Pope Francis’ prayer for the Immaculate Conception: ‘You never stop loving your children’

Pope Francis drinks mate while in Paraguay in July 2015. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Mariana Moreno

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2024 / 16:20 pm (CNA).
“Buon pranzo e arrivederci!” (“Have a nice lunch and see you later!” ) — just hearing the way Pope … […]

Vatican City, Nov 1, 2020 / 06:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis on Sunday named Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi his special delegate to the Order of Malta, following the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

In a pontifical letter Nov. 1, Pope Francis said he had accepted the resignation of Becciu as delegate and appointed Tomasi in his place.

Tomasi, 80, will be elevated to cardinal at a consistory on Nov. 28. In 2016, he retired after 13 years as permanent observer to the United Nations Office and Specialized Agencies in Geneva.

Cardinal Becciu had been the pope’s delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta since February 2017, when he was appointed to oversee the nearly one-thousand-year-old order’s “spiritual and moral” renewal as it navigated a period of internal reform.

On Sept. 24, Pope Francis asked Becciu to resign as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights of cardinals, following reports alleging he had used millions of euros of Vatican charity funds in speculative and risky investments.

As special delagate to the Order of Malta, Tomasi will collaborate with the order’s new Grand Master, who will be chosen in an election in Rome on Nov. 7.

Tomasi’s appointment comes at a crucial time for the historic order, which has been in a slow-moving constitutional crisis since Pope Francis compelled the resignation of a previous Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing in 2017.

That decision came after Festing himself had compelled the resignation of Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager Boeselager in 2016, after it became known that an aid project of the order in Myanmar had distributed thousands of condoms. Boselager insisted that he had not known about the distribution of condoms, and that he had put a stop to it as soon as he became aware.

In 2017, Boeselager was reinstated as Grand Chancellor, and Becciu was appointed as the pope’s personal delegate to oversee the order’s reform, effectively supplanting the role of the order’s Cardinal Patron, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who remains in post only nominally.

Becciu was to work with Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, who was elected to succeed Festing, first on an interim basis and later permanently, as the order moved towards a revision of its governing code and constitution, including a revision of the roles and rights of its three levels of knights from around the world. Dalla Torre died in May.

On Nov. 7, the professed knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta will hold a Council Complete of State, a gathering of representatives from across the order’s provinces and ranks, at which they will elect a new Grand Master.

Boeselager told CNA last month that the “the papal delegate is not part of the structure of the order. He is a representative of the Holy Father, but he is not involved directly in the governance or work of the order.”

Pope Francis said in his Nov. 1 letter to Tomasi that he will “enjoy all the powers necessary to decide any questions that may arise for the implementation of the mandate entrusted to you, to receive the oath of the next Grand Master, and you will be my exclusive spokesperson for all that pertains to relations between this Apostolic See and the Order.”

An Italian, Tomasi was ordained a priest in 1965 as a member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo.

He earned a PhD in sociology from Fordham University in New York City. In the 1970s and ’80s he taught sociology in New York and co-founded the Center for Migration Studies.

In 1989, Pope John Paul II named him secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.

He later served as a Vatican diplomat, with posts as apostolic nuncio in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, before being appointed permanent observer.

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St. Peter’s Basilica / Simone Savoldi / Unsplash (CC0)

Rome Newsroom, Oct 2, 2022 / 03:00 am (CNA).

The world’s newest bishops gathered in Rome last month to learn more about what it means to be a Catholic bishop.

While the week’s presentations spanned a range of topics, three U.S. bishops who attended told CNA that synodality emerged as a key theme.

The Vatican’s annual formation course, sometimes known by the nickname “baby bishop school,” was canceled for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic — making the 2022 edition the largest yet, with approximately 330 participating bishops across two sessions.

“People kind of picture baby bishop school as nuts and bolts, like ‘how to be a bishop.’ It’s not that at all,” Bishop Erik Pohlmeier of the Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida, told CNA at the end of the course.

“It’s kind of whatever the Church is talking about at that time, bringing that to the bishops that are coming on board,” he said. “The synodal process has been … a hallmark of conversation for the last couple of years, so now as we’re new bishops … the reflections revolved around that.”

