Vatican City, Aug 1, 2020 / 03:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis appointed an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State as his new personal secretary Saturday.
The Holy See press office said Aug. 1 that the 41-year-old Fr. Fabio Salerno would succeed Msgr. Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, who had served in the role since April 2014.
Salerno currently works in the Secretariat of State’s Section for Relations with States, also known as the Second Section. In the new role he will become one of the pope’s closest collaborators.
Gaid, a Coptic Catholic priest born in the Egyptian capital Cairo, was the first Eastern Catholic to hold the position. The 45-year-old will now focus on his work with the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, a body formed after the pope and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar signed the Document on Human Fraternity in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in February 2019.
Salerno was born in Catanzaro, the capital of Italy’s Calabria region, on April 25, 1979. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Catanzaro-Squillace on March 19, 2011.
He acquired a doctorate in both civil and church law at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. Following studies at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, he served as secretary of the apostolic nunciature in Indonesia and of the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.
In his new role, Salerno will work alongside Fr. Gonzalo Aemilius, a Uruguayan who formerly worked with street children. The pope named Aemilius as his personal secretary in January, replacing the Argentine Mgsr. Fabián Pedacchio, who occupied the post from 2013 to 2019, when he returned to his position at the Congregation of Bishops.
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Pope Francis at the general audience at St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 18, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Oct 18, 2023 / 09:57 am (CNA).
Pope Francis drew upon the example of St. Charles de Foucauld during his general audience Wednesday in his ongoing catechesis on apostolic zeal to stress the importance of centering our lives on Jesus.
At the end of his remarks at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 18, the pope called for peace in the Middle East and announced that Oct. 27 has been designated as a day of prayer and fasting.
Before the assembled faithful, the pope said the “first step” for evangelization and conversion is putting “Jesus at the center of one’s heart.”
The pope, however, admonished that “we risk talking about ourselves, our group, a morality, or, even worse, a set of rules, but not about Jesus, his love, his mercy.”
He added, in unscripted remarks: “I see this in some new movements that are arising: They talk about their vision of humanity, they talk about their spirituality and they feel they are on a new path… But why don’t you talk about Jesus? They talk about many things, about organization, about spiritual paths, but they don’t know how to talk about Jesus.”
Pope Francis presides over his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Oct. 18, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
Epitomizing this love for the Eucharist was St. Charles de Foucauld, who was canonized by Pope Francis in 2022. Born in 1858, he dedicated his life to missionary work in the Sahara, living and working among the Tuareg people (a subgroup of Berber people).
After serving in the French cavalry, he went on to become a Trappist, going to serve the poor in Syria, an experience that had a profound impact on him and helped define his understanding of poverty. He later discerned out of the Trappists and went to Palestine, where he went to live close to the Poor Clares.
“It is in Nazareth that he realizes he must be formed in the school of Christ. He experiences an intense relationship with him, spends long hours reading the Gospels, and feels like his little brother. And as he gets to know Jesus, the desire to make Jesus known arises in him,” the pope said.
It was this time in Palestine that provided him with the inspiration to write his prolific works, including “Letters from the Desert,” “Hope in the Gospels,” and “Meditations of a Hermit.” These writings became the essence of his spiritual legacy, inspiring the formation of numerous future religious congregations. He was assassinated in 1916 at his hermitage in Tamanghasset in southern Algeria after being kidnapped by an armed tribal group associated with the Senussi Bedouins.
Pope Francis closed his 2020 encyclical on fraternity and social action Fratelli Tutti with a reflection on the saint, writing: “Blessed Charles directed his ideal of total surrender to God towards an identification with the poor, abandoned in the depths of the African desert. In that setting, he expressed his desire to feel himself a brother to every human being, and asked a friend to ‘pray to God that I truly be the brother of all.’ He wanted to be, in the end, ‘the universal brother.’ Yet only by identifying with the least did he come at last to be the brother of all. May God inspire that dream in each one of us.”
Pope Francis greets pilgrims at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Oct. 18, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis, in today’s catechism, noted that while de Foucauld lived “a youth far from God” he converted “by accepting the grace of God’s forgiveness in confession.” He was someone who “drawing upon his intense experience of God, made a journey of transformation towards feeling a brother to all,” the pope said, quoting Fratelli Tutti.
In contrast to the life of de Foucauld, the pope lamented the loss of Eucharistic devotion today. “I am convinced that we have lost the sense of adoration; we must take it up again, starting with us consecrated people, the bishops, the priests, the nuns, and all the consecrated people. ‘Wasting’ time in front of the tabernacle, to take up again the sense of adoration,” the pope said in an unscripted remark.
