PHOTOS: Eucharistic procession winds through Vatican streets in honor of protomartyrs of Rome

Pope Francis delivers the homily at the funeral Mass for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Square on Jan. 5, 2023. / Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Jan 5, 2023 / 03:46 am (CNA).

At 9:30 a.m. this morning Pope Francis presided over the funeral Mass of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. This is the full text of his homily:

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46). These were the final words spoken by the Lord on the cross; his last breath, as it were, which summed up what had been his entire life: a ceaseless self-entrustment into the hands of his Father. His were hands of forgiveness and compassion, healing and mercy, anointing and blessing, which led him also to entrust himself into the hands of his brothers and sisters. The Lord, open to the individuals and their stories that he encountered along the way, allowed himself to be shaped by the Father’s will. He shouldered all the consequences and hardships entailed by the Gospel, even to seeing his hands pierced for love. “See my hands,” he says to Thomas (Jn 20:27), and to each of us: “See my hands.” Pierced hands that constantly reach out to us, inviting us to recognize the love that God has for us and to believe in it (cf. 1 Jn 4:16).

“Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is the invitation and the programme of life that he quietly inspires in us. Like a potter (cf. Is 29:16), he wishes to shape the heart of every pastor, until it is attuned to the heart of Christ Jesus (cf. Phil 2:5). Attuned in grateful devotion, in service to the Lord and to his people, a service born of thanksgiving for a completely gracious gift: “You belong to me… you belong to them,” the Lord whispers, “you are under the protection of my hands. You are under the protection of my heart. Stay in my hands and give me yours.” Here we see the “condescension” and closeness of God, who is ready to entrust himself to the frail hands of his disciples, so that they can feed his people and say with him: Take and eat, take and drink, for this is my body which is given up for you (cf. Lk 22:19). The total synkatabasis of God.

Attuned in prayerful devotion, a devotion silently shaped and refined amid the challenges and resistance that every pastor must face (cf. 1 Pet 1:6-7) in trusting obedience to the Lord’s command to feed his flock (cf. Jn 21:17 ). Like the Master, a shepherd bears the burden of interceding and the strain of anointing his people, especially in situations where goodness must struggle to prevail and the dignity of our brothers and sisters is threatened (cf. Heb 5:7-9). In the course of this intercession, the Lord quietly bestows the spirit of meekness that is ready to understand, accept, hope and risk, notwithstanding any misunderstandings that might result. It is the source of an unseen and elusive fruitfulness, born of his knowing the One in whom he has placed his trust (cf. 2 Tim 1:12). A trust itself born of prayer and adoration, capable of discerning what is expected of a pastor and shaping his heart and his decisions in accord with God’s good time (cf. Jn 21:18): “Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of God’s word, the nourishment of his presence.”

Attuned also in devotion sustained by the consolation of the Spirit, who always precedes the pastor in his mission. In his passionate effort to communicate the beauty and the joy of the Gospel (cf. Gaudete et Exsultate, 57). In the fruitful witness of all those who, like Mary, in so many ways stand at the foot of the cross. In the painful yet steadfast serenity that neither attacks nor coerces. In the stubborn but patient hope that the Lord will be faithful to his promise, the promise he made to our fathers and to their descendants forever (cf. Lk 1:54-55).

Holding fast to the Lord’s last words and to the witness of his entire life, we too, as an ecclesial community, want to follow in his steps and to commend our brother into the hands of the Father. May those merciful hands find his lamp alight with the oil of the Gospel that he spread and testified to for his entire life (cf. Mt 25:6-7).

At the end of his Pastoral Rule, Saint Gregory the Great urged a friend to offer him this spiritual accompaniment: “Amid the shipwreck of the present life, sustain me, I beseech you, by the plank of your prayer, that, since my own weight sinks me down, the hand of your merit will raise me up.” Here we see the awareness of a pastor who cannot carry alone what in truth he could never carry alone, and can thus commend himself to the prayers and the care of the people entrusted to him. God’s faithful people, gathered here, now accompanies and entrusts to him the life of the one who was their pastor. Like the women at the tomb, we too have come with the fragrance of gratitude and the balm of hope, in order to show him once more the love that is undying. We want to do this with the same wisdom, tenderness, and devotion that he bestowed upon us over the years. Together, we want to say: “Father, into your hands we commend his spirit.”

