Pope Francis encourages Argentine women opposing legal abortion

Vatican City, Jan 20, 2019 / 06:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis launched an app Sunday called  “Click to Pray,” which connects Catholics to a global network to share prayer intentions via their smartphones.

The pope opened the new app using an iPad during his Angelus address Jan. 20 and encouraged young Catholics, in particular, to download the smartphone app to pray the “Rosary of Peace” ahead of World Youth Day.

“Click to Pray” allows users to post prayer intentions and view other prayer requests in six languages. After posting on the social network, one can track how many Catholics around the world have prayed for their request.

The Android and iOS app includes the pope’s monthly prayer intentions, all of the mysteries of the rosary, and daily prayers for morning, afternoon, and night. In each of these sections, users can click a box to indicate that they have completed the prayer and view how many others also prayed.

This month’s prayer intention is “for young people and the example of Mary.” In his Angelus address, Pope Francis reflected on Mary’s role in Sunday’s Gospel narrative of the wedding feast at Cana.

“Let us look at Mary: the words that Mary addresses to the servants come to crown the spousal framework of Cana, ‘Do whatever he tells you,’” Francis said. “These words are a precious inheritance that our Mother has left us.”

“To serve the Lord means to listen and practice His word. It is the simple, essential recommendation of the Mother of Jesus, it is the program of life of the Christian,” he continued.

Pope Francis explained that “it is not accidental that at the beginning of Jesus’ public life there is a wedding ceremony, because in Him God has married humanity.”

Jesus’ transformation of water into wine was also symbolic, Francis noted, “Water is necessary to live, but the wine expresses the abundance of the banquet and the joy of the party.”

He joked, “It would have been bad to continue the party with water! … A party without wine? I don’t know.”

The pope encouraged Catholics to turn to Our Lady when facing difficult situations, and to echo her words, “They have no wine.”

Francis explained, “When problems occur that we do not know how to solve, when we often feel anxiety and anguish, when we lack the joy, go to Our Lady and say, ‘We have no wine. The wine is finished: look how I am, look at my heart, look at my soul.’ Tell Mother, and she will go to Jesus to say, ‘Look at this, look at this: they have no wine.’ And then, she will come back to us and tell us, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”

In a prayer to Mary after the Angelus, the pope expressed his grief and continued prayers for the Colombian people after the terrorist attack last Thursday at the National Police Academy, which killed 21 people.

The pope said that it “pained his heart” that an estimated 170 migrants are missing after two shipwrecks in the Mediterranean this weekend.

“They were looking for a future for their lives. Victims, perhaps, of human traffickers. We pray for them, and for those who are responsible for what happened,” he said.

The cheers at the end of the Angelus prayer were louder than usual as young people in St. Peter’s square waved Panamanian flags and raised a large banner reading, “Buon Viaggio.” The pope will depart Rome for Panama on January 23 for World Youth Day 2019.

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Vatican City, Jun 14, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Here is the full text of Pope Francis’ Corpus Christi homily, delivered June 14 at the Basilica of St. Peter.

“Remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you” (Deut 8:2). Today’s Scripture readings begin with this command of Moses: Remember! Shortly afterwards Moses reiterates: “Do not forget the Lord, your God” (v.14). Scripture has been given to us that we might overcome our forgetfulness of God. How important it is to remember this when we pray! As one of the Psalms teaches: “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (77:11). But all those wonders too, that the Lord has worked in our own lives.

It is vital to remember the good we have received. If we do not remember it, we become strangers to ourselves, “passers-by” of existence. Without memory, we uproot ourselves from the soil that nourishes us and allow ourselves to be carried away like leaves in the wind. If we do remember, however, we bind ourselves afresh to the strongest of ties; we feel part of a living history, the living experience of a people. Memory is not something private; it is the path that unites us to God and to others. This is why in the Bible the memory of the Lord must be passed on from generation to generation. Fathers are commanded to tell the story to their sons, as we read in a beautiful passage. “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded you?’, then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves… [think of the whole history of slavery!], and the Lord showed signs and wonders… before our eyes’” (Deut 6:20-22). You shall hand down this memory to your son.

But there is a problem: what if the chain of transmission of memories is interrupted? And how can we remember what we have only heard, unless we have also experienced it? God knows how difficult it is, he knows how weak our memory is, and he has done something remarkable: he left us a memorial. He did not just leave us words, for it is easy to forget what we hear. He did not just leave us the Scriptures, for it is easy to forget what we read. He did not just leave us signs, for we can forget even what we see. He gave us Food, for it is not easy to forget something we have actually tasted. He left us Bread in which he is truly present, alive and true, with all the flavor of his love. Receiving him we can say: “He is the Lord; he remembers me!” That is why Jesus told us: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24). Do! The Eucharist is not simply an act of remembrance; it is a fact: the Lord’s Passover is made present once again for us. In Mass the death and resurrection of Jesus are set before us. Do this in remembrance of me: come together and celebrate the Eucharist as a community, as a people, as a family, in order to remember me. We cannot do without the Eucharist, for it is God’s memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.