The seminar’s first session was primarily attended by bishops consecrated in 2019 and 2020, while the second session was mostly those who joined the ranks in 2021 and the first part of 2022.

Thirty-nine U.S. bishops and auxiliary bishops attended, divided between the two weeks.

Pohlmeier was the freshest U.S. bishop to join. He was ordained a bishop on July 22 — just two days after his 51st birthday and seven weeks before arriving in Rome for the Sept. 12–19 course. 

Speaking to CNA in Rome on Sept. 19, Pohlmeier said that as a new bishop, there are many things you do not know, but that’s where one’s fellow bishops come in.

“Every bishop knows other bishops,” he explained, like the bishop of the diocese where they served as a priest. “And they’re always, I mean to a person, helpful.”

Bishop Gregory Gordon, the first-ever auxiliary bishop of Las Vegas, Nevada, told CNA on Sept. 19 that the U.S. bishops’ conference also organizes meetings between bishops of the same ordination year, or “class,” as a way to build fraternity and create a network of support.

While the formal theme of this year’s seminar was how to announce the Gospel in changing times, Pohlmeier, Gordon, and Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Illinois, said the unofficial topic of the week was synodality.

What they talked about

“We’re in the midst of the synod,” Tylka, who attended the seminar Sept. 1–8, told CNA by phone from his diocese. So the course, he added, focused on questions such as: “What does it mean to be a synodal Church? What is the ministry of the bishop in relation to that?”

Care for the planet and one’s neighbor, themes important to Pope Francis’ pontificate, were also a major part of the seminar, Tylka said.

The week’s presentations also covered child protection and the sexual abuse crisis.

“That’s one of those things that I think we will take home, saying we will be very, very careful not to neglect,” Gordon said. 

Some talks, Pohlmeier noted, were directly about synodality and what it means. At the same time, those of a more practical nature, such as canon law for bishops, “would always include some comment on the synodal approach.”

“You’re going to get different articulations of what that means depending on who you talk to, but in general, my understanding is that it is more of a listening posture,” the St. Augustine bishop said.

Bishop Gordon said Pope Francis himself modeled this listening attitude in their meeting with him on the final day of formation.

In the nearly two-hour meeting, he said most of the time was spent with the pope answering the bishops’ questions. “So you finished the course, [the pope] said. You’ve heard a lot already… Now I want to hear from you.”

This was Gordon’s big takeaway from the week: “It has to go back to the Holy Father’s words to us as he was answering our own questions, you know, asking us to exercise that episcopal closeness.”

The week also included time for communal prayer, Mass, adoration, and confession. 

Bishop Tylka of Peoria said his personal opinion is that “a big part of synodality is the willingness and openness to create space for people to share their stories, to share their own encounters with Christ, to share their own experiences of how life is going.”

“So I think the role of the bishop clearly is to model that openness and that willingness to engage in dialogue,” he said.

What (not) to wear

But there is also a lighter side to being a new bishop, as Pohlmeier evidenced with an amusing scene from the end of the week.

“Here we are, brand new and so … we got instructions on what we’re supposed to wear to meet the pope,” Pohlmeier said.

He explained that bishops in the Latin Church have two main styles of a full-length garment called a cassock. The new bishops were told to meet the pope. They should wear a black cassock with red trim, a purple fascia, and a purple zucchetto. (There is also a purple cassock with red trim for special liturgical events.)

Pohlmeier said it was funny to watch the bishops get ready for Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and, afterward, the meeting with Pope Francis. Many of them were helping each other figure out where each piece of the complicated attire went — including the tall headpiece, called a mitre, which bishops wear to denote their office.

“Guys are literally opening up bags that haven’t been opened with miters from right there, from Euroclero,” Pohlmeier said, pointing over his shoulder in the direction of a clerical supply store next to St. Peter’s Square.

“You could see everybody that bought one this morning because they all matched,” he chuckled. “There were several people that were literally opening it up and pulling it out of the package and trying to get it on straight, and get things attached right, and not sure what clips go where and what’s right.”

“Those kinds of things are funny,” Pohlmeier said, “but nobody just tells you, ‘OK, buy this stuff, here’s what you need.’”

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