Benedict XVI tells Ukrainian archbishop: ‘I continue to pray for peace’

Vatican City, Jun 5, 2017 / 03:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Monday challenged the Consolata Missionaries to give a “new impetus” to their missions work, including by inculturation of the Gospel, promoting family values, and dialogue with Islam.

“It will be above all your apostolic fervour that will sustain the Christian communities entrusted to you, especially those that have been recently founded,” the Pope said June 5 to the Consolata Missionaries who were gathered at Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

“In the effort of the re-qualification of the style of missionary service, it will be necessary to favour certain significant elements, such as sensitivity to inculturation of the Gospel, and the choice of simple and poor forms of presence among the people. Special attention is due to dialogue with Islam, commitment to the promotion of the dignity of women and family values, and sensitivity to the themes of justice and peace.”

The Consolata Missionaries are a community of religious priests and sisters consecrated to God for the evangelization of peoples, especially wherever the Gospel is not yet known. The communities, founded by the Blessed Giuseppe Allamano in 1901, are holding their 13th General Chapter in Rome this month.

Pope Francis urged the Consolata Missionaries to further their charism and reignite their zeal for evangelization by how they encounter the culture and the mercy of God. He said they must follow the example of Blessed Guiseppe, whose faithfulness was identified by how he used his gifts to evangelize and his dedication to sharing the gospel to all people regardless of race or nationality.

“Let yourselves be continually challenged by the concrete realities with which you come into contact and seek to offer in appropriate ways the witness of charity that the Spirit infuses in your hearts.”

He told the community they are called “to project yourselves with renewed zeal in the work of evangelization, in view of pastoral urgencies and new forms of poverty. While I joyfully thank the Lord for the good that you are doing in the world, I would like to urge you to carry out a careful discernment on the situation of the peoples among whom you perform your evangelizing work.”

He urged them to “never tire of bringing comfort” to those whose lives “are often marked by great poverty and acute suffering”, as in much of Africa and Latin America as an example.

Applauding the fruitfulness of the Consolata Missionaries, he identified the sacrifices made by the order’s men and women, to the point of death: “May their evangelical choice, without reserve, illuminate your missionary effort and be of encouragement for you all to continue with renewed generosity on your special mission in the Church,” he said.

In order to move forward in this mission with renewed generosity, Pope Francis said the Consolata Missionaries must have an increasing awareness of God’s mercy.

“It is necessary to live communion with God with increasingly awareness of the Lord’s mercy that we receive. It is much more important to be aware of how much we are loved by God, than of how we love Him ourselves!”
We should consider first of all the “priority of the gratuitous and merciful love of God,” he said, experiencing “our commitment and our effort as a response.”

“We have a great need always to rediscover the love and mercy of the Lord to develop our familiarity with God. Consecrated persons, inasmuch as they make an effort to conform more perfectly to Christ, are most of all, familiar with God, intimate with Him, those who interact with the Lord with full freedom, and with spontaneity, but also with astonishment at the wonders He performs.”

Religious life can thus “become a journey of the progressive rediscovery of divine mercy, facilitating the imitation of the virtues of Christ and His attitudes … to then bear witness to them to all those you encounter in your pastoral service.”

Invoking the intercession of the Blessed Mother, Pope Francis ended his address with hope that their consecrated lives and the guidelines which will be developed in the General Chapters may lead to a greater encounter with Christ’s love, the source of consolation for all humanity.

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Vatican City, Apr 4, 2017 / 11:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday Pope Francis spoke about what an ‘integral human development’ looks like, saying that development must include the whole person, both physically and spiritually.

“Development does not consist in having the regulation of more and more goods, for just a material well-being,” he said April 4. “Integrating body and soul also means that no development work can really achieve its purpose if it does not respect the place where God is present to us and speaks to our hearts.”

In Christ “God and man are not divided and separated. God became man to make of human life, both personal and social, a concrete path to salvation,” he reflected.

“So the manifestation of God in Christ – including his acts of healing, liberation, and reconciliation that we are called to propose to the many injured by the roadside – shows the way and the mode of service that the Church intends to offer to the world,” he explained.

“In this sense, the very concept of the person, born and matured in Christianity, helps to pursue a fully human development.”

Pope Francis spoke April 4 in the Vatican’s Synod Hall to participants in a conference hosted by the
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The April 3-4 conference, held in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio, on the development of peoples, aimed to discuss the question: “who is man?”

“What does that mean, today and in the near future, integral development, i.e. development of every person and of the whole man?” Pope Francis asked, borrowing the words of his predecessor in Populorum Progressio.

