Pope Francis on adoption: ‘Every child that arrives is God’s gift’

Black Elk, daughter Lucy Black Elk and wife Anna Brings White. / Credit: Public Domain

Detroit, Mich., Dec 10, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Nicholas Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota Sioux warrior, visionary, and Catholic catechist, is known worldwide but … […]

Vatican City, Apr 14, 2017 / 10:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Even as sinful people in a society filled with violence and increasing secularism, we have hope because Christ’s cross perdures, the papal preacher said at the Vatican’s Good Friday Service.

“The cross, then, does not ‘stand’ against the world but for the world: to give meaning to all the suffering that has been, that is, and that will be in human history,” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., said April 14.

He gave the homily during the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica. Fr. Cantalamessa also gave the homilies at Mass at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta on Fridays throughout Lent.

Today, we are constantly hearing about death and violence, he said. “Why then are we here to recall the death of a man who lived 2,000 years ago?”

“The reason is that this death has changed forever the very face of death and given it a new meaning,” he said.

Fr. Cantalamessa preached: “The cross is the living proclamation that the final victory does not belong to the one who triumphs over others but to the one who triumphs over self; not to the one who causes suffering but to the one who is suffering.”

He explained how the Carthusian monks have adopted a coat of arms that hangs at the entrance to their monastery. It has a globe of the earth with a cross above it, and written across it: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis,” or “The cross stands firm as the world turns.”

He described a painting by Salvador Dali, called “Christ of St. John of the Cross.” It depicts Christ on the cross as if you are looking from above. Beneath him are clouds, and below that, water.

In a way, the water beneath Christ in this image, instead of earth, is a symbol of the lack of firm foundation of values in our current society, he explained. But even though we live in this very “liquid society,” there is still hope, because “the cross of Christ stands.”

“This is what the liturgy for Good Friday has us repeat every year with the words of the poet Venanzio Fortunato: ‘O crux, ave spes unica,’ ‘Hail, O Cross, our only hope.’”

The point of Christ’s Passion, however, is not an analysis of society, he said. “Christ did not come to explain things, but to change human beings.”

In each of us, to varying degrees, is a “heart of darkness,” he said. In the Bible, it is called “a heart of stone.”

“A heart of stone is a heart that is closed to God’s will and to the suffering of brothers and sisters, a heart of someone who accumulates unlimited sums of money and remains indifferent to the desperation of the person who does not have a glass of water to give to his or her own child; it is also the heart of someone who lets himself or herself be completely dominated by impure passion and is ready to kill for that passion or to lead a double life,” he said.

He explained that even as practicing Christians we have these hearts of stone when we live fundamentally for ourselves and not for the Lord.

Quoting God’s words through the prophet Ezekiel, Fr. Cantalamessa said: “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh.”

He went on to explain how in Scripture we are told that at the moment of Christ’s death, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”

This description, using apocalyptic language and signs, indicates “what should happen in the heart of a person who reads and meditates on the Passion of Christ.”

“The heart of flesh, promised by God through the prophets, is now present in the world: it is the heart of Christ pierced on the cross, the heart we venerate as the “Sacred Heart,’” he said.

We believe that though he was slain, because Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, his heart has also “been raised from the dead; it is alive like the rest of his body.”

And when we receive the Eucharist, we “firmly believe” that the very heart of Christ has come to “beat inside of us” as well, he explained.

“As we are about to gaze upon the cross, let us say from the bottom of our hearts, like the tax collector in the temple, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ and then we too, like he did, will return home ‘justified’.”

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Pope Francis shared a stage with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on May 12, 2023, to speak at a two-day conference on “The General State of the Birth Rate,” held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Rome Newsroom, May 12, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Friday a society’s birth rate is a key indicator of the hope people have in the future.

The pope shared the stage on May 12 with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a two-day conference on “The General State of the Birth Rate,” held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican.

“The birth of children, in fact, is the main indicator for measuring the hope of a people,” Pope Francis said. “If few are born it means there is little hope. And this not only has repercussions from an economic and social point of view but also undermines confidence in the future.”

“The General State of the Birth Rate” is a conference for Italian political, business, and organization leaders to reflect on Italy’s demographic crisis, caused by one of the lowest birth rates in Europe: 1.25 births per woman.

The event was organized by the Foundation for Births and the Family Associations Forum and supported by the Italian Ministry for Family, Birth, and Equal Opportunity.

This was the third annual conference and the second time Pope Francis attended. In 2022, he sent a message to be read at the event.

Italy hit a historic low number of births in 2022, with only about 393,000 children born in the country.

The same year, the country saw 700,000 deaths, marking a dangerous decline in population.

The low number of births, Pope Francis said, “is a figure that reveals a great concern for tomorrow.”

He lamented that childbearing and rearing is seen as the burden of families only, and the pressure this puts on young adults today, “who grow up in uncertainty, if not disillusionment and fear.”

Young people “experience a social climate in which starting a family has turned into a titanic effort, instead of being a shared value that everyone recognizes and supports,” he said.

The decline in communal living, together with an increasing self-reliance creates loneliness, Pope Francis said, and one consequence is that only the wealthy have the freedom to live the life they want.

“This is unfair, as well as demeaning,” he added.

The pope also criticized a culture that places pets before human children.

He said at a recent audience, he went to greet a woman of around 50 years old — “like me,” he joked — but was surprised to be asked to bless her dog, which she called, “my baby.”

“I had no patience and scolded the lady,” he said, pointing out the great number of hungry children in the world.

Pope Francis used a walker to move on stage on Friday, referencing the pain he experiences while standing.

At the beginning of his speech, the pope said: “I’m sorry for not standing up while speaking, but I cannot tolerate the pain when I am standing.”

In what appeared to be a reference not only to welcoming the birth of children but also to welcoming migrants, Pope Francis said “a happy community naturally develops desires to generate and integrate, to welcome, while an unhappy society is reduced to a sum of individuals trying to defend what they have at all costs.”

He emphasized again that “the birth rate challenge is a matter of hope,” though, he underlined, hope is not the same as optimism or “a vague positive feeling about the future.”

Hope, he said, “is not an illusion or an emotion that you feel, no; it is a concrete virtue, a life attitude. And it has to do with concrete choices. Hope is nourished by each person’s commitment to the good, it grows when we feel we are participating and involved in making meaning of our own and others’ lives.”

“Hope generates change and improves the future. It is the smallest of virtues — Péguy said — it is the smallest, but it is the one that takes you the furthest. And hope does not disappoint,” Francis said.

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