Vatican congregation to send ventilators to Syria and Holy Land

Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, S.J., with the official image of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome. / Screenshot from Diocesi di Roma YouTube channel.

Denver Newsroom, Dec 7, 2022 / 22:30 pm (CNA).
In an unusual Twitter thread, Father Gianfranc… […]

Black smoke billows over the city after drone strikes in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Sept. 19, 2023, amid Russia’s military invasion on Ukraine. Drones attacked Ukraine’s western city of Lviv early on Sept. 19, and explosions rang out, causing a warehouse fire and wounding at least one person. / Credit: YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images

Vatican City, Sep 20, 2023 / 12:29 pm (CNA).

The head of the Vatican’s charity office is traveling to Ukraine to inaugurate a new home for displaced mothers and children in Lviv days after a warehouse containing aid burned to the ground following a Russian strike.

According to a Sept. 20 press release from the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski is in Ukraine this week to open the House of Refuge “in the name of Pope Francis, as a sign of support and closeness to the many people who were forced to flee because of the conflict, bringing the apostolic blessing.”

The shelter was built during the conflict with Russia and financed in part by the Vatican. It will provide temporary housing to women who have fled the bombing in other parts of Ukraine.

The visit follows Russian attacks in Ukraine that killed nine people Sept. 19, according to Reuters. In Lviv, a drone strike set on fire several industrial warehouses, including a warehouse used by the Catholic charity Caritas-Spes to store humanitarian aid.

The secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, Alistair Dutton, said the attack destroyed more than 330 tons of humanitarian aid for Ukrainians.

“The mission’s employees were unharmed,” the head of Caritas-Spes Ukraine, Father Vyacheslav Grynevych, said, “but the warehouse with everything inside burned to the ground including food, hygiene kits, generators, and clothes.” 

“We will be able to calculate the final details of the losses later, as special services are currently working at the scene. We already know that 33 pallets of food packages, 10 pallets of hygiene kits and canned food, 10 pallets of generators and clothes were destroyed,” the priest said, according to a press release from Caritas Internationalis.

Dutton is in New York this week to attend the U.N. General Assembly at which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke Tuesday.

The Caritas-Spes warehouse served as a place to store aid from other countries, including Caritas Poland, before it was transported to families in eastern Ukraine.

The Caritas-Spes warehouse has also been used as a deposit for supplies, including generators, donated to Ukraine by Pope Francis through the Vatican’s charity office.

“I am sorrowful for what happened in Lviv with the attack on the warehouse of Caritas-Spes,” Krajewski said. “They struck to destroy the possibility of helping people who are suffering.”

In a message to Cardinal Peter Turkson on Sept. 19, Pope Francis denounced “the use in contemporary warfare of so-called ‘conventional weapons,’ which should be used for defensive purposes only and not directed to civilian targets.”

The pope’s message, dated Sept. 12, was sent to the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on the occasion of a Sept. 19-20 conference on Pacem in Terris, St. John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical on peace.

“It is my hope that sustained reflection on this issue will lead to a consensus that such weapons, with their immense destructive power, will not be employed in a way that foreseeably causes ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering,’ to use the words of the St. Petersburg Declaration,” Francis said.

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Vatican City, May 3, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis called on all Catholics to pray for vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life on Good Shepherd Sunday, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

“Priesthood and consecrated life require courage and perseverance, and without prayer one does not follow this path. I invite everyone to ask the Lord for the gift of good workers for his kingdom who have their hearts and hands open to his love,” Pope Francis said on May 3.

In his Regina Caeli address, the pope said that the World Day of Prayer of Vocations is a reminder of Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few, so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”

Christ, the Good Shepherd, calls his sheep by name and the sheep listen to his voice, the pope said.

“Christian existence is always a response to the call of God, in any state of life,” he said.

Speaking from the library of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis offered advice for discerning the Lord’s voice from other voices of temptation or distraction.

He said that the voice of the evil one “seduces, assails, forces” with “tempting but passing emotions”.

“At first it flatters, makes us believe that we are omnipotent, but then it leaves us with emptiness inside and accuses us: ‘You are worth nothing,’” he said. “The voice of God, on the other hand, corrects us with much patience, but always encourages us, consoles us. It always nourishes hope.”

“The voice of God never binds: God proposes himself, he does not impose himself,” he said.

Pope Francis explained that the voice of temptation “always revolves around the self,” whereas the voice of God invites all to go “beyond ourselves to find true goodness and peace.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, in this time many thoughts and concerns lead us to turn in on ourselves. We pay attention to the voices that reach our heart. Let’s ask where they come from,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis said that May is “the Marian month par excellence” and encouraged people to place all of their concerns, expectations, and plans for the future “in the heart of the Holy Virgin.”

In his message for the 2020 World Day of Vocations, Pope Francis pointed to Mary’s courageous “yes” to God at the Annunciation as a model to follow:

“Cultivate the interior disposition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Grateful that Lord gazed upon her, faithful amid fear and turmoil, she courageously embraced her vocation and made of her life an eternal song of praise to the Lord.”

“Every vocation is born of that gaze of love with which the Lord came to meet us,” he said. “We will succeed in discovering and embracing our vocation once we open our hearts in gratitude and perceive the passage of God in our lives.”

The pope stressed that vocational discernment is not simply “a decision we make as isolated individuals.”

“Vocation, more than our own choice, is a response to the Lord’s unmerited call,” he said.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis led the traditional Marian Regina Caeli prayer via video livestream on May 3. The pope then appeared in the window of the Apostolic Palace above an empty St. Peter’s Square to offer a blessing for the city of Rome and the world.

“We ask for the grace to recognize and follow the voice of the Good Shepherd, who brings us out of the enclosure of selfishness and leads us to the pastures of true freedom. Our Lady, Mother of the Good Council, guide and accompany our discernment,” Pope Francis said.

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