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Five bishops who could move the youth synod

October 1, 2018 CNA Daily News 3

Vatican City, Oct 1, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- This week the Synod of Bishops begins its fifteenth ordinary general session, convoked to discuss the themes of young people, the faith, and vocational discernment. The session will take place over three wee… […]

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Pope: Be open to the good, wherever it comes from

September 30, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2018 / 08:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis advised Sunday that we be open to the good, regardless of whether it comes from someone outside our own “circle”.

The pope reflected Sept. 30 on the day’s Gospel, in which Christ taught his disciples humility and to avoid scandal. He was delivering the Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square.

When the disciples objected to someone outside their group casting out a demon, Pope Francis said they “demonstrate a closed attitude before an event that does not fit into their schemes, in this case the action, though good, of a person ‘external’ to the circle of followers.”

“Instead Jesus appears very free, fully open to the freedom of the Spirit of God, who in his action is not limited by any boundary and by any enclosure. Jesus wants to educate his disciples, even today, to this interior freedom.”

Pope Francis commended an examination of conscience in relation to this episode, saying, “the attitude of the disciples of Jesus is very human, very common, and we can find it in the Christian communities of all time, probably also in ourselves.”

“In good faith, indeed, with zeal, one would like to protect the authenticity of a certain experience, protecting the founder or the leader from false imitators,” he said. “But at the same time there is the fear of ‘competition’ – and this is bad: the fear of competition – that someone can steal new followers, and then you can not appreciate the good that others do: not good because ‘it’s not ours’, they say. It is a form of self-referentiality.”

He said this is “the root of proselytism”, and that the Church “does not grow by proselytism, it grows by attraction, that is, it grows by the testimony given to others by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Christ “calls us not to think according to the categories of ‘friend / enemy’, ‘us / them’, ‘who is inside / who is outside’, ‘mine / yours’, but to go further, to open the heart to recognize his presence and the action of God even in unusual and unpredictable areas and in people who are not part of our circle,” Pope Francis said.

“It is a matter of being more attentive to the genuineness of the good, the beautiful and the true that is accomplished, than to the name and provenance of those who do it.”

Rather than judging others, the pope said, “we must examine ourselves, and ‘cut’ without compromise everything that can scandalize the weaker people in the faith.”

Francis concluded, saying the Virgin Mary, “model of docile reception of the surprises of God, helps us to recognize the signs of the presence of the Lord in our midst, discovering him wherever he manifests himself, even in the most unthinkable and unusual situations.”

“May she teach us to love our community without jealousy and closures, always open to the vast horizon of the action of the Holy Spirit.”

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Pope Francis: Pray the rosary daily for Church’s protection from Satan

September 29, 2018 CNA Daily News 4

Vatican City, Sep 29, 2018 / 08:23 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has asked all Catholics to pray the rosary daily during the month of October, asking Mary and St. Michael the Archangel to intercede for the protection of the Church in a moment of “spiritual turbulence.”

A Sept. 29 statement from the Vatican said that Pope Francis had recently affirmed that prayer “is the weapon against the Great Accuser who ‘goes around the world seeking to accuse.’ Only prayer can defeat him.”

“The Russian mystics and the great saints of all the traditions advised, in moments of spiritual turbulence, to shelter beneath the mantle of the Holy Mother of God,” the statement added.

The pope said that recitation of the rosary would invoke Mary’s intercession, placing the Church under her “protective mantle.”

The statement also encouraged the prayer of Sub Tuum Praesidium: “We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.”

The pope did not specify the “spiritual turbulence” to which he referred, but did say that prayer could help the Church to become “more aware of the faults, the errors and the abuses committed in the present and in the past, and committed to combating without any hesitation, so that evil may not prevail.”

Pope Francis also encouraged that Catholics end the rosary with the recitation of the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, composed by Pope Leo XII: “Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
 

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