Vatican

Vatican City, Nov 4, 2018 / 05:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis expressed sorrow for the victims of an attack on Coptic Christians in Egypt in his Angelus address Sunday.

Islamic militants ambushed a bus carrying Coptic Christian pilgrims to a desert monastery south of Cairo on Friday, killing seven and leaving 19 injured.

“I pray for the victims, pilgrims killed just because they are Christians, and I ask Holy Mary to console their families and the whole community,” Pope Francis said Nov. 4.

The Coptic Orthodox Church held funerals on Saturday for six of the victims, who were killed while on pilgrimage to Saint Samuel the Confessor monastery in Egypt’s Minya province. The Islamic State claims to be behind Friday’s attack.

“Love for God and love for neighbor are inseparable,” Pope Francis said Sunday. “It would be an illusion to claim to love our neighbor without loving God; and it would be just as illusory to claim to love God without loving our neighbor.”

“My neighbor is the person I meet along my journey,” the pope said. I cannot “pre-select” my neighbor, he stressed, “This is not Christian.”

“Today’s Gospel invites all of us to be attentive not only towards the urgencies of the poorest brothers, but above all to be attentive to their need for fraternal closeness, for the meaning of life and tenderness,” Francis told the 20,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

“We can say that the hungry not only needs a plate of soup, but also a smile, to be heard, and even a prayer, maybe done together,” the pope continued.

Pope Francis expressed gratitude for the beatification of Blessed Mother Clelia Merloni on Saturday.

Mother Merloni was a 20th century Italian religious sister whose life was marked by both suffering and evangelical initiative.

As foundress of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Merloni was “a woman fully abandoned to God’s will, zealous in charity, patient in adversity and heroic in forgiveness,” Pope Francis said.

“Let us give thanks to God for the luminous Gospel witness of this new Blessed and let us follow her example of goodness and mercy.”

[…]

Vatican City, Nov 3, 2018 / 07:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a Mass offered for the repose of the souls of bishops and cardinals who died this year, Pope Francis prayed for “the intercession of all those who lived unassuming lives, content to prepar… […]

Vatican City, Nov 2, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Mother Clelia Merloni, a 20th-century Italian religious sister and founder of the women’s institute of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, will be beatified in Rome on Saturday.

With her beatif… […]

Vatican City, Nov 1, 2018 / 07:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- If a Christian wants to reach heaven, he or she should ask themselves if they are living for the pleasures of the world, or if they are striving after holiness with all their strength, Pope Francis… […]

Vatican City, Oct 31, 2018 / 04:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Faithful married love, in which a husband loves his wife like Christ loves the Church, is “revolutionary,” Pope Francis said Wednesday.

The pope focused his remarks at the general audience on spousal fidelity in every vocation.

“A call to love … manifests itself in fidelity,” Pope Francis said Oct. 31 in St. Peter’s Square.

“This letter of St. Paul is revolutionary to say a husband should love like Christ loves the Church,” the pope continued, in a departure from his prepared remarks. “It’s a revolution. Always on the way of love.”
 
Pope Francis’ comments came as a part of a weekly catechesis on the Ten Commandments. This Wednesday, the pope reflected on the Sixth Commandment, “Do not commit adultery.”

“Who then is the adulterer, the lustful, the unfaithful?” asked the pope. “He is an immature person, who … interprets situations based on his own well-being and satisfaction.”

“The human body is not an instrument of pleasure, but the place of our call to love, and in authentic love there is no room for lust and for its superficiality. Men and women deserve more!” he continued.

“This command is for everyone, it is a paternal Word of God addressed to every man and woman,” the pope said.

“Let us remember that the path of human maturity is the path itself of love that goes from receiving care to the ability to offer care, from receiving life to the ability to give life,” he added

The Holy Father stated twice, “every Christian vocation is spousal.”

“In the priesthood one loves God’s people with all the paternity, tenderness and strength of a husband and a father,” the pope explained.

“The Church does not need aspirants to the role of priests, but men to whom the Holy Spirit touches the heart with unconditional love for the Bride of Christ,” he said.

We start from Christ’s “fidelity, his tenderness, his generosity,” Pope Francis said, and from there “we look with faith at marriage and every vocation, and we understand the full meaning of sexuality.”

[…]

Vatican City, Oct 30, 2018 / 10:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican has invoked diplomatic immunity in refusing to deliver a French court summons to the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, in a case against a French cardinal.

The Holy See informed the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September that it would not notify Cardinal Ladaria of an order to testify before the Lyon court regarding a letter he sent while secretary of the CDF.

A Vatican court ruled that the summons was not valid, since the letter was sent in Ladaria’s capacity as a minister of Vatican City State and is protected under international law.

The Spanish cardinal was first called to testify last spring in a case against Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon and six other officials of the Archdiocese of Lyon, who are being prosecuted for allegedly failing to report accusations of abuse by a priest to the police.

The accused abuser, Fr. Bernard Preynat, was charged with having committed sexual abuse against minors from 1986 to 1991, though prosecutors dropped his case in 2016. Preynat was removed from ministry by Cardinal Barbarin in 2015.

Victims of Preynat are the plaintiffs in the trial, which is scheduled to begin in January 2019, after two postponements after a lack of response from Ladaria. The court decided last month to continue without his testimony.

In Ladaria’s letter to the Archbishop of Lyon, which was found in a police search of the archdiocesan offices, he advised Barbarin to take disciplinary action against Preynat, “while avoiding public scandal.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers want Ladaria to testify as to whether the direction to prevent scandal was intended as an injunction to avoid going to court, in which case they accuse the CDF prefect of being complicit in failing to report the allegedly abusive priest to authorities.

Cardinal Barbarin has maintained his innocence of the charges brought against him, though he acknowledges the action he took, after learning of abuse allegations in 2007, was “belated.”

[…]

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2018 / 03:37 pm (CNA).- The fifteenth ordinary general session of the Synod of Bishops closed on Saturday. After a long afternoon of voting by the synod fathers, a final document was approved, mostly addressing the topics of young… […]

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2018 / 02:32 pm (CNA).- If one’s work as a Catholic is not united to Christ Jesus, it is no longer the “mission” to which the Church is called, Pope Francis told a group of religious brothers Monday.

&ld… […]

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2018 / 12:14 pm (CNA).- Among the most debated paragraphs of the final document from the Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment were those pertaining to the concept of synodality.

Although all paragra… […]

Vatican City, Oct 28, 2018 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis closed the 2018 Synod of Bishops Oct. 27, calling the meeting’s final document the work of the Holy Spirit.

The 167 paragraph text on young people, the faith, and vocational disc… […]