The pope presented the life of de Foucauld as an antidote to this tendency, saying that we “by kneeling and welcoming the action of the Spirit, who always inspires new ways to engage, meet, listen and dialogue, always in collaboration and trust, always in communion with the Church and pastors.”
“Every Christian is an apostle,” the pope said, quoting de Foucauld. In this way, he continued, “Charles foreshadows the times of Vatican Council II. He intuits the importance of the laity and understands that the proclamation of the Gospel is up to the entire people of God.”
The Holy Father concluded Wednesday’s general audience by renewing his appeal for peace in the Holy Land. “My thoughts turn to Palestine and Israel. Victims are increasing and the situation in Gaza is desperate. Please do everything possible to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe,” the pope pleaded.
He added: “War does not solve any problem… It increases hatred and multiplies revenge. War erases the future; it erases the future.”
In calling for a day of prayer and fasting , the pope invited members of other faiths to join an interfaith prayer vigil for peace on Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in St. Peter’s Square.
Vatican City, Jun 12, 2017 / 04:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In order to foster collegiality, Pope Francis has added to the usual schedule of bishops’ ad limina visit to Rome: one additional meeting with the heads of the Vatican dicasteries.
The ad limina apostolorum – “to the tomb of the apostles” – visits are the meetings that groups of bishops from each ecclesiastical region in the world have with the Pope every five years. In such occasions they also visit and celebrate Mass at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Before meeting the Pope, the bishops from a particular country or region visit all the dicasteries Vatican dicasteries and can schedule personal meetings with the head of each dicastery to discuss particular matters.
During such visits, bishops’ conferences prepare exhaustive reports for each dicastery, describing the status of the Church in the country or region.
Before Pope Francis, the meeting of the bishops with the Pope included an exchange of speeches: the president of the bishops’ conference delivered a speech to describe the state of the region, and the Pope delivered a speech in his turn which provided pastoral recommendations and priorities.
After the exchange of speeches, the Pope held a short conversation with each bishop individually.
But since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis chose the format of an open conversation with the whole group of bishops. All of them are allowed to ask questions, and the Pope responds off the cuff.
The Pope also prepared a formal speech, a copy of which was provided to each bishop.
With time, even the delivery of the papal speech fell into disuse. Now, no official papal text is prepared and therefore the press only knows of the matters discussed during the visit from the bishops who attended it.
Pope Francis has made an additional, recent change: the bishops have now a meeting presided over by Pope Francis with many heads of the Vatican dicasteries.
Not all the heads of Vatican dicasteries take part in the meeting, but only those whose dicasteries are in some way related to pastoral care or some of the main issues at stake in the ecclesiastical region visiting Rome.
Bishop Thomas Dowd, auxiliary bishop of Montreal, told CNA that “for the first time with our group, the Pope met twice with the bishops: before in a meeting with several heads of the Vatican dicasteries, and after for the usual exchange of opinions, which lasted about two hours.”
Bishop Dowd described it as a working meeting which included representatives from the Secretariat of State, the Congregation for Clergy, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, and the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
Thanks to provided translation, the Pope, prefect, and bishops of Quebec had “an open exchange of opinions about the Church in the region and its needs. We got advice from the Curia. We gave our input to them, the Curia officials gave their input to us.”
Bishop Dowd added that “the Pope listened to us, and we had coffee together at the end.”
The auxiliary bishop of Montreal recounted: “The Pope basically said: ‘We want to hear from you about what is your situation. Tell us your experience’. The various dicasteries had prepared remarks based on the reports that we sent in advance to the ad limina visit.”
He added that, as the discussion went on, “some of the dicasteries read the texts they prepared, but most of them did not read the texts, but reacted to the experiences raised during the open discussion.”
During the meeting, Pope Francis listened attentively to all the discussions. He spoke at the end, to summarize the discussions and provide an overall reaction.
The bishops of Peru followed next in May, with the same new extra meeting.
Archbishop José Antonio Eguren Anselmi of Piura told CNA that the double meeting, first with the heads of the dicasteries and then only with the bishops “gives great attention to the local Churches, since we have the possibility to spend at least four hours with the Pope.”
Vatican City, Mar 9, 2021 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic News Agency offers its readers for free in digital book format (ebook) all the homilies, prayers and speeches of Pope Francis on his historic trip to Iraq.The Holy Father was in Iraq from March 5 to… […]
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The Holy Father is serving humanity through intense prayer, constructive deeds, creative ideas, and empowering words. May he be blessed with good health and fine collaborators.
The Holy Father is serving humanity through intense prayer, constructive deeds, creative ideas, and empowering words. May he be blessed with good health and fine collaborators.