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During his last full day of hospitalization on June 15, 2023, Pope Francis visits the pediatric oncology ward of Gemelli Hospital, which is next to his own hospital suite. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jun 15, 2023 / 09:50 am (CNA).
Pope Francis will be discharged from the hospital on Friday morning, according to the Vatican.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said 86-year-old Pope Francis continues to make a normal recovery eight days after he underwent a three-hour surgery to repair an incisional hernia on June 7.
During his last full day of hospitalization on June 15, Pope Francis visited the pediatric oncology ward of Gemelli Hospital, which is next to his own hospital suite.
Pope Francis “touched the pain of these children who carry the suffering of the cross on their shoulders every day, together with their mothers and fathers,” Bruni said.
Francis gave everyone a rosary and a book.
During his last full day of hospitalization on June 15, 2023, Pope Francis visits the pediatric oncology ward of Gemelli Hospital, which is next to his own hospital suite. Credit: Vatican Media
During his stay in the hospital, the pope has received cards and pictures wishing him a speedy recovery from children receiving treatment for cancer.
On Wednesday night, Pope Francis had dinner with those assisting his recovery in the hospital, and on Thursday morning, he greeted and thanked the surgical team, nurses, and health care workers involved in his June 7 operation.
Pope Francis also received several guests in his hospital room, including the hospital’s chaplain, Father Nunzio Currao, and Bishop Claudio Giuliodori, the ecclesiastical assistant general at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.
He also met the director general of the hospital and representatives of the board of directors, among others.
The Vatican has canceled all of the pope’s public and private audiences until June 18.
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Pope Francis on Palm Sunday 2022 / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 10, 2022 / 03:30 am (CNA).
Here is the full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2022, which was celebrated with the public in St. Peter’s Square on April 10, 2022.O… […]
A detail of Timothy P. Schmalz’s fourth station: Jesus meets his mother. / Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 18, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Catholic artist Timothy P. Schmalz sought to find and bring to life the most important subject matter an artist could ever express.
“I wanted to create a sculpture project that would be the heart of Christianity,” the Canadian sculptor said.
He settled on Christ’s crucifixion and death.
His new creation, once finished, will be a life-size set of the 14 Stations of the Cross — scenes depicting Christ’s journey from being condemned to death to his burial — placed right next to Disney World. The faithful will be able to encounter the 12-foot tall, 11-feet wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida.
“I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney, and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” Schmalz said.
Once completed, visitors will encounter the 12-foot tall, 11-feet wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida. “It’s right in the center of a place that desperately needs a spiritual Catholic oasis,” sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz says. Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
Schmalz is not new to sculpting. The experienced artist’s work can be found worldwide, from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to Washington, D.C. He is perhaps best known for his “Homeless Jesus” sculpture and the “Angels Unaware” statue.
His new Stations of the Cross, he hopes, will serve as a tool for evangelization and conversion for the roughly 50 million people that visit Disney each year.
“It’s right in the center of a place that desperately needs a spiritual Catholic oasis,” he said, adding that bringing the Stations of the Cross to Orlando is “bringing the Gospels [to] where the people are, in a sense.”
The stations — which combine mural painting and sculpture — will offer visitors “visual doorways into a Catholic-Christian experience,” he said.
So far, he has completed the first four stations: Jesus is condemned to death, Jesus carries his cross, Jesus falls for the first time, and Jesus meets his mother.
It will take another year, he says, before all 14 are done. On his YouTube channel, Schmalz walks viewers through the process of creating each station, from sketching them on paper to sculpting them in bronze.
Each scene, made of bronze, bursts with symbolism, movement, and emotion. The foreground shows Jesus’ passion. In the background, Schmalz plans to include every single parable found in the New Testament.
“When you see Jesus in the front, you’re going to see … a raw, hardcore scene from the passion,” he said. “But in the distance, you’re going to see the parables that he taught us. So it might be in the distance, you’ll see a camel trying to get through a little hole in the wall or the eye of the needle.”
While he works in his studio located in St. Jacobs, in Ontario, Canada, he listens to an audio recording of the New Testament, he said.
“Things are pulled out and things describe themselves as I create,” he explained, comparing his role to a “passenger” or “director.”
The stations are getting funded by various donors, he said, as he works on them. As they progress from one to 14, each station will become “more and more intense.”
“The passion now has become my passion,” he said.
He hopes that viewers will feel like they are a part of the stations.
“We know there’s a lot of kids going to Walt Disney in Orlando every year,” he said, giving one example. “I’m putting a lot of children within them so they can see themselves in the scene.”
The 53-year-old artist also sees himself in them.
“It’s fascinating because you really become a part of the subject matter as you’re working on it,” he said. “It evolves and it grows as you’re working on it, and it’s almost like it tells you what to do in a sense where I don’t necessarily know exactly how the piece will end up.”
