Waiters bring lunch to Pope Francis and those seated at his table on the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. The lunch was offered by Hilton Hotels and organized by the Vatican’s charity office and the Sant’Egidio community. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 20, 2023 / 11:11 am (CNA).
Pope Francis had lunch with approximately 1,200 poor, refugees, and homeless from around Rome on Sunday to mark the Catholic Church’s seventh observance of the World Day of the Poor.
Pope Francis had lunch with around 1,200 of Rome’s poor and economically disadvantaged for the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. The lunch was served in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall and preceded by the Angelus and a special Mass. Credit: Vatican Media.
The lunch, which was offered by Hilton Hotels, included spinach and ricotta cheese-stuffed cannelloni, meatballs with tomato sauce, and a cauliflower purée. The dessert was tiramisu and small pastries.
Waiters bring lunch to Pope Francis and those seated at his table on the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. The lunch was offered by Hilton Hotels and organized by the Vatican’s charity office and the Sant’Egidio community. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA.
The lunch was organized by the Vatican’s charity office and the Catholic Sant’Egidio community.
Before the meal, Pope Francis led the weekly Sunday Angelus from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
Pope Francis exchanges a look with someone seated at his table during a Vatican lunch with poor and economically disadvantaged people for the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media.
He also celebrated a Mass for the poor in St. Peter’s Basilica, in which he called poverty “a scandal.”
“When the Lord returns, he will settle accounts with us and — in the words of St. Ambrose — he will say to us: ‘Why did you allow so many of the poor to die of hunger when you possessed gold to buy food for them? Why were so many slaves sold and mistreated by the enemy, without anyone making an effort to ransom them?’ (De Officiis: PL 16, 148-149).”
Pope Francis receives the offertory gifts during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark the Church’s seventh World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. Among those who brought the gifts to Pope Francis were two people with blindness. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA.
“Let us think, then,” the pope said in his homily, “of all those material, cultural, and spiritual forms of poverty that exist in our world, of the great suffering present in our cities, of the forgotten poor whose cry of pain goes unheard in the generalized indifference of a bustling and distracted society.”
Pope Francis established the World Day of the Poor in 2016 at the end of the Church’s Jubilee Year of Mercy. The day is celebrated each year on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, a week before the feast of Christ the King.
Pope Francis gives his Angelus address on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023 / Vatican Media
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Pope Francis opens the Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica to begin the Year of Mercy, Dec. 8, 2015. / L’Osservatore Romano.
Vatican City, May 18, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
As Rome and the Vatican prepare for an influx of millions of people for a special year focused on hope, one experienced jubilee attendee is offering her advice for a fruitful pilgrimage.
“Watching people from all over the world praying… it’s an experience of the universal Church. For me, it reinforces my faith.”
The Vatican and the city of Rome are expecting an estimated 35 million people to flock to the Eternal City for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope — the first ordinary jubilee since the Great Jubilee of 2000.
A jubilee is a special holy year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. It typically takes place once every 25 years, though the pope can call for extraordinary jubilee years more often, such as in the case of the 2016 Year of Mercy or the 2013 Year of Faith.
A central part of any jubilee are the Holy Doors. These doors, found at St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome’s other major basilicas, are sealed from the inside and only opened during a jubilee year. In 2016, Catholic dioceses also had their own Holy Doors.
The opening of the Holy Door symbolizes the offering of an “extraordinary path” toward salvation for Catholics during a jubilee. Pilgrims who walk through a Holy Door can receive a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions.
Jubilees have biblical roots, as the Mosaic era established jubilee years to be held every 50 years for the freeing of slaves and forgiveness of debts as manifestations of God’s mercy. The practice was reestablished by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300.
Jubilees are planned years in advance, with the 2025 Year of Hope being no exception. The theme was announced in January 2022. Now, the city of Rome is preparing to launch a number of infrastructure projects to make the experience better for pilgrims.
The Vatican said an estimated 20.4 million people attended Year of Mercy events at the Vatican over the course of 2016.
Lewis, who participated in the Jubilees of 1983, 1987, 2000, and 2016, noted that if people can plan their visit in nonpeak times it could be helpful but to be prepared for throngs regardless.
“If they can choose ‘the road less traveled’ that will probably augment their appreciation,” she said, noting that the busiest times will probably be the summer, holidays, and the opening and closing of the Holy Door.
“Be prepared for crowds. Bring patience along with your comfiest walking shoes,” Lewis added.
For the 2025 Jubilee, Rome has allocated approximately $2.5 billion to go into 87 public works projects, though this may increase to $4.3 billion.
