British military bishop returns Marian statue taken during Falklands War

Vatican City, May 25, 2020 / 05:48 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday remembered Ut unum sint, St. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on ecumenism, on the 25th anniversary of its publication.

Ut unum sint “confirmed ‘irrevocably’ the e… […]

Vatican City, Jul 4, 2019 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Pope Francis at the Vatican July 4 for a 55-minute private discussion.

“Thank you for the time you have devoted to me,” Putin said after his audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

It was Putin’s third meeting with Pope Francis and fifth visit to the Vatican. The Russian leader arrived nearly an hour late for his meeting with the pope, as he did for both of his prior meetings with Francis.

The day before Putin’s visit Pope Francis expressed his condolences and closeness to the families of the 14 Russian sailors who died when a deep-sea submarine caught fire in an Artic port July 2. Russian officials confirmed that the top-secret submarine was nuclear-powered less than one hour before the papal audience was scheduled.

“The Holy Father was informed of the Russian submarine tragedy. It expresses its condolences and its closeness to the victims’ families and those affected by this disaster,” Holy See press office interim director Alessandro Gisotti said July 3.

The Russian Ambassador to the Holy See Aleksandr Avdeev said ahead of the meeting that he expected Putin and the Roman pontiff to discuss “the instability of international relations, the crisis in the Middle East, the fate of Syria, the problem of nuclear disarmament, the situation in Iran.”

“The time has come when Catholics can no longer solve many problems and open challenges, without taking into account the political logic of Russia and the experience of our Orthodoxy,” Avdeev said in an interview with Ogonek, a Russian magazine.

Putin was also expected to discuss the situation in Ukraine after the Ukrainian Orhtodox Church split with the Russian Orthodox Church last year. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople formally recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in January.

Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev, along with other leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, are expected to meet with Pope Francis and Vatican officials later this week.

At Putin and Pope Francis’ previous meeting in June 2015, Pope Francis asked Putin for “sincere and comprehensive effort to achieve peace” in Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea one year prior. Their first meeting in November 2013 focused on the Syrian civil war.

After his visit to the Vatican, Putin will meet the Italian president and prime minister during his one-day trip to Rome.

Putin met with Pope John Paul II in 2000 and 2003 and had an audience with Pope Benedict in 2007. The Holy See and the Russian Federation re-established full diplomatic relations in 2009.

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Vatican City, Dec 13, 2019 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Fifty years ago on Dec. 13, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was ordained a Jesuit priest in Argentina. As pope, he will celebrate his ordination anniversary Friday by honoring one of his early spiritual mentors, Fr. Miguel Angel Fiorito.

Fiorito, 1916-2005, was a Jesuit Argentine priest, professor, and spiritual writer who died when Cardinal Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

In a preface to a five-volume collection of his writings to be launched Dec. 13, Pope Francis wrote that Fiorito had a “passion for the spiritual exercises,” and “taught many to pray and to discern the signs of the times.”

The future Pope Francis first met Fiorito as a young priest shortly after his ordination in 1969. Bergoglio later put Fiorito in charge of the last stage of Jesuit seminary formation when he served as Jesuit provincial for Argentina.

As a professor of Jesuit spirituality, Fiorito understood that “the spiritual mercy is to teach to discern,” Pope Francis wrote of Fiorito in the preface to his spiritual writings to be presented at the General Curia of the Society of Jesus Dec. 13.

“He had a special nose to feel a bad spirit, he knew how to expose him for his bad fruits. He was a man of combat against a single enemy: the bad spirit, satan, the devil, the tempter, the accuser, the enemy of our human nature,” he said.

Pope Francis described Fiorito in the preface as both “a man of “dialogue and listening” and “lovable father, a patient master and a firm adversary.”

The pope discovered his own vocation to the priesthood as a chemistry student in Argentina after a making a confession with a priest who was dying from leukemia.

“At that moment I felt that I had to become a priest. And I didn’t have the slightest hesitation,” Bergoglio said in an Italian radio interview in 2013.

In 1958, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He received a philosophy degree in 1963, taught literature and psychology, and then studied theology. He was ordained a priest in 1969. He would go on to serve as Jesuit provincial for Argentina, a seminary rector, a pastor, a professor, and a spiritual director.

Fr. Bergoglio was consecrated an auxiliary bishop of the Buenos Aires archdiocese in In 1992. He became the archdiocese’s coadjutor archbishop in 1997, and succeeded as archbishop the following year. St. John Paul II appointed Archbishop Bergoglio a cardinal in 2001.

Pope Francis began his 50th ordination anniversary with a private morning Mass in Casa Santa Marta with all of the cardinals present in Rome. In the evening, he will celebrate with the General Curia of the Society of Jesus as he presents Fiorito’s collected writings.

Fr. Fioriti “brought us the divine imprint that the Lord Jesus has impressed on his life: that of the passion for spiritual exercises, which are an instrument for knowing how to feel and taste the Lord’s request to our soul and help to cleanse it of all ambiguities,” Pope Francis wrote.

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