Pope Francis: The Gospel is a call to holiness in concrete actions

Vatican City, Sep 14, 2017 / 09:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Thursday the Vatican announced Pope Francis’ appointment of Fr. Matteo Visioli as the new under-secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, following the appointment on Tuesday of Fr. Andrea Ripa as under-secretary of the Congregation for Clergy.

Fr. Visioli, 51, replaces Fr. Giacomo Morandi, who had been under-secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2015 and was promoted to secretary of the dicastery on July 18. Fr. Ripa, 45, was appointed Sept. 12 and replaces Mons. Antonio Neri, who died on June 5.

Both canonists, Fr. Visioli is the author of more than 30 articles and books in the area of church law, including the topics of ecumenical dialogue, the mystery of communion, and the right to receive the sacraments.

He also has several forthcoming publications, including one on confessionalism and the doctrinal principles of the Second Vatican Council, which will be published in the Journal of Law and Religion from Cambridge University Press.

Fr. Visioli was born in Parma, Italy on July 20, 1966, and ordained a priest in May 1992.

He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University, receiving licenses in theology in 1994 and canon law in 1996. The following year he received a specialization in jurisprudence. He received a doctorate in canon law in 1999.

Fr. Visioli held the position of Episcopal Vicar of the Church-World sector from 1999-2008 and was a member of the Committee for the Entities and the Ecclesiastical Property of the Italian Bishops’ Conference from 2001-2008.

He also ministered to parishes in the province of Parma and since 1999 has been head of the Legal Office for the Diocese of Parma.

He is presently the President of Caritas Children Onlus and Episcopal Vicar for Pastoral Care for the diocese.

He is the director and professor of the Inter-diocesan Institute of Religious Sciences, “S. ‘Ilario di Poitiers,” as well as a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Studium Generale Marcianum of Venice.

Fr. Ripa was born in Rimini, Italy on January 5, 1972 and ordained a priest for the Diocese of Rimini in 2004. He received his license in canon law from the Pontifical Lateran University in 2006 and his doctorate in canon law in 2010.

His doctoral thesis was titled, “The missed innovation: the probative value of the parties’ declarations from the 1983 Code to Dignitatis Connubii, the contribution of case law of the Sacred Roman Rota.”

He received a diploma of a Roman Rota lawyer in 2013 and has published multiple scientific articles.

Fr. Ripa was a professor of matrimonial and canon law for the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences in Rimini and of the “General Norms” at the Lugano Faculty of Theology and the Pontifical Lateran University.

He was also a judge and vicar of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of Flaminio in Bologna.

He has been a part of the Congregation for Clergy since 2013 and in addition to Italian, knows English, French, Spanish and Latin.

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Vatican City, Sep 13, 2019 / 11:47 am (CNA).- Pope Francis told members of a men’s religious order Friday that the first goal personally and in their apostolates should be an orientation of their hearts toward God, who is Love.

“Your hearts always reaching out to God. Always! Each member of the community should be oriented, as the first ‘holy purpose’ of every day, to the search for God,” the pope told about 150 members of the Order of Saint Augustine Sept. 13.

“This ‘direction’ should be declared, confessed, witnessed among you without false modesty,” he continued.

“The search for God cannot be obscured by other purposes, although generous and apostolic. Because that is your first apostolate. We are here – you should be able to say among yourselves every day – because we walk towards God. And because God is Love, we walk towards Him in love.”

Members of the Order of Saint Augustine, also referred to as Augustinians, live as mendicants directed by the Rule of St. Augustine. The order was gathered in Rome this week for its general chapter.

In the order’s audience with Pope Francis, he noted a writing of Fr. Agostino Trapè, now deceased, who was prior general of the Augustinians from 1965 to 1971.

Fr. Trapè wrote that according to the Rule of St. Augustine, “charity is not only the end and means of religious life, but it is also its center: from charity it must proceed and charity must be oriented, with a perennial movement of circular causality, every thought, every affection, every attitude, every action.”

Pope Francis advised thinking on a meditation St. Augustine once gave on the Church as “‘mater charitas,’ a mother who cries for the division of children and calls and calls for unity of charity.”

St. Augustine wrote to St. Jerome about the experience of charity in community, the pope noted. St. Augustine said he finds it “very natural to abandon myself entirely to the affection of such people, especially when I am oppressed by the scandals of the world: in their hearts I find rest free of concern, being convinced that there is God in it.”

“Dear brothers, this is also the challenge and responsibility for you today,” the pope urged, “to live in your communities in such a way as to make the experience of God together and be able to show it alive to the world!”

He explained that this is a big responsibility and asked them to focus on living their community life well, so that they can show God to the outside world “in a clear, courageous way, without compromise or hesitation.”

“You Augustinians have been called to bear witness to that warm, living, visible, contagious charity of the Church, through a life of community that clearly shows the presence of the Risen One and his Spirit,” he said.

He quoted his 2018 apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness in today’s world, Gaudete et exsultate, saying, “Community life … is made up of many small daily details … The community that preserves the small details of love, where the members take care of each other and constitute an open and evangelizing space, is the place of the presence of the Risen One who is sanctifying it according to the plan of the Father.”

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Vatican City, Jun 11, 2020 / 08:50 am (CNA).- In a phone call Wednesday, Pope Francis told an archbishop in Brazil that he is praying for the country, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America.

According to Archbishop… […]