(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Sunday announced a consistory for the creation of new Cardinals. He made the announcement at the end of the Regina Caeli in St Peter’s Square.
The new Cardinals come from Mali, Spain, Sweden, Laos and El Salvador. The Consistory will take place on June 28th.
Find below the list of new Cardinal designates:
Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, Mali.
Archbishop Juan José Omella of Barcelona, Spain.
Bishop Anders Arborelius, Bishop of Stockholm, Sweden.
Archbishop Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun Apostolic Vicar of Paksé, Laos.
Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez – Auxillary Bishop in the Archdiocese of San Salvador, El Salvador.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday highlighted the serious problem of unemployment. His words came during a meeting with participants attending an International Conference of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation which has been taking place in Rome this week.
Listen to our report:
The Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation is a lay-led non-profit-organisation whose purpose it is to promote Catholic Social Doctrine. And is was on Saturday that Pope Francis met with those attending an international conference in the Vatican where he highlighted the fight against poverty and what he called the “grave problem” of unemployment.
Addressing those gathered, the Holy Father commended the foundation for their 2017 statement which notes “that the fight against poverty demands a better understanding of the reality of poverty as a human and not merely an economic phenomenon.
He also highlighted that “promoting integral human development demands dialogue and engagement with people’s needs and aspirations, listening to the poor and their daily experience of “multidimensional, overlapping deprivations”, and devising specific responses to concrete situations.
The Pope said that what was needed was community and business enterprises where the poor “are the principal actors and beneficiaries.”
Another issue which was highlighted by Pope Francis was that of unemployment noting that the conference had paid particular attention to the critical issue of job creation in the context of the ongoing new technological revolution.
How can we not be concerned, the Pope said, “about the grave problem of unemployment among the young and among adults that have not the means to “upgrade” themselves? It is a problem, he added, “that has reached truly dramatic proportions in both developed and developing countries, and needs to be addressed, not least out of a sense of intergenerational justice and responsibility for the future.”
The Holy Father also recalled that the effects of unemployment on families was a concern expressed by the recent Synod assemblies on the family, which noted, “that uncertainty about work situations often contributes to family pressures and problems, and has an effect on the family’s ability to participate fruitfully in the life of society.”
Concluding his discourse the Pope encouraged the Foundation to bring the light of the Gospel and “the richness of the Church’s social teaching to these pressing issues by contributing to informed discussion, dialogue and research, but also by committing themselves for that change of attitudes, opinions and lifestyles which is essential for building a world of greater justice, freedom and harmony.”
Please find the English language translation of the Pope’s discourse
Address of His Holiness Pope Francis
to the “Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice” Foundation
20 May 2017
Dear Friends,
I offer you a warm welcome on the occasion of the International Conference of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation. I thank your President, Mr Domingo Sugranyes Bickel, for his kind greeting in your name. I express my appreciation for your efforts to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, and business, to meet the ethical challenges posed by the imposition of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the throwaway culture and lifestyles that ignore the poor and despise the weak (cf. Enc. Laudato Si’, 16).
Many people are struggling to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change (cf. ibid, 13). Your Foundation is also making a valuable contribution precisely by approaching business and finances both in the light of the rich heritage of the Church’s social doctrine and the intelligent search for “constructive alternatives”. Drawing on your own expertise and experience, and in cooperation with other people of good will, you are committed to developing models of economic growth centred on the dignity, freedom and creativity that are the hallmark of the human person.
Your Foundation’s 2017 Statement rightly notes that the fight against poverty demands a better understanding of the reality of poverty as a human and not merely economic phenomenon. Promoting integral human development demands dialogue and engagement with people’s needs and aspirations, listening to the poor and their daily experience of “multidimensional, overlapping deprivations”, and devising specific responses to concrete situations. This calls for the creation, within communities and between communities and business, of mediating structures capable of bringing people and resources together, initiating processes in which the poor are the principal actors and beneficiaries. Such a person-based approach to economic activity will encourage initiative and creativity, the entrepreneurial spirit and communities of labour and enterprise, and thus favour social inclusion and the growth of a culture of effective solidarity.
In these days, you have paid particular attention to the critical issue of job creation in the context of the ongoing new technological revolution. How can we not be concerned about the grave problem of unemployment among the young and among adults that have not the means to “upgrade” themselves? It is a problem that has reached truly dramatic proportions in both developed and developing countries, and needs to be addressed, not least out of a sense of intergenerational justice and responsibility for the future. In a similar way, efforts to address the complex of issues associated with the growth of new technologies, the transformation of markets and the legitimate aspirations of the workforce must take into account not only individuals but families as well. This, as you know, was a concern expressed by the recent Synod assemblies on the family, which noted that uncertainty about work situations often contributes to family pressures and problems, and has an effect on the family’s ability to participate fruitfully in the life of society (cf. Ap. Exhort. postsin. Amoris Laetitia, 44).