He called the project mentally, spiritually, and physically taxing. He might dedicate one entire day to creating a little corner of one of the stations, he said, and another day just focusing on the face of Jesus.
But, he added, the work is worth it. These stations allow him, as an artist, to “get to the absolute essence of Christianity” in the hope that “it will be one of the greatest tools to convert and inspire Christianity.”
“I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney, and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” says Timothy P. Schmalz, shown here in his studio looking at the fourth station. Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
“I want [people] to come back from Orlando and, sure, talk about the rides, talk about Mickey Mouse. But I want them to say that the most exciting and most interesting and most moving thing with their vacation was this Stations of the Cross project,” he said. “And if I can do that with this piece of artwork, I have succeeded.”
At a time when many people are attacking Christianity and Christian symbols, Schmalz’s response is to create new, stronger symbols. “Sculptures that are bold, sculptures that celebrate and glorify Christ, but also encourage people to walk through that doorway and see Christ in focus,” he said.
“As they try to make us invisible, we have to sharpen,” he concluded. “And me, as an artist, that is my job, to sharpen our identity with these symbols and art.”
Vatican City, May 21, 2017 / 04:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his Regina Coeli address Sunday, Pope Francis announced to pilgrims that he will be holding a June 28 consistory to create 5 new cardinals he said represent the “catholicity” of the Church.
“Brothers and sisters, I wish to announce to you that Wednesday, June 28, I will hold a consistory for the nomination of 5 new cardinals,” the Pope said May 21, adding that “their origin from different parts of the world manifests the catholicity of the Church, spread throughout the earth.”
The day after the consistory, on the June 29 Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, the new cardinals will concelebrate Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peters Basilica alongside the new metropolitan archbishops named during the previous year, who traditionally receive the pallium from the Pope on that day.
The five new cardinals appointed by Pope Francis are: Archbishop Jean Zerbo, of Bamako, Mali; Archbishop Juan José Omella of Barcelona, Spain; Bishop Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, Sweden; Bishop José Gregorio Rosa Chávez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, El Salvador and Bishop Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, Apostolic Vicar of Pakse, Laos and Apostolic Administrator of Vientiane.
Keeping true to Francis’ style, the new appointments represent not only the weight key European dioceses such as Stockholm carry, but also the Pope’s acute attention to the peripheries.
A key example of this is the appointment of a cardinal to communist Laos. In 2015 Pope Francis advanced the causes of canonization of 12 potential saints, two of whom were martyred by communist revolutionaries in Laos in 1960.
The Pathet Lao defeated the royalist forces in 1975, and Laos has been a communist state ever since. Foreign missionaries were expelled or fled that year, and now fewer than two percent of Laotians are Christian.
Also noteworthy is his appointment of San Salvador’s auxiliary bishop, marking the first time he has tapped an auxiliary as cardinal. Bishop Chávez was chosen over his Archbishop, Jose Luis Escobar Alas, for the red hat, showing that Francis, as seen in his previous appointments, is willing to skip over “cardinal sees.”
San Salvador is also the diocese Bl. Oscar Romero led before being shot during Mass in 1980. He was recognized as a martyr and beatified in 2015. Chávez is known to have been a close collaborator of Romero before the archbishop’s death.
Rumors have been going around that Romero will be canonized sometime this year, however, so far there has been no confirmation.
All of the new cardinals are under 80, and therefore eligible to vote in the next conclave.
They will join the 17 other prelates who got a red hat during Francis’ most recent consistory, held Nov. 19, 2016, to coincide with the close of the Jubilee of Mercy.
On that occasion, the Pope named 13 new cardinals of voting age, including three Americans, and five who had already passed the voting age of 80, making them ineligible to be elected Pope or to vote in the next conclave.
The Americans named by the Pope in November were Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Newark, and Bishop Kevin Farrell, prefect of the new Congregation for Laity, Family and Life.
Others of voting age include: Archbishop Mario Zenari, who is and will remain apostolic nuncio to the “beloved and martyred” Syria; Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui; Archbishop Carlos Osoro Sierra of Madrid; Archbishop Sergio da Rocha of Brazil; Archbishop Patrick D’Rozario of Dakha, Bangladesh; Archbishop Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo of Merida, Venezuela; Archbishop Joseph de Kesel of Malines Brussels; Bishop Maurice Piat of Port-Louis, Mauritius Island; Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes of Tlalnepantla, Mexico and Archbishop John Ribat of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Non-voters elevated were: Anthony Soter Fernandez, Archbishop Emeritus of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Renato Corti, Archbishop Emeritus of Novara and Sebastian Koto Khoarai, O.M.I, Bishop Emeritus of Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho.
Additionally, Francis also nominated Fr Ernest Simoni, an Albanian priest from the diocese of Shkodra, whose testimony of the persecution of the Albanian Church under the communist regime the Pope cried at during his 2014 daytrip to the country.
Love, affection, and prayers accompany the Holy Father everywhere. Francis is an inspiration to the young and the young at heart worldwide.