethal attacks to take place anywhere in the world in recent years.

“I would like to express my sorrow for the massacre that occurred a few days ago in Mogadishu, Somalia,” the Pope said Oct. 18. “This terrorist act deserves the most firm censure, because it ravages a population that has already been so tried.”

The attack took place Oct. 14 when a truck packed with explosives blew up in front of a hotel in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, killing more than 300 people and injuring hundreds, including children.

Responsibility for the bombing has yet to be claimed by any group, though some Somalis have reacted to the attack by condemning al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group associated with al-Qaeda.

In his appeal, Pope Francis said he prays “for the dead and the wounded, for their family members and for all the people of Somalia,” and also offered prayer “for the conversion of the violent.”  He also encouraged “those who, with great difficulty, work for peace in that tortured land.”

Pope Francis made his appeal at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square. In his address, the Pope spoke about the inevitability of death, saying it’s good to meditate on our eventual passing.

As a piece of advice, he told pilgrims to “recite Psalm 90,” which asks to be taught how “’to count our days and acquire a wise heart.’”

These words help to give us a “healthy realism, casting off the delusions of omnipotence,” he said, asking: “What are we? We are ‘almost nothing,’ says another psalm; our days are running fast.”

He noted how many times he has heard older people speak about their life, saying it “passed like a breath.” Death brings our life into focus, showing how all our pride, anger and hatred is ultimately vanity, he said.

“We realize with regret that we have not loved enough and did not look for what was essential. And, on the contrary, we see what we have really sowed: the affections for which we have sacrificed ourselves and who now hold our hand.”

But faith gives us hope, he said, explaining that “we are all small and helpless in front of the mystery of death. However, what a grace if we keep the flame of faith in our hearts!”

Francis noted that Jesus, by his life and death, illuminated the mystery that is death. As an example, he pointed to the New Testament, when Jesus weeps after learning of the death of his dear friend Lazarus, showing us that it is okay to mourn the loss of a friend.

But then Jesus prays to the Father, the source of life, and orders Lazarus to leave the tomb: “and so it happens.”

This is a source of Christian hope, he said: that though death is a part of life and is present in creation, it is “an affront to the design of God’s love, and the Savior wants it to be healed.”

In another Gospel episode there is a father with a very sick daughter who addresses Jesus with faith, asking him to save her, the Pope recalled. But then, someone comes out from the man’s house to tell him it is too late, his daughter has died.

“Jesus knows that man is tempted to react with anger and despair because of the child’s death, and advises him to guard the small flame that is lit in his heart: faith.”

“Do not be afraid, only have faith,” Jesus says to the father, telling him that when he arrives at home, he will find the child alive.

Also in his words to Martha, as she weeps for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus teaches us that he is “the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.”

These words are repeated to us every time death comes in order “to tear the fabric of life and affections,” Francis said, adding that “all our existence is played out here, between the side of faith and the precipice of fear.”

Jesus is the resurrection and the life, the Pope said, asking pilgrims: “do you believe this?” He then invited those present in St. Peter’s Square to close their eyes and think of the moment of their death.

Think of your death and imagine the moment when Jesus will take you by the hand and say, “come, come with me, get up,” he said. Jesus will come to each of us, taking us by the hand “with his tenderness, his mildness, his love.”

“This is our hope before death,” he concluded. “For whoever believes, it is a door that opens wide completely; for those who doubt it is a glimmer of light that seeps out of a door that has not closed completely.”

“But for all of us it will be a grace when this light illuminates us.”

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CNA Staff, Oct 22, 2020 / 09:28 am (CNA).- Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, director of the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, said on Wednesday evening that an expression of support for same-sex civil unions from Pope Francis is “nothing new” and does not signify a change of Catholic doctrine. But the priest’s remarks have raised some question about the origin of comments from Pope Francis on civil unions, which were featured in the newly-released documentary “Francesco.”

In a video released by Tv2000, a media apostolate of the  Italian bishops’ conference, Spadaro said that “the director of the film ‘Francesco’ compiles a series of interviews that have been conducted with Pope Francis over time, giving a great summary of his pontificate and the value of his travels.”

“Among other things, there are various passages taken from an interview with Valentina Alazraki, a Mexican journalist, and within that interview Pope Francis speaks of a right to the legal protection of homosexual couples but without in any way affecting doctrine,” Spadaro said.

Tv2000 is not affiliated with the Vatican, and Spadaro is not a Vatican spokesman.

On Wednesday, the documentary’s director, Evgeny Afineevsky, told CNA and other journalists that the pope’s statement in support of legalizing same sex civil unions was made during an interview the director himself conducted with Pope Francis.

But the interview Pope Francis gave to Televisa’s Alazraki is shot in the same place, with the same lighting and the same appearance as the pope’s comments on civil unions that were aired in “Francesco,” suggesting that the remarks came from the Alazraki interview, and not an interview with Afineevsky.

Spadaro said Oct. 21 that “there is nothing new” in the pope’s remarks on civil unions.

“This is an interview given a long time ago that has already been received by the press,” Spadaro added.

And on Wednesday, the priest told the Associated Press that “there’s nothing new because it’s a part of that interview,” adding that “it seems strange that you don’t remember.”

While Alazraki’s interview was released by Televisa June 1, 2019, the pope’s comments on civil union legislation were not included in the published version, and had not previously been seen by the public in any context.

