(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has met with a group of Italian Pentecostal pastors, telling them that unity is achieved by walking patiently together.
The seven Pentecostal pastors, led by the Pope’s friend Giovanni Traettino from the Evangelical Church of Reconciliation, had a private audience in the Casa Santa Marta on Thursday afternoon to continue the dialogue begun by the pontiff’s visit to their community in Caserta two years ago.
During the informal encounter Pastor Traettino thanked the Pope for his role “as a brother and an ally” in accelerating the dialogue between Catholics and Pentecostals.
Pope Francis replied that he “felt in his heart” the need to undertake steps towards reconciliation, citing the examples of his meeting with the Waldensian community or with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Unity, he said, is achieved step by step, through a patient and continuous journey together. Full unity, he said, will be achieved after “the Son of Man returns” but in the meantime, he stressed, Christians must pray, repent of their sins and walk together.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) As Iraqi government forces step up military efforts to take back towns in the north and west of the country held by so-called Islamic State fighters, doctors in the city of Erbil struggle to provide vital support to displaced families fleeing from the conflict.
The Humanitarian “Nineveh Relief” Organization is an independent, non-governmental organisation founded in November 2015 to provide medical services to all displaced people in the Kurdistan region, regardless of their religion and ethnicity.
Wissam Elias is one of the doctors working for the organisation which Pope Francis has also supported in a personal way by helping provide transport for medical supplies to Iraq.
Listen to Philippa HItchen’s interview with Dr Elias…..
HNRO runs two primary health care units providing different services, such as pediatric care, dental and ophthalmic services, medical tests and medicines for the internally displaced people. While other NGOs in the region provide food and others essential supplies such as shelter and blankets, only HNRO and one other Church organisation provides health care those who have lost everything.
Dr Elias says that most of those fleeing from IS are Christians from Mosul and the surrounding region but over the last few months the organisation has been receiving people from other cities in Iraq, including Tikrit and Ramadi.
He says many of them are facing health complications connected to trauma and psychological stress as a result of losing everything and not being able to find work or sufficient resources. Many of them have been there for two years now and are trying to find ways of leaving the country.
Dr Elias notes that since the start of their work, Pope Francis has been supporting the organsiation following a phone call that he made to their president Fr Benham Benoka. “He said he will never let us down”, Dr Elias says and explains how the Pope has recently signed the necessary papers to pay for deliveries of medical supplies in containers coming from an American NGO. “He kept his promise to us, so we feel blessed by this”, Dr Elias says.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Friday told bishops that division, gossip and money are weapons in the hands of the devil.
Speaking to a group of recently appointed bishops of mission countries at the end of a formation course organized by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Pope said each bishop is called to give testimony of God’s love, care and mercy with their own lives and example.
Listen to the report by Linda Bordoni :
Pointing out that bishops of mission countries come from places that are “different and distant”, each of you – Pope Francis said – has “the great privilege and responsibility of being on the front lines of evangelization”.
Inviting them never to forget that one of their foremost duties is to respond immediately to the requests and needs of their priests, the Pope warned them against the evils that can wreak damage and destroy their mission to evangelize.
He reminded them that a missionary bishop’s first duty as a pastor is to reach out to the lost sheep and to bring the joy of the gospel to those who perhaps do not know Jesus or have rejected him.
He spoke of the vocation of the episcopal ministry saying that each bishop is called give testimony of Jesus’s care and love for all men and women also through their own personal example.
And he warned of the dangers that can foil this vocation mentioning specifically the factors that – he said – become weapons in the hands of the devil bent on destroying the Church.
“The devil – he said – has two weapons: the main one is division; the other is money”.
And saying that the devil slips in through one’s pockets and wreaks havoc through ‘the tongue’, Pope Francis described the tendency to gossip as “a terroristic” one.
“He who gossips is a terrorist who throws a bomb” – because gossip, he said, destroys.