Dear friends, I encourage your efforts to bring the light of the Gospel and the richness of the Church’s social teaching to these pressing issues by contributing to informed discussion, dialogue and research, but also by committing yourselves for that change of attitudes, opinions and lifestyles which is essential for building a world of greater justice, freedom and harmony.
In offering my prayerful good wishes for the fruitfulness of your work, I cordially invoke upon you, your families and your associates God’s blessings of joy and peace.
(from Vatican Radio)…
Bulletin for 5/21/2017
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis is continuing his “Mercy Friday” activities. Begun during the 2015-1016 Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Mercy Fridays see the Holy Father engaged in specific corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
A communiqué from the Press Office of the Holy See explains that the Pope on this Friday made a visit to public housing projects in the parish of Stella Maris – Star of the Sea parish – in the coastal town of Ostia on the outskirts of Rome.
The communiqué goes on to explain that the Holy Father was to bless the abodes of the parishioners in the complex located at Piazza Francesco Conteduca, 11, just as the parish priest does traditionally each year during Eastertide.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) True doctrine unites; ideology divides. That was the message of Pope Francis in the homily at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on Friday.
The Pope based his reflections on the so-called Council of Jerusalem which, around the year 49 A.D., decided that gentile converts to Christianity would not have to be circumcised.
The Holy Father was commenting on the First Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. He noted that even in the first Christian community “there were jealousies, power struggles, a certain deviousness that wanted to profit from and to buy power.” There are always problems, he said: “We are human, we are sinners” and there are difficulties, even in the Church. But being sinners leads to humility and to drawing close to the Lord, as Saviour who saves us from our sins. With regard to the gentiles who the Spirit called to become Christians, the Holy Father recalled that, in the reading, the apostles and the elders chose several people to go to Antioch together with Paul and Barnabas. The reading describes two different kinds of people: those who had “forceful discussions” but with “a good spirit,” on the one hand; and those who “sowed confusion”:
“The group of the apostles who want to discuss the problem, and the others who go and create problems. They divide, they divide the Church, they say that what the Apostles preached is not what Jesus said, that it is not the truth.”
The apostles discussed the situation among themselves, and in the end came to an agreement:
“But it is not a political agreement; it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that leads them to say: no things, no necessities. Only those who say: don’t eat meat at the time, meat sacrificed to idols, because that was communion with the idols; abstain from blood, from animals that were strangled, and from illegitimate unions.”
The Pope pointed to the “liberty of the Spirit” that leads to agreement: so, he said, the gentiles were allowed to enter the Church without having to undergo circumcision. It was at the heart of the “first Council” of the Church: the Holy Spirit and they, the Pope with the Bishops, all together,” gathered together in order “to clarify the doctrine;” and later, through the centuries – as at Ephesus or at Vatican II – because “it is a duty of the Church to clarify the doctrine,” so that “what Jesus said in the Gospels, what is the Spirit of the Gospels, would be understood well”:
“But there were always people who without any commission go out to disturb the Christian community with speeches that upset souls: ‘Eh, no, someone who says that is a heretic, you can’t say this, or that; this is the doctrine of the Church.’ And they are fanatics of things that are not clear, like those fanatics who go there sowing weeds in order to divide the Christian community. And this is the problem: when the doctrine of the Church, that which comes from the Gospel, that which the Holy Spirit inspires – because Jesus said, “He will teach us and remind you of all that I have taught’ – [when] that doctrine becomes an ideology. And this is the great error of those people.”
These individuals, the Pope explained, “were not believers, they were ideologized,” they had an ideology that closed the heart to the work of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles, on the other hand, certainly discussed things forcefully, but they were not ideologized: “They had hearts open to what the Holy Spirit said. And after the discussion ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.’”
Pope Francis’ final exhortation was to not be afraid in the face “of the opinions of the ideologues of doctrine.” The Church, he concluded, has “its proper Magisterium, the Magisterium of the Pope, of the Bishops, of the Councils,” and we must go along the path “that comes from the preaching of Jesus, and from the teaching and assistance of the Holy Spirit,” which is “always open, always free,” because “doctrine unites, the Councils unite the Christian community, while, on the other hand, “ideology divides.”
(from Vatican Radio)…