Pope Francis enters the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall in a wheelchair on May 5, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis will be hospitalized for “some days” after being diagnosed with a respiratory infectio… […]
Wisconsin Family Action was attacked with two Molotov cocktails in May 2022. / YouTube/Madison.com
Boston, Mass., Mar 29, 2023 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
A Wisconsin man was arrested and charged with violating federal law in connection with the May 2022… […]
Pope Francis speaks at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2023 / 13:24 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis will be hospitalized for “some days” after being diagnosed with a respiratory infection, the Vatican said Wednesday.
“In recent days Pope Francis has complained of some difficulty breathing and this afternoon went to [Gemelli Hospital] to carry out some medical tests. The results of these tests showed a respiratory infection (a COVID-19 infection was excluded) that will require some days of opportune medical treatment in the hospital,” Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni said Wednesday evening.
“Pope Francis is touched by the many messages he received and expresses his gratitude for the closeness and prayer,” Bruni added.
Bruni had issued a brief statement earlier in the afternoon of March 29 to say the pope was at Gemelli Hospital “for some previously scheduled checkups.”
Gemelli is the same hospital where Pope Francis was hospitalized in July 2021 when he underwent surgery on his colon for diverticulitis, or inflammation of the intestinal wall.
In an interview with the Associated Press in January, Pope Francis disclosed that the diverticulitis had “returned.” At the time, the 86-year-old pontiff — who traveled to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in late January — insisted he was in relatively good condition.
The pope has also suffered since last year from a problem with his right knee, making it necessary for him to rely on a cane and a wheelchair to move around. But Francis told the AP that a fracture had healed without surgery after laser and magnet therapy.
As of Wednesday evening, the pope’s agenda for Thursday and Friday lists two meetings, one with teachers and students from the schools of the Oblate Sisters of the Child Jesus on Thursday, and the fifth Lenten sermon with the Roman Curia on Friday.
This is a developing story.
Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta. / Credit: JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 29, 2023 / 11:40 am (CNA).
A new report says that 28 Catholic priests have faced credible child sex abuse all… […]
Shia LaBeouf and Brother Alexander Rodriguez, a real Franciscan friar who makes an appearance in the film, are close friends in real life. / Br. Alexander Rodriguez
Boston, Mass., Mar 29, 2023 / 10:00 am (CNA).
A new movie about St. Padre Pio, … […]
Father Hans Zollner. / Rebecski CC 4.0
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2023 / 09:30 am (CNA).
Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, an internationally-renowned expert in protecting children and vulnerable adults from clerical sex abuse, has resigned from his posi… […]
Pope Francis, seated in a wheelchair, greets a child during the pope’s general audience at the Vatican on Jan. 25, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2023 / 08:57 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has been undergoing some medical checkups at one of Rome’s most prominent hospitals since Wednesday afternoon, according to a Vatican spokesman.
Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni issued a brief statement the afternoon of March 29 to say the pope was at Gemelli Hospital “for some previously scheduled checkups.”
Gemelli is the same hospital where Pope Francis was hospitalized in July 2021 when he underwent surgery on his colon for diverticulitis, or inflammation of the intestinal wall.
In an interview with the Associated Press in January, Pope Francis disclosed that the diverticulosis had “returned.”
At the same time, however, the 86-year-old pontiff — who traveled to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in late January and early February — insisted he was in relatively good condition.
“I’m in good health. For my age, I’m normal,” he told the AP on Jan. 24.
The pope has also suffered since last year from a problem with his right knee, making it necessary for him to rely on a cane and a wheelchair to move around. But Francis told the AP that a fracture had healed without surgery after laser and magnet therapy.
Pope Francis’ General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 29, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke against a comfortable Christianity that keeps Jesus at arm’s length, rather than inviting him into the heart to change it.
“If one of us says, ‘Ah, thank you Lord, because I am a good person, I do good things, I do not commit major sins…’ this is not a good path, this is the path of self-sufficiency, it is a path that does not justify you, it makes you turn up your nose,” the pope said during his weekly public audience March 29.
He called this attitude being “an elegant Catholic, but an elegant Catholic is not a holy Catholic, he is elegant.”
“The true Catholic, the true Christian is one who receives Jesus within, which changes your heart,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square.
“This,” he continued, “is the question I ask you all today: What does Jesus mean for me? Did I let him enter my heart, or do I keep him within reach, but so that he does not really enter within? Have I let myself be changed by him? Or is Jesus just an idea, a theology that goes ahead…”
At his Wednesday general audience, the pope continued his reflections on evangelization and apostolic zeal with a catechesis centered on St. Paul’s transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a great evangelist.
St. Paul “was a man who was zealous about the law of Moses for Judaism, and after his conversion, this zeal continued, but to proclaim, to preach Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis explained. “Paul loved Jesus. Saul — Paul’s first name — was already zealous, but Christ converts his zeal.”
To better explain zeal, the pope referenced St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that passion, from a moral perspective, is neither good nor bad: it depends on if it is used virtuously or sinfully.
“In Paul’s case, what changed him is not a simple idea or a conviction: it was the encounter, this word, it was the encounter with the risen Lord — do not forget this, it is the encounter with the Lord that changes a life — it was the encounter with the risen Lord that transformed his entire being,” the pope said.
“Paul’s humanity,” he added, “his passion for God and his glory was not annihilated, but transformed, ‘converted’ by the Holy Spirit.”
The pope noted that part of the change that takes place in Paul is his conversion from feeling righteous before God, and thus authorized to persecute, to arrest, and even to kill — to someone who, enlightened by God, recognizes himself to be a “blasphemer and persecutor.”
After recognizing what he had done, Paul becomes truly capable of loving, Francis said.
“If Jesus did not enter your life, it did not change,” he said. “You cannot be Christian only from the outside. No, Jesus must enter and this changes you, and this happened to Paul. It is finding Jesus, and this is why Paul said that Christ’s love drives us, it is what takes you forward.”
“This is zeal, when one finds Jesus and feels the fire, like Paul, and must preach Jesus, must talk about Jesus, must help people, must do good things,” he explained. “When one finds the idea of Jesus, he or she remains an ideologue of Christianity, and this does not justify, only Jesus justifies us. May the Lord help us find Jesus, encounter Jesus, and may this Jesus change our life from within and help us to help others.”
null / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2023 / 05:27 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has expressed his sorrow over a shooting at a private Presbyterian Christian school in Nashville.A person took the lives of three 9-year-old students and three … […]
A Falsely Happy Story – “Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited, closes a body of work that’s occupied a lot of my attention for the past fifteen years.” Giving New Heart to the Wounded […]
© Catholic World Report