Staff of the Dicastery for Communication distribute books commemorating Pope Francis’ extraordinary Urbi et Orbi during coronavirus at the Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, March 27, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Mar 27, 2022 / 16:28 pm (CNA).
After his Angelus address on Sunday, Pope Francis remarked that it was the second anniversary of his offering an Urbi et Orbi blessing shortly early in the coronavirus pandemic.
“Precisely two years ago, in this piazza, we lifted up our plea for the end of the pandemic,” he said March 27 in St. Peter’s Square.
“Today, we have done so for an end to the war in Ukraine. At the Square’s entrances, you will be given a book as a gift, produced by the Vatican Covid-19 Commission with the Dicastery for Communication. It is an invitation to pray without fear during moments of difficulty, always having faith in the Lord.”
Some 10,000 copies of the book, commemorating the extraordinary Urbi et Orbi two years ago, were distributed to the pilgrims in the piazza.
The pope had held a holy hour of Eucharistic adoration followed by an Urbi et Orbi blessing before an empty and rain-covered St. Peter’s Square March 27, 2020.
The holy hour included a reading from the Gospel and a meditation by Pope Francis, who spoke about faith and trust in God during a time when people fear for their lives, as did the disciples when their boat was caught in a violent storm.
“We have an anchor: by his cross we have been saved. We have a rudder: by his cross we have been redeemed. We have a hope: by his cross we have been healed and embraced so that nothing and no one can separate us from his redeeming love,” Francis said in 2020.
Embracing Christ’s cross, he said, “means finding the courage to embrace all the hardships of the present time.”
“Embracing the Lord in order to embrace hope: that is the strength of faith, which frees us from fear and gives us hope,” the pope stated.
Present during the holy hour was a miraculous crucifix which the pope visited had visited earlier in March 2020 to pray for an end to the pandemic.
The crucifix, which usually hangs in San Marcello al Corso, was venerated as miraculous by Romans after it was the only religious image to survive unscathed from a fire that completely gutted the church on May 23, 1519.
An icon of Mary as Salus Populi Romani was also brought to the square for veneration during the prayer.
At the conclusion of the prayer, Pope Francis gave an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing, and gave benediction with the Blessed Sacrament while the bells of the basilica rang.
In his meditation, Pope Francis entrusted everyone to the Lord through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “from this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world.”
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Vatican City, Nov 11, 2023 / 07:05 am (CNA).
The Vatican announced Saturday that Pope Francis has relieved Bishop Joseph Strickland from his duties in the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, and appointed a… […]
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 05:15 am (CNA).
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus voluntarily took on the pain and abandonment of his Passion and Crucifixion so that he could be with us in whatever sorrow or difficulty we might be experiencing.
Jesus “experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever,” the pope said during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 2.
“He did this for me, for you,” he said, “because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of ‘whys’ without answer, there can still be some hope…”
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass one day after being discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The pope was admitted to the hospital for three days beginning March 29 for treatment for a bronchitis infection, the Vatican said.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
In his homily, Francis spoke in a soft voice as he emphasized that whatever situation of abandonment we find ourselves in, Jesus is at our side.
The pope also said that we will find Jesus in those who are abandoned, recalling the death in November last year of a homeless man from Germany, who was found under the colonnade of St. Peter‘s Square.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Jesus “wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude,” he said. “Today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems.”
Pope Francis said these people are “Christs” for us: “People who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves,” such as the unborn, the isolated elderly, the forgotten sick, the abandoned disabled, and the lonely young.
“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned,” he said.
Pope Francis entered St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile April 2. He was driven to the central obelisk for the blessing of the palms and the proclamation of a reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the singing of Psalm 23.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why…?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
Vatican City, Feb 8, 2019 / 11:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In mid-nineteenth century Algeria, a French bishop sought to share the Gospel among the local Africans living in his diocese by forming a community that adopted the traditional dress in Algiers — a white cassock with a red fez.
One hundred and fifty years later, the Missionaries of Africa, commonly called the “White Fathers” for their distinctive attire, have grown to have more than 1,500 vocations in 22 African countries — 95 percent of which come from Africa.
Pope Francis welcomed members of the Missionaries of Africa and Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa to the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace Friday, and encouraged them to continue their mission on their 150th anniversary of their community’s founding.
“It is always for Him, with Him and in Him that the mission is lived. Therefore, I encourage you to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, so as never to forget that the true missionary is above all a disciple,” Pope Francis told the missionaries Feb. 8.
Founded by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie of Algiers in 1868, the White Fathers went on to evangelize in sub-Saharan Africa. Their priests notably brought Catholicism to Uganda, catechizing and baptizing St. Charles Lwanga and his 22 companion martyrs in the 1880s.
Today the White Fathers work to provide clean for orphanages in Tanzania, education for women in Burkina Faso, mental trauma aid for refugees in Burundi, and healing for victims of human trafficking in Kenya. They continue to be known for their dialogue with Muslim communities in Africa.
Pope Francis thanked the White Fathers and Sisters “in particular for the work you have already done in favor of dialogue with Islam, with our Muslim sisters and brothers.”
“May the Spirit make you builders of bridges among men. Where the Lord has sent you, may you help to grow a culture of encounter, be at the service of a dialogue that, while respecting differences, can draw wealth from the diversity of others,” he said.
The pope commented on the community founder’s zeal for abolishing slavery.
Called the “the apostle of the slaves of all Africa,” Cardinal Lavigerie was an outspoken opponent of the European slave trade in the 19th century. He traveled around Europe campaigning against the practice of slavery in Africa and elsewhere.
Today the White Fathers continue to fight slavery in the form of human trafficking with the establishment of the “Human Trafficking Rescue Center” in Ngong, Kenya.
“In the wake of Cardinal Lavigerie, you are called to sow hope, fighting against all today’s forms of slavery; making you close of the little ones and the poor, of those who wait, in the peripheries of our society, to be recognized in their dignity, to be welcomed, protected, raised, accompanied, promoted and integrated,” Pope Francis said.
“With this hope, I entrust you to the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Africa,” he added.
Well said, Lucy. The pope and bishops abandoning the faithful with the Mass and the Eucharist can only be called what it was: a sin, and one without parallel in the entire 2,000-year history of the Church that has been replete with deadly worldwide plagues. How many souls were condemned to Hell because they were deprived of the graces of Confession, Extreme Unction, and Viaticum? God is not mocked. He knows.
Paul, we pray for the dead, remember them at Mass and entrust them to God’s merciful love.
The current dangers are apathy toward the sacraments or bitterness toward those who have treated us unjustly. Although the injustice is real, don’t let bitterness give Satan an opening to your soul. Even good bishops made mistakes, as we all do. We need to pray for them!
I do hope they see the error in separating us from the sacraments and are resolved not to repeat it…
I pray that the pope and bishops will never again leave the faithful without the Mass and the Eucharist as they did in March 2020.
Well said, Lucy. The pope and bishops abandoning the faithful with the Mass and the Eucharist can only be called what it was: a sin, and one without parallel in the entire 2,000-year history of the Church that has been replete with deadly worldwide plagues. How many souls were condemned to Hell because they were deprived of the graces of Confession, Extreme Unction, and Viaticum? God is not mocked. He knows.
Paul, we pray for the dead, remember them at Mass and entrust them to God’s merciful love.
The current dangers are apathy toward the sacraments or bitterness toward those who have treated us unjustly. Although the injustice is real, don’t let bitterness give Satan an opening to your soul. Even good bishops made mistakes, as we all do. We need to pray for them!
I do hope they see the error in separating us from the sacraments and are resolved not to repeat it…