Urging those present to fight against divisions which can destroy the local Church and the universal Church, he said there are many difficult challenges to overcome, but thanks to the grace of God, thanks to prayer and thanks to penitence, it is possible.
Pope Francis concluded his address to the new missionary bishops urging them to take good care of the people of God who have been entrusted to them, to take good care of their priests, and of their seminarians. “This – he said – is your job”.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta on Friday morning. In remarks to the faithful following the readings of the day, the Holy Father focused on the nature of the work of Evangelization: it is an art and a discipline – never a vaunt and never a task to be done by rote – and the work of evangelization is never, never, “a walk in the park”.
Click below to hear our report
Drawing on the Readings of the Day for Friday, the liturgical memorial of the great priest and missionary to African slaves in the New World, St. Peter Claver, SJ, the Holy Father explained that the essence of evangelization is witness to Christ with one’s whole life.
Evangelizing is neither a vaunt, nor a rote task
Sadly, however, there are some Christians today, who live their lives of service as though they were mere functionaries – priests and lay people who boast of what they do:
“This is the boast: I am proud of myself. This reduces the Gospel to a function or even a source of pride: I go to preach the gospel and I’ve brought many people into the Church. To proselytize: that too is a source of pride. To evangelize is not to proselytize. That is, neither coast along, nor reduce the Gospel to rote work, nor to proselytize: none of these is really to evangelize. This is what Paul says here [in the 1 st Letter to the Corinthians (9:16-19, 22b-27)]: ‘For me it is not a boast. For me it is a necessity’, adding, ‘one that is laid on me.’ A Christian has an obligation, the force of which is such as to make it like a heartfelt necessity to carry the name of Jesus.”
And what, then, ought to be the “style” by which we evangelize? “That,” responded Francis with the words of St. Paul, “of becoming all things to all people.” He went on to say, “Go and share in the lives of others: accompany them on their journey of faith, that they might grow in faith along their way.”
To evangelize is to give witness, without too many words
We must put ourselves in the other’s condition: not to get in others’ way, but to be on the way with them. Pope Francis recalled an episode during lunch with young people at World Youth Day in Krakow, when a boy asked him what he should say to a close friend who was an atheist:
“It’s a good question. We all know people far from the Church: what should we tell them? I said: ‘Look, the last thing you need to do is say something! begin to do, and he will see what you are doing and ask you about it; and when he asks you, then tell him.’ To evangelize is to give this testimony: I live the way I do, because I believe in Jesus Christ; I awaken in you a curiosity, so you ask me, ‘But why are you doing these things?’ The answer: ‘Because I believe in Jesus Christ and preach Jesus Christ and not just with the Word – you must proclaim the Word – but with your life.”
This is to evangelize, he said, “and this is done free of charge,” because, “we have freely received the Gospel.” Grace, salvation, can be neither bought nor sold: it is free. “We have to give it for free.”
To proclaim Christ is to live the faith, giving free the love of God
Pope Francis then recalled the figure of St. Peter Claver: a missionary, he noted, who, “who went off to preach the Gospel.” Perhaps, wondered Pope Francis, “he thought his future would be devoted to preaching. The Lord, however, asked him to be close to those, who had been ‘discarded’ at that time: the slaves, the black people who arrived there from Africa, to be sold”:
“This man did not stroll along saying he evangelized: he did not reduce evangelism to a rote task, and even to a proselytizing; he proclaimed Jesus Christ with his actions, speaking to the slaves, living with them, living like them – and there are many like him in the Church – many people who annihilate themselves to proclaim Jesus Christ – and all of us, brothers and sisters, have an obligation to evangelize – and that does not mean a knock on the neighbor’s door to say: ‘Christ is risen!’ – it is living the faith, talking about it with meekness, with love, with no desire to win an argument (It. convincere ), but [to give it away] for free: giving away freely that, which God has given to me – that is what it means to evangelize.”
(from Vatican Radio)…