Specifically, Francis said, in the use of the word “integrate,” we can find “a fundamental orientation for the new dicastery,” which was established Jan. 1 of this year.

One major integration that has largely been lost, he said, is that of community and the individual. Especially in the West, we have “exalted the individual until they become like an island, as if one can be happy alone,” he said.

On the other hand, there are “ideological views and political powers have crushed the person,” he said, taking away their personal liberty.

But “the self and the community are not in competition with each other,” he said. They should work together, because it is only within the context of authentic relationships that the “self is able to mature.”

“This applies even more to the family, which is the first cell of society and where we learn to live together,” he said.

The Pope said another form of integration we can improve is the solidarity between those who have too much and those who have nothing.

In considering social integration, we must remember that “everyone has a contribution to offer the whole of society,” he said, “no one is excluded from making something for the good of all. This is both a right and a duty.”

He said another essential aspect for this improved development is integration of the different systems: the economy, finance, labor, culture, family life, and religion.

“None of them can be free-standing and none of them can be excluded from a concept of integral human development,” he said, this is taking “into account that human life is like an orchestra that sounds good if the different instruments agree and follow a score shared by all.”

“The Church never tires of offering this wisdom and her work to the world, in the awareness that integral development is the way of goodness that the human family is called to tread,” the Pope concluded.

“I encourage you to pursue this action with patience and perseverance, trusting that the Lord is with us.”

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Vatican City, Dec 24, 2017 / 06:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With Christmas just a day away, Pope Francis said Mary’s humble and modest response at the announcement of Jesus’ birth reflects what our own attitude should be regarding God’s plan for our lives as we prepare for the incarnation.

In her response to the angel during the Annunciation, Mary’s attitude “perfectly corresponds to that of the Son of God when he comes into the world: he wants to become the Servant of the Lord, putting himself at the service of humanity in order to fulfill the plan of God,” the Pope said Dec. 24.

By saying “I am the handmaid of the Lord,” Mary “perfectly reflects” the words of Jesus himself, who in the Gospels tells God the Father that “I come to do your will.”

“In this way Mary is revealed as a perfect collaborator in the plan of God, and she is also revealed as a disciple of her son, and in the Magnificat she is able to proclaim that ‘God has exalted the lowly,’ because with this humble and generous response she has obtained a high joy, and even the highest glory.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his Angelus address for the fourth Sunday of Advent, which this year falls on Christmas Eve. Later this evening, at 9:30p.m. local time in Rome, he will celebrate the vigil Mass for Christmas in St. Peter’s Basilica.

In his Angelus address, the Pope pointed to the difference between the responses of the angel and Mary during the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke.

The angel’s declaration that Mary will conceive a son, that his name will be Jesus, that he will be the Messiah, and that he will have a specific mission in line with his ancestors David and Jacob, is “a long revelation, which opens unheard of perspectives,” he said, adding that after Mary’s question, the angel goes into further detail, and the revelation becomes “still more detailed and surprising.”

Mary’s response, on the other hand, “is a brief phrase, which doesn’t speak of joy, it doesn’t speak of privilege, but only of availability and service.”

Even the content of her response that “I am the handmaid of the Lord, do unto me according to your word,” is different, he said, noting that “Mary doesn’t exalt before the prospect of becoming the mother of the Messiah, but remains modest and expresses her own adhesion to the project of the Lord,” Francis said.

This contrast in their responses is important, he said, because it shows us that Mary is “truly humble and doesn’t try to show off.” Instead, Mary recognizes that “she is small before God, and she is content to be like this.”

However, at the same time Mary is also aware that the fulfillment of God’s plan depends on her response, and that she is therefore called to “adhere to it with her whole self.”

Pope Francis closed his address saying while admiring Mary for her response to the call and mission of God, we must also pray that she help each person “to welcome the plan of God in our lives with sincere humility and courageous generosity.”

After leading pilgrims in the traditional Angelus prayer, the Pope noted that the birth of the “Prince of Peace” is drawing nearer, and prayed for the gift of peace for the whole world, especially for those who “suffer most due to ongoing conflicts.”

He also prayed that everyone who has been kidnapped in these conflicts – priests, religious and lay men and women – would be set free and able to return to their homes.

Francis also prayed for the victims of a massive tropical storm that tore through the Philippine Island of Mindanao yesterday, killing at least 180 people, asking that God “welcome the souls of the deceased and comfort those who suffer due to this calamity.”

The Pope then gave a final piece of advice before Christmas, telling pilgrims to find a moment of silence to stop and pray in front of the nativity scene, and to “adore the mystery of the true Christmas, that of Jesus, who draws near to us with his love, humility and tenderness.”

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