(Vatican Radio) A group of nine Syrian refugees, including two Christians, arrived in Rome on Thursday from the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, following the visit of Pope Francis to the island on April 16, when he accompanied three families of refugees back to Rome.
The Vatican Gendarmeria, with the help of Interior Ministry of Greece, the Greek Asylum Service, and the Community of Sant’Egidio, accompanied the refugees from Athens to Rome on Thursday. The Community of Sant’Egidio will provide for their housing, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.
The refugees, six adults and three children, are all Syrian citizens who were in the Kara Tepe refugee camp. They had arrived in Lesbos from Turkey.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) A video message by Pope Francis was released on Friday to highlight an awareness and fund-raising initiative by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The charity’s “Be God’s Mercy” initiative marking the Jubilee Year of Mercy was formally launched at a press conference in the offices of Vatican Radio.
In his video message the Pope urged people to “carry out works of mercy together with ACN in every corner of the world, in order to meet the many, many needs of today.”
Please find below a full English translation