The Eucharist first heals our orphaned memory. We are living at a time of great orphanage. The Eucharist heals orphaned memory. So many people have memories marked by a lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot. God, however, can heal these wounds by placing within our memory a greater love: his own love. The Eucharist brings us the Father’s faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans. It gives us Jesus’ love, which transformed a tomb from an end to a beginning, and in the same way can transform our lives. It fills our hearts with the consoling love of the Holy Spirit, who never leaves us alone and always heals our wounds.

Through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity which seeps so often into our hearts. The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sorry notion that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we are ourselves a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends with whom he wants to dine. And not only because he is generous, but because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are. The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections. And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains the antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness. We will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unrealized dreams. But their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with his love. This is the strength of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bringers of God, bringers of joy, not negativity. We who go to Mass can ask: What is it that we bring to the world? Is it our sadness and bitterness, or the joy of the Lord? Do we receive Holy Communion and then carry on complaining, criticizing and feeling sorry for ourselves? This does not improve anything, whereas the joy of the Lord can change lives.

Finally, the Eucharist heals our closed memory. The wounds we keep inside create problems not only for us, but also for others. They make us fearful and suspicious. We start with being closed, and end up cynical and indifferent. Our wounds can lead us to react to others with detachment and arrogance, in the illusion that in this way we can control situations. Yet that is indeed an illusion, for only love can heal fear at its root and free us from the self-centeredness that imprisons us. And that is what Jesus does. He approaches us gently, in the disarming simplicity of the Host. He comes as Bread broken in order to break open the shells of our selfishness. He gives of himself in order to teach us that only by opening our hearts can we be set free from our interior barriers, from the paralysis of the heart.

The Lord, offering himself to us in the simplicity of bread, also invites us not to waste our lives in chasing the myriad illusions that we think we cannot do without, yet that leave us empty within. The Eucharist satisfies our hunger for material things and kindles our desire to serve. It raises us from our comfortable and lazy lifestyle and reminds us that we are not only mouths to be fed, but also his hands, to be used to help feed others. It is especially urgent now to take care of those who hunger for food and for dignity, of those without work and those who struggle to carry on. And this we must do in a real way, as real as the Bread that Jesus gives us. Genuine closeness is needed, as are true bonds of solidarity. In the Eucharist, Jesus draws close to us: let us not turn away from those around us.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us continue our celebration of Holy Mass: the Memorial that heals our memory. Let us never forget: the Mass is the Memorial that heals memory, the memory of the heart. The Mass is the treasure that should be foremost both in the Church and in our lives. And let us also rediscover Eucharistic adoration, which continues the work of the Mass within us. This will do us much good, for it heals us within. Especially now, when our need is so great.

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Vatican City, Oct 25, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For one member of “the Pope’s Choir,” the Catholic Church, while appreciating sacred music, has in some respects lost the art of singing it in her parishes, prompting the need for a revival of traditional style across the world.

“Coming from the UK, I’m used to a choral tradition, it’s a great Anglican tradition,” Mark Spyropoulos told CNA, noting that much of the sacred music they sing is written for great Catholic choirs, but “generally, across Europe at least, we’ve lost touch with that.”

“The cathedrals are mostly silent,” he said, and while the Vatican is an exception, “from a personal stance, as a choral singer, I would like to see that tradition revived” in Catholic choirs “because it’s absolutely wonderful.”

Originally from London, Spyropoulos has been a member of the Sistine Chapel Choir for two and a half years, and is the first person from Britain to join the choir, which just returned from a tour in the United States, the first in 30 years, which included stops in Washington D.C., New York and Detroit.

“I would like to see our touring also promote something of a revival of great Catholic choirs,” he said.
 
He was present for the Oct. 24 presentation of the choir’s annual CD, which this year is titled “Veni Domine: Advent and Christmas at the Sistine Chapel.”

When it comes to sacred music, Spyropoulos said he believes it has “a huge place” in the Church, and has much to offer, even outside of an ecclesial context.

Sacred music, he said, “puts young singers in touch with their history, their culture, and it’s an inspirational thing to do, not just to be part of it, but to hear it.”

Whenever the choir sings, “our intention is that it should inspire people, that people would listen to it and be transported away from the mundane and the banal, and that their minds would be directed to something that is spiritual, beautiful and transcendent,” he said.

The singer shared that in his experience, there isn’t just a need for sacred music, but also a desire for it, because “when we sing, people seem to be amazed.”

Simply being “the Pope’s choir” is enough to attract people, Spyropoulos said, while adding that there also seems to be “more than that” fueling peoples’ interest.

“This music has such a deep power to it,” he said. Using the image of a fresco as an example, he said that when people look at one, “it’s incredibly beautiful, but when you sing this music it’s not like looking at a fresco, it’s like being in a fresco, it’s like being painted in it – you have to create it, and people listen to that.”

Recalling the choir’s recent tour of the United States, the singer said each of their venues were packed, and that highlights from the trip for him were singing in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, where they got “a standing ovation from thousands of people, that was wonderful.”

He also reflected on singing Evensong in the Anglican parish of St. Thomas on First Avenue, which he said was “a very special moment” given his own background and formation in the Anglican choral tradition.

The people they met in each city, he said, “were so kind and so generous to us all the way through… we were really welcomed so warmly. We had a great time.”

While no official plans have been made, Spyropoulos said there are rumors the choir will return to the U.S., perhaps traveling along the West Coast.

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