Benedict, faithful friend of the Bridegroom, may your joy be complete as you hear his voice, now and forever!

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Vatican City, Dec 17, 2019 / 12:56 pm (CNA).- In 2019, Pope Francis unveiled a new bronze sculpture in St. Peter’s Square, “Angels Unawares,” a depiction of migrants throughout history crammed together on a boat with the holy family.

The sculpture’s artist, Timothy Schmalz, told CNA Tuesday that a second cast of the “Angels Unawares” sculpture will be touring different cities around the U.S. before being permanently installed in a yet-to-be-disclosed location in the United States.

The 20-foot-tall bronze statue is based off of Hebrews 13:2, “Be welcoming to strangers, many have entertained angels unawares.”

“Most of the time when I sculpt, I turn on the Bible. Actually I have it on unabridged tapes read by Steven B. Stevens,” Schmalz told CNA. “Just listening to the Bible as I sculpt … turns my studio into a sort of a chapel and a very spiritual place when the sound is being filled up with Biblical texts.”

For this work, Schmalz also had refugees from Africa visit his studio in Canada to model for some of the 140 different people depicted in the sculpture. He also collected vintage photographs of people’s grandparents, who crossed the Atlantic as immigrants.

“What I wanted to do is create a sculpture that is really inclusive of all migration,” he said. “It exemplifies all historical, all cultures, all races that have ever moved throughout the world.”

“You have a Jew escaping Nazi Germany right beside a Muslim from today escaping Syria and … you have a Polish woman leaving communist Poland right beside an Irish boy escaping from the potato famine,” Schmalz said.

“They’re actually sculpted out of one big mass of clay which is to symbolize unity … in it you have Mary and Joseph being worked within this tapestry of people,” he said.

Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, is also among the faces huddled together on the sculpted boat.

Pope Francis first revealed the “Angels Unawares” sculpture in St. Peter’s Square after the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees Sept. 29, 2019.

While it is not the first statue to be added to St. Peter’s Square in 400 years as many Vatican pundits claimed — the current statues of St. Peter and St. Paul were commissioned by Pope Pius IX in the mid-19th century — the bronze sculpture is the first post-conciliar statue to be permanently added to the piazza.

“Knowing that it was meant for Saint Peter’s Square, I made sure I created 140 migrants within the piece, sort of a symbolic attachment to the 140 statues around the colonnade,” Schmalz said.

The artist said that he hopes the new piece of art in St. Peter’s Square “confirms the idea that this is a living Church, that it’s not a museum,” as Pope Francis has frequently repeated.

It is “something that has been created in the year 2019, and so it doesn’t necessarily and it should not look like a sculpture that was created in the 1600s,” he said.

It is not his first work for the Vatican – an installation of Schmalz’s “Homeless Jesus” was created for Vatican City in 2016. In November 2019, his sculpture entitled “I was naked and you clothed me” was installed in front of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington D.C.

“Angels Unawares” came about after Cardinal Michael Czerny, then a Jesuit priest, asked Schmalz to think about creating a new sculpture based on the theme of migration.

The artist sent Czerny photos of a small model of his idea, which Fr. Czerny then showed them to Pope Francis who invited Schmalz to come to Rome for further discussions.

“It was probably after six months of working on the concept that I heard that Pope Francis wanted to install it right here in Saint Peter’s Square. And so at that time I began to drop everything in my life to start working on this project,” Schmalz said. “Everyday I woke up at 4 in the morning until basically at then end of the day working obsessively on the piece.”

Schmalz recently completed a live sculpting of a nativity display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. in which visitors to the museum could watch him as he worked.

“I’m always searching for Scripture that I can bring to life, bring to sculpture, bring to art,” he told CNA.

“Within Christianity today, we need to use as many weapons as possible to get our message across because there’s a lot of competition out there for people’s attention on so many different issues,” Schmalz said.

“Christianity is an endless source of creativity for artists,” he said.

All photos credit: Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

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Nashville, Tenn., Apr 8, 2021 / 20:01 pm America/Denver (CNA). A bill on the burial of the bodies of aborted fetuses advanced through the Tennessee Senate and House earlier this week. The bill, HB 1181, […]