In fact, Alazraki told CNA she has no recollection of the pope making remarks about civil unions, although comparative footage suggests the remark almost certainly came from her interview.

It is not clear how unpublished footage from Alazraki’s interview, of which Spadaro seemed aware in his remarks on Wednesday, became available to Afineevsky during the production of his documentary.

On May 28, 2019, Vatican News, the official news outlet of the Vatican, published a preview of Alazraki’s interview, which also did not contain reference to the pope’s remarks on civil unions.

In a 2014 interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Pope Francis spoke briefly about civil unions after he was asked about them. The pope distinguished between marriage, which is between a man and a woman, and other kinds of government-recognized relationships. Pope Francis did not weigh in on during the interview on a debate in Italy over same-sex civil unions, and a spokesman later clarified that he had no intention of doing so.

Pope Francis is also on record speaking about civil unions in the little known 2017 book “Pape François. Politique et société,” by French sociologist Dominique Wolton, who wrote the text after several interviews with Pope Francis.

In the English translation of the book, titled “A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society,” Wolton tells Pope Francis that “homosexuals aren’t necessarily favorable toward ‘marriage.’ Some prefer civil union (sic) It’s all complicated. Beyond the ideology of equality, there is also, in the word ‘marriage’, a search for acknowledgment.”

In the text, Pope Francis briefly responds: “But it isn’t a marriage, it is a civil union.”

Based on that reference, some reviews, including one published in America magazine, claimed that in the book, the Pope “repeats his opposition to gay marriage but accepts the civil union of people of the same sex.”

Journalists from CNA and other media outlets have asked the Vatican press office for clarification on the source of the pope’s interview, but have not yet received a response.

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Vatican City, May 4, 2018 / 04:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Prayer, poverty, and patience are essential to living religious life, Pope Francis said Friday to a gathering of consecrated men and women.

The pope set aside his prepared remarks and spoke extemporaneously May 4 at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall to some 700 participants in a conference organized by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

He was reflecting on discernment and how to avoid losing oneself among worldliness and provocations.

The pope jokingly said the Holy Spirit “is a calamity, because he never tires of being creative.”

“Now, with the new forms of consecrated life, he is so creative, with the charisms … He is the author of diversity, but at the same time is Creator of unity. This is the Holy Spirit. And with the diversity of charisms and many things, he makes a unity of the Body of Christ, and also the unity of consecrated life. And this too is a challenge.”

Francis posited that the Holy Spirit wants prayer, poverty, and patience to stay strong in consecrated life.

For the consecrated person, prayer is “turning always to the first call … to that Person who has called me,” he said.

Consecrated life is a call to renounce all things for the sake of the gospel, and for the consecrated person “every prayer has to turn back to this … prayer is that which makes me work for the Lord, not for my interests or for the institution in which I work, no, for the Lord.”

Pope Francis reiterated that for the consecrated person prayer is a return to the meeting with the Lord in which they were called by him.

“And prayer, in the consecrated life, is the air which makes us breathe that call, renew that call. Without this air we could not be good consecrated persons. We would be perhaps good persons, Christians, Catholics who do many works in the Church, but consecration you must continually renew, in prayer, in an encounter with the Lord,” he said.

CNA contacted the Holy See Press Office about these unclear remarks concerning prayer and those living in the world, but did not receive a response by deadline.

The Pope went on to say that there are no excuses for not devoting time to prayer, including busyness, pointing to St. Teresa of Calcutta as an example. Someone might say: “But I’m busy, I’m busy, I have so many things to do,” he pointed out, stating “[prayer] is more important: Go pray.”

St. Teresa of Calcutta had concerns, he acknowledged, yet “the two hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, nobody took them away from her… Do as she did, do the same.”

Another reason prayer is so important for men and women in consecrated life, he said, is that it helps to direct action to the correct purpose, keeping the focus on God, instead of just serving an institution or one’s own interests.

“Search for your Lord, the one who called you… Not just in the morning,” he said. “Everyone must look for how to do it, where to do it, when to do it. But always do it, pray. One cannot live the consecrated life, one cannot discern what is happening without speaking with the Lord.”

Pope Francis then turned to poverty, which he noted St. Ignatius of Loyola called the mother of consecrated life.

“Without poverty there is no fecundity in consecrated life,” he said. The spirit of poverty is necessary for discernment, and is a defense against all that would destroy consecrated life.

Even in religious life there can be a worldliness, the Pope said, which comes from a lack of poverty; vanity; and pride.

Francis finally spoke about the quality of patience in consecrated life, which, he said, is not just about bearing patiently with those with whom we live and work – it is also about bearing patiently with the suffering of the world, “carrying [it] on the shoulders.”

“Enter into patience,” he said, because without patience “you cannot be magnanimous, you cannot follow the Lord.”

Internal struggles in a congregation and careerism at general chapters are attributable to impatience, the Pope said.

There must even be patience in the face of a lack of vocations, he added. Choosing to stop accepting members and to sell off the community’s property is a sign that the congregation “is close to death” and has become attached to money, rather than having the patience to pray for new vocations.

This “art of dying well” – a congregation choosing not to pursue prospective vocations – is a “spiritual euthanasia” which “doesn’t have the courage to follow the Lord … We follow [Jesus] to a certain point and by the first or second trial, goodbye.”

The pope concluded by telling the consecrated men and women that they will surely be fruitful if they are prayerful, poor, and patient.

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