Pope Francis on day of prayer for Ukraine: ‘Please, no more war’

Bishops process into St. Peter’s Basilica for the closing Mass of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 29, 2023. / Vatican Media

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2023 / 07:30 am (CNA).

At the Synod on Synodality’s closing Mass, Pope Francis said that God’s love cannot be confined “to our own agenda” and that those who truly want to reform the Catholic Church should follow Jesus’ greatest commandment: to adore God and love others with his love.

“We may have plenty of good ideas on how to reform the Church, but let us remember: to adore God and to love our brothers and sisters with his love, that is the great and perennial reform,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 29.

“We are always at risk of thinking that we can ‘control God,’ that we can confine his love to our own agenda. Instead, the way he acts is always unpredictable, it goes beyond, and consequently, this action of God demands amazement and adoration,” he added.

The pope underlined that worship of Jesus in the tabernacle “in every diocese, in every parish, in every community” is necessary in the “struggle against all types of idolatry” in today’s world.

“Let us be vigilant, lest we find that we are putting ourselves at the center rather than him. And let us return to worship. May worship be central for those of us who are pastors: let us devote time every day to intimacy with Jesus the Good Shepherd in the tabernacle. Adoration,” he said.

“Only in this way will we turn to Jesus and not to ourselves. For only through silent adoration will the Word of God live in our words; only in his presence will we be purified, transformed, and renewed by the fire of his Spirit. Brothers and sisters, let us adore the Lord Jesus!”

The pope’s homily marked the closing of the monthlong 2023 Synod on Synodality assembly, where 365 delegates discussed and voted on more than 80 proposals for how to become a more “synodal Church.”

“Brothers and Sisters, the General Assembly of the Synod has now concluded,” he said. “In this ‘conversation of the Spirit,’ we have experienced the loving presence of the Lord and discovered the beauty of fraternity.”

“Today we do not see the full fruit of this process, but with farsightedness, we look to the horizon opening up before us. The Lord will guide us and help us to be a more synodal and more missionary Church, a Church that adores God and serves the women and men of our time, going forth to bring to everyone the consoling joy of the Gospel,” Francis added.

In his homily, Pope Francis said that he believed that the conclusion of this stage in the Synod “it is important to look at the ‘principle and foundation’ from which everything begins ever anew: loving God with our whole life and loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

“Not our strategies, our human calculations, the ways of the world, but love of God and neighbor: that is the heart of everything,” he said.

Pope Francis emphasized that adoration and worship are “essential in the life of the Church.”

“To adore God means to acknowledge in faith that he alone is Lord and that our individual lives, the Church’s pilgrim way, and the ultimate outcome of history all depend on the tenderness of his love. He gives meaning to our lives,” he said.

“Those who worship God reject idols because whereas God liberates, idols enslave,” he added.

“We must constantly struggle against all types of idolatry; not only the worldly kinds, which often stem from vainglory, such as lust for success, self-centredness, greed for money — the devil enters through our pockets let us not forget — the enticements of careerism; but also those forms of idolatry disguised as spirituality: my own spirituality, my religious ideas, my pastoral skills.”

Pope Francis said that being “a worshiping Church and a Church of service” entails “washing the feet of wounded humanity, accompanying those who are frail, weak and cast aside, going out lovingly to encounter the poor.”

Quoting St. John Chrysostom, he said: “The merciful man is as a harbor to those who are in need; and the harbor receives all who are escaping shipwreck, and frees them from danger, whether they be evil or good; whatsoever kind of men they be that are in peril, it receives them into its shelter. You also, when you see a man suffering shipwreck on land through poverty, do not sit in judgment on him, nor require explanations, but relieve his distress.”

About 5,000 people attended the closing Mass for the Synod on Synodality’s 2023 assembly, according to the Vatican. The Mass concluded with the congregation singing the Marian hymn “Salve Regina.”

Pope Francis thanked all of the cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, and lay people from around the world who traveled to Rome to participate in the Synod. Next year, the delegates will return to the Vatican in October 2024 to take part in the second assembly to advise the pope on the theme: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.”

“In expressing my gratitude, I would also like to offer a prayer for all of us: may we grow in our worship of God and in our service to our neighbor. Worship and Service. May the Lord accompany us. Let us go forward with joy,” Pope Francis said.

[…]

Vatican City, Feb 27, 2019 / 05:07 pm (CNA).- In a video message sent Wednesday to an international anti-death penalty group Pope Francis encouraged them in their work and deliberations.

“Human life is a gift that we have received, the most important and primary, the source of all other gifts and rights. As such it needs to be protected,” Pope Francis said Feb. 27 to the seventh World Congress Against the Death Penalty, being held in Brussels.

“The death penalty is a serious violation of the right to life of every person. While it is certain that societies and human communities often face very grave delicts which threaten the common good and the security of persons, it is no less certain that today there are other means to expiate the harm caused, and detention systems are increasingly more effective in protecting society from the evil which some persons can occasion,” the pope stated.

“On the other hand, there can never be abandoned the conviction of offering even to those culpable of crimes the possibility of repentance.”

He added that “it is a positive sign that more and more countries are betting on life and no longer utilize the penalty of death, or have completely eliminated it from their penal legislation.”

“For believers, human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. For believers and non-believers alike, every life is a good and its dignity must be guarded without exception,” the pope said.

“The dignity of the person is not lost even when they have committed the worst of the crimes. No one can be killed and deprived of the opportunity to embrace the community they wounded and made to suffer.”

The Church has “always defended life,” Pope Francis said, “and her vision of the death penalty has matured.”

He said that it was “for this reason” that the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was changed last year.

In August 2018, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a new draft of the catechism’s paragraph regarding capital punishment.

Quoting Pope Francis’ words in a speech of Oct. 11, 2017, the new paragraph states, in part, that “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

Reasons for changing the teaching, the paragraph says, include: the increasing effectiveness of detention systems, growing understanding of the unchanging dignity of the person, and leaving open the possibility of conversion.

The Church has consistently taught that the state has the authority to use the death penalty, in cases of “absolute necessity,” though with the qualification that the Church considered such situations to be extremely rare.

Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., a moral theologian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., told CNA at the time that he thinks this change “further absolutizes the pastoral conclusion made by John Paul II.”

“Nothing in the new wording of paragraph 2267 suggests the death penalty is intrinsically evil. Indeed, nothing could suggest that because it would contradict the firm teaching of the Church,” Fr. Petri continued.

Both of Pope Francis’s immediate predecessors condemned the practice of capital punishment in the West.

St. John Paul II called on Christians to be “unconditionally pro-life” and said that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” He also spoke of his desire for a consensus to end the death penalty, which he called “cruel and unnecessary.”

And Benedict XVI exhorted world leaders to make “every effort to eliminate the death penalty” and told Catholics that ending capital punishment was an essential part of “conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.”

Pope Francis concluded his video message encouraging the meeting in Belgium.

“I accompany you with my prayer, and I encourage the governors and all those with responsibilities in their countries to take the necessary steps towards the total abolition of the death penalty,” he said.

“It is our responsibility to recognize the dignity of each person, so that no other lives are taken away, but are earned for the good of all society.”

[…]

Religious sisters view remains discovered at a site in Gdańsk, northern Poland. / Poszukiwania IPN.

Warsaw, Poland, Jun 4, 2021 / 03:10 am (CNA).
Sr. Maria Gunhilda was recovering from tuberculosis at a hospital in Orneta, northern Poland, when … […]