The city is planning to improve its public transport and public bathroom facilities, repave roads, build underground parking and pedestrian underpassages, and clean up the area around the central Termini train station.
For the Jubilee Year in 2000, Rome built a large parking garage for tour buses under the nearby Janiculum Hill. Lewis said they also worked hard to make the ancient city a little bit more accessible for people in wheelchairs by adding sidewalk ramps and ramps at church entrances.
“The Vatican does a lot of work with the city — anything that can make the trip easier for a pilgrim,” she said. The Vatican and Rome “want to help make the trip enjoyable.”
Sometime early next year the pope will publish the official bull declaring the Jubilee and establishing the date for the opening of the Holy Door, which will likely be in December 2024.
Registrations for the Jubilee will open in September, the Vatican said.
Lewis said much of the practical tips she would offer individuals or families hoping to come to Rome for the Jubilee would be similar to the typical advice for any tourist to the Eternal City.
A digital “pilgrim’s card,” created by the Vatican, will be a useful tool, facilitating access to the most important sites connected to the Holy Year. An additional “service card” will also be available for a small price and will offer additional discounts to museums, transportation, and other services.
The Vatican also recently published the full list of themed Jubilee celebrations that will happen throughout 2025, such as the jubilees of families, artists, and seminarians.
Lewis recommended that families traveling with young children make sure that part of every day there is something for them and pointed out that Rome has greenspaces, parks, and playgrounds, good for a picnic or letting kids run around.
She also said it is important to emphasize the “spiritual celebration of pilgrimage” and the “difference between a pilgrimage experience versus being a tourist.”
A Vatican flag, with the incorrect design likely drawn from Wikipedia, and the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Bohumil Petrik/ACI
St. Louis, Mo., Apr 8, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
The flag of Vatican City, with its distinctive yellow and white, is instantly recognizable to many Catholics. Likely far fewer people, though, have scrutinized the papal coat of arms on the right-hand side, instead taking the intricate design — which includes famous crossed keys — for granted.
As it turns out, there’s a good chance that the coats of arms on many of the Vatican flags you’ve seen out in the world are rendered incorrectly. And it took until 2023 for the internet to start taking notice.
Imagine you wanted to print your own version of the Vatican flag. Where would you go to find a high-quality picture of one? If you’re like most internet users, your first stop would probably not be the Vatican’s official (but admittedly outdated) vatican.va website. You’re probably going to pull up Wikipedia, one of the world’s most visited websites and an endless storehouse of free image content. Flagmakers the world over appear to have done so over the years.
Imagine many people’s surprise, then, to discover that the image of the “Flag of Vatican City” displayed on Wikipedia has been wrong several times over the years, most recently from 2017 to 2022. (It was also wrong from 2006–2007.)
What is “wrong” about these flags, you might ask? It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things but easy to spot once you know about it. The erroneous Wikipedia file includes a red disk at the bottom of the papal tiara as well as a different shade of yellow on portions of the coat of arms.
The anonymous Wikipedia editor who changed the look of the flag in 2017 wrote that he or she did so for “color correction” purposes, noting that the Vatican’s coat of arms includes the red at the bottom of the tiara. The only problem? The Vatican’s official flag design renders the coat of arms differently, with the circular bottom of the tiara in white.
The image was reverted to the correct one in 2022, but the damage was done. A casual internet search will turn up dozens of Vatican flags for sale that clearly used the incorrect image downloaded from Wikipedia. The incorrect flag has even made its way into emojis. (This whole situation gained attention last month after a Reddit user made a post about it.)
An inexpensive Vatican flag available for sale on Amazon that makes use of the incorrect Wikipedia flag design. Amazon/Screenshot
Father William Becker, pastor at St. Columbanus Parish in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, read the Reddit post with interest and amusement. Becker, a self-described “flag guy,” has studied the Vatican flag for years and even wrote an entire book about it. He has fond memories of raising the yellow and white colors over his alma mater, the North American College in Rome.
Becker told CNA that the saga of the Vatican flag on Wikipedia demonstrates a need for the Vatican to step in and clarify exactly what its flag should look like, especially considering the fact that Catholic churches all over the world display the Vatican flag.
It was precisely this lack of clarity on the official design of the Vatican flag that led Becker to create a website detailing, as best as he could, the correct design for the flag.
“Cultural communities in general have turned to flags in a stunning way,” Becker commented, citing in part a proliferation of cheaply made, mass-produced flags. And, anecdotally, there seems to be an ever-increasing interest in the Vatican flag as a way for Catholics to claim an identity, whether by flying a flag at home, waving it at a papal event, or by putting one in their social media profile picture.
