Archbishop Aupetit: Pope Francis asked me to stay in Congregation of Bishops after Paris resignation

Vatican City, Aug 27, 2019 / 10:44 am (CNA).- A new bishop was consecrated Monday in Inner Mongolia, China, according to Asia News. Bishop Antonio Yao Shun is the first bishop to be consecrated in the country after a deal on bishop appointments was made with the Vatican last year.

Beijing and Vatican officials signed a provisional agreement on bishop appointments Sept. 22, 2018. The Vatican-China deal was intended to unify the underground Church and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

While the terms of the agreement have been kept confidential, it reportedly allows the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to choose a slate of nominees for bishop. The deal has drawn significant criticism.

Bishop Antonio Yao Shun, 54, will head the Diocese of Jining in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, Asia News reports. The diocese has been without a bishop since the June 2017 death of Bishop John Liu Shigong.

Yao was consecrated in the Jining Cathedral on the morning of Aug. 26, with more than 120 priests concelebrating, a consecrator-bishop, and three co-consecrators, Asia News reports.

Contrary to usual Vatican practice, Yao’s nomination to the episcopacy was not published in the daily bulletin of the Holy See press office, and it is unknown whether Pope Francis appointed Yao prior to or after the signing of the Vatican-China deal.

Yao studied at the national seminary in Beijing. From 1994 to 1998 he was in the United States completing a specialization in liturgy. He also spent a period doing biblical studies in Jerusalem.

The bishop previously taught at the national seminary. From 1998 to 2004 he served as secretary of the liturgical commission of the Council of Chinese Bishops and the Patriotic Association. He has been vice director of the same commission since 2004.

Yao’s chosen episcopal motto is “Misericordes sicut pater,” which means “Be merciful as the Father is.”

Since 1957, the Church in China had been split between the “underground” Church, in full communion with Rome, and the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA) for which the Chinese government appointed bishops.

The agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic is meant to end the split between the two.

The U.S. Commission on International Religion wrote in its 2018 report that last year China “advanced its so-called ‘sinicization’ of religion, a far-reaching strategy to control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith into a socialist mold infused with ‘Chinese characteristics.’” Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners have all been affected.

Restrictions put in place in February 2018 made it illegal for anyone under age 18 to enter a church building.

Reports of the destruction or desecration of Catholic churches and shrines have come from across China, including the provinces of Hebei, Henan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, and Shandong.

Muslims, too, have come under pressure from the Chinese government. It is believed that as many as 1 million Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnoreligious group in China’s far west, are being detained in re-education camps where they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination.

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Pope Francis delivers his Angelus address at the Vatican, March. 6, 2022. / Vatican Media.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 6, 2022 / 06:45 am (CNA).
Pope Francis condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and expressed his solidarity with the countr… […]

Pope Francis celebrates the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. March 29, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Mar 29, 2024 / 15:20 pm (CNA).

During the Good Friday liturgy at the Vatican, presided over by Pope Francis, the papal preacher reflected on the triumph of the cross, noting that it is an event that changed the universal perception of God’s omnipotence, revealing his humility. 

“The true omnipotence of God is the total powerlessness of Calvary,” Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., said during his homily.

At approximately 5 p.m. Rome time, Pope Francis made his way into Saint Peter’s Basilica, in a wheelchair, vested in a red chasuble. Cast against the backdrop of complete and palpable silence, the Holy Father paused in meditation before the Papal Altar underneath Bernini’s Baldacchino (covered in scaffolding for its restoration), while the congregation knelt.

For the past several years the pope has been unable to lay prostrate due to his fragile health, which includes persistent knee problems and several bouts of pulmonary inflammation.

After the chanting of the passion from the Gospel of John, Cantalamessa — who was made a cardinal in 2020 after more than 40 years as Preacher of the Papal Household — opened his homily reflecting on Christ’s self-affirmation of “I am,” words he said come without any qualification and carry “an absolute, metaphysical significance” and is an “unprecedented novelty.” 

The cardinal stressed that this new paradigm can only be understood by looking at Christ’s preceding words heard in the passion: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man.”

Observing that “to be lifted up” refers to the crucifixion, the cardinal noted that the sum of these words express a “total reversal of the human idea of God,” revealing “the true face of God.”

“Jesus did not come to retouch and perfect the idea that men had of him, but, in a certain sense, to overturn it and reveal the true face of God,” he said. ““He humbly behaves in the glory of the resurrection as in the annihilation of Calvary. The concern of the risen Jesus is not to confuse his enemies, but to immediately go and reassure his lost disciples and, before them, the women who had never stopped believing in him.”

“Understood in this light,” Cantalamessa continued, “the word of Christ takes on a universal significance that challenges those who read it, in any era and situation, including ours.”

The cardinal warned not to conflate God’s omnipotence, and the “definitive and irreversible triumph” of the cross with temporal triumphs, as God’s triumph showcases humility. 

“It takes little power to show off,” the cardinal noted, “Instead, it takes a lot to step aside, to cancel. God is this limitless power of self-concealment.”

“The resurrection takes place in the mystery,” he continued. “As a resurrected one, Jesus appears only to a few disciples, out of the spotlight. With this he wanted to tell us that after suffering, we must not expect an external, visible triumph, like an earthly glory.”

At the end of Cantalamessa’s homily, the faithful sat in a moment of deep silence and reflection. This was followed by the reading of the Oratio Universalis, the universal prayer also known as the Solemn Intercessions.

Then, a deacon, flanked by two candle bearers, stopped at three separate points in the central nave of the basilica, proclaiming, with an increasing pitch, “Ecce lignum crucis” (“behold the wood of the cross”). After the third proclamation, the deacon, holding an unveiled crucifix, brought it to the papal chair for the pope’s veneration.

Once the crucifix was fixed in a central place, the Sistine Chapel Choir chanted the Improperia, or the Good Friday Reproaches, a series of antiphons sung in alternating manner between a cantor and the choir. The cardinals, who sat opposite the pope, filed in line to kneel before and kiss the crucifix.

After the final prayer over the people, the pope left the basilica just as he entered: solemn, and in silence.

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