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Vatican City, Oct 11, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Sunday that the life of Blessed Carlo Acutis provides a witness for young people that true happiness is found when one puts God first.

“Yesterday in Assisi, Carlo Acutis, a fifteen-year-old boy in love with the Eucharist, was beatified. He did not settle into comfortable inaction, but grasped the needs of his time because in the weakest he saw the face of Christ,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Oct. 11.

“His witness shows today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God first and serving Him in our brothers, especially the least. Let’s make a round of applause for the new young Blessed,” the pope told the pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

Blessed Carlo Acutis, a Catholic teen with an aptitude for computer programming and a great devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, became the first millennial to be declared ‘Blessed’ on Oct. 10.

At the age of 15, Acutis was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006. He offered his sufferings for Pope Benedict XVI and for the Church, saying “I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the pope, and the Church.”

Pope Francis first presented Acutis as an example for young people in post-syondal apostolic exhortation on young people, Christus Vivit. The pope wrote that Acutis’ provided a model of how young people can use the internet and technology to spread the Gospel.

“It is true that the digital world can expose you to the risk of self-absorption, isolation and empty pleasure. But don’t forget that there are young people even there who show creativity and even genius. That was the case with Venerable Carlo Acutis,” the pope wrote in 2018.

“Carlo was well aware that the whole apparatus of communications, advertising and social networking can be used to lull us, to make us addicted to consumerism and buying the latest thing on the market, obsessed with our free time, caught up in negativity. Yet he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty.”

In his Angelus message, Pope Francis said that the Church today is called reach the geographical and existential peripheries of humanity where people can find themselves on the margins without hope.

The pope urged people “not to rest in comfortable and routine modes of evangelization and witness of charity, but to open the doors of our hearts and our communities to all because the Gospel is not reserved for a select few.”

“Even those on the margins, even those who are rejected and despised by society, are considered by God worthy of His love,” he added.

The Lord “prepares his banquet for everyone: just and sinful, good and bad, intelligent and uneducated,” the pope said, referencing chapter 22 in the Gospel of Matthew.

“The habit of mercy, which God offers us ceaselessly, is a free gift of his love … And it requires to be received with amazement and joy,” Francis said.

After praying the Angelus, the pope prayed for the victims of violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan, expressing his gratitude that a ceasefire had been reached.

Pope Francis also encouraged all laity, especially women, to exercise Christian leadership by virtue of their baptism.

“We must promote the integration of women in the places where important decisions are made,” he said.

“Let us pray that, by virtue of baptism, the lay faithful, especially women, will participate more in institutions of responsibility in the Church, without falling into the clericalisms that nullify the lay charism and also ruin the face of Holy Mother Church.”

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Pope Francis meets participants in the international conference ‘Lines of Development of the Global Compact on Education’ in a room adjacent to the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, June 1, 2022. / Vatican Media.

Vatican City, Jun 1, 2022 / 12:35 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis on Wednesday criticized people who “call themselves guardians of traditions, but of dead traditions,” saying that failing to move forward is dangerous for the Church today.

Speaking to the organizers of a conference on education on June 1, the pope said that it was vital to make progress by “drawing from the roots.”

He said that “there is the fashion — in every age, but in this age in the Church’s life I consider it dangerous — that instead of drawing from the roots in order to move forward — meaning fine traditions — we ‘step back,’ not going up or down, but backward.”

“This ‘back-stepping’ makes us a sect; it makes you ‘closed’ and cuts off your horizons. Those people call themselves guardians of traditions, but of dead traditions.”

Pope Francis underlined that “the true Catholic Christian and human tradition … grows, progresses.”

“Education, for its part, is always rooted in the past, but it does not stop there: it is directed towards ‘forward-looking initiatives,’ where the old and the new converge to create a new humanism,” he said.

The pope underlined that true tradition is “what that fifth-century theologian described as a constant growth: throughout history, tradition grows, progresses: ut annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate.”

The pope was referring to St. Vincent of Lerins, who wrote about the development of Church teaching, saying that it “is solidified over the years, extended with time, and refined with age.”

Pope Francis has invoked this quotation numerous times since his election in 2013, including in a letter on Amoris laetitia in 2018.

The pope did not mention the liturgy or Catholic doctrine in his June 1 address, but focused his speech on education.

He said that Virgil’s Aeneid contains an image that “can serve to illustrate the mission of educators, who are called to preserve the past … and to guide the steps of the young towards the future.”

“An eloquent example of how to confront the crisis can be found in the epic figure of Aeneas, who amid the flames of his burning city, carries on his shoulders his elderly father Anchises and takes the young son Ascanius by the hand, leading them both to safety,” Francis said.

“Aeneas saves himself, but not by himself. He brings with him his father, who represents his past, and his son, who represents the future. And so he moves forward,” he added.

Pope Francis said that this representation of tradition being respected and preserved reminded him of “what Gustav Mahler said about tradition: ‘Tradition is the guarantee of the future,’ not a museum piece.”

The pope met at the Vatican with participants in a conference organized to evaluate the work accomplished so far by his Global Compact on Education and to plan for its development in the years to come.

“I thank you for all that you do in the service of education, which is also the specific contribution that you are offering to the Church’s synodal process. Keep moving in this direction, from the past towards the future, continuous growth,” he said.

“And be attentive to the ‘back-stepping’ so much in vogue today, which makes us think that by stepping back, we can preserve humanism,” the pope added.

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Vatican City, Jun 10, 2020 / 04:30 am (CNA).- In our darkest moments God awaits us and is ready to transform us, Pope Francis said at his general audience Wednesday.

Reflecting on Jacob’s struggle with an angel described in the Book of Genesis, … […]