The Vatican flag. Bohumil Petrik/CNA
Perhaps surprisingly, the Vatican flag is less than 100 years old, as is Vatican City itself. For more than a millennium before 1870, the pope ruled over the Papal States, large regions mainly within present-day Italy. After the Vatican lost control of the Papal States, it found itself a tiny island surrounded by an acrimonious Italy. It took nearly 60 years until the ratification of the Lateran Accords of 1929 ushered in harmony between the Vatican and Italy, and the creation of the world’s smallest sovereign country.
In the days of the Papal States, many different flags were used, but the yellow and white color scheme was a common feature. Becker said the modern design was first used by the merchant fleet in the Papal States from 1825 to 1870. In 1929, that design was chosen as the new flag of Vatican City, the sovereign country.
“It took a while in 1929 to get some flags made. The techniques of mass production weren’t available yet, and so it would have been a matter of sewing up some flags and fitting out buildings with flag staffs,” Becker noted, saying that during this time and for years afterward there was quite a bit of variation between the Vatican flags people flew, perhaps even more so than today.
“That’s kind of common with other countries too, especially those that don’t really take pains to standardize their design. [Nowadays] a flagmaker is likely to go to a source like Wikipedia, and it may vary in its accuracy,” Becker told CNA.
The same flag chosen in 1929 was reconfirmed in a revised Vatican constitution, issued by Pope John Paul II in 2000. The original Vatican flag was actually square, as indeed the official version is today. Since roughly the 1960s, though, buildings began to fly oblong state flags that followed Italy’s flag proportions, probably because most Vatican flags at the time were mass-produced there.
The flag has special significance beyond the walls of Vatican City as a marker for the Vatican’s extraterritorial properties, of which there are more than a dozen. These properties, which include major basilicas such as St. Paul Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major, are marked as the Vatican’s through their flying of the papal flag.
Becker said he hopes his website will serve as a helpful resource for anyone looking for the exact Vatican flag design, at least until the Vatican issues some kind of clarification on what exactly the flag should look like.
“The papal flag is interesting because on the one hand, the Vatican is such a small state, but the papal flag is seen all over the world. Anywhere there’s a Catholic church, you might be likely to run into a papal flag,” he said.
“It would be nice if somebody at the Holy See could, through their website or wherever, make some design specifications more available … design specifications that manufacturers could rely on a bit more.”
Pope Francis meets with Cesar Landa, Peru’s foreign minister, at the Vatican, Oct. 17, 2022. / Vatican Media
Denver Newsroom, Oct 19, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
The Vatican on Monday returned three pre-Columbian mummies to Peru, which had been loaned for the 1925 Universal Vatican Exposition and have since been kept in its Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum.
The repatriation of the remains was made official through the signing of an agreement Oct. 17 by the president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, Cardinal Fernando Vergéz, and the minister of foreign affairs of Peru, César Landa.
“Thanks to the good disposition of the Vatican and Pope Francis, it has been possible to carry out the return, as is appropriate. I came to sign that document. In the coming weeks they will arrive in Lima,” the Peruvian foreign minister told the local press.
According to Vatican News, the Vatican Museums will study the skeletal remains to determine their period of origin.
The mummies were found at an altitude of 9,800 feet in the Peruvian Andes.
En la ceremonia desarrollada en las intalaciones del Museo Etnológico Vaticano, el Canciller ratificó el compromiso de nuestro país con la protección del patrimonio cultural en todas sus formas. (Fotos: Vatican Media) pic.twitter.com/loFbV9UxOG
“The feeling shared with Pope Francis is that these mummies, more than objects, are human beings. Human remains that must be buried with dignity in the place where they come from, that is, in Peru,”Landa said.
At the Vatican, the Peruvian foreign minister met with Pope Francis and then with Secretary of State of the Holy See Cardinal Pietro Parolin and with Cardinal Paul Richard Gallagher, the secretary for relations with states.
The Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum has more than 80,000 objects and works of art.
According to the museum’s website, the collection holds “thousands of prehistoric artifacts from all over the world and dating from over two million years ago, to the gifts given to the current pontiff; from evidence of the great Asian spiritual traditions, to those of the pre-Columbian and Islamic civilizations; from the work of African populations to that of the inhabitants of Oceania and Australia, and the indigenous peoples of America.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Waiters bring lunch to Pope Francis and those seated at his table on the World Day of the Poor on Nov. 19, 2023. The lunch was offered by Hilton Hotels and organized by the Vatican’s charity office and the Sant’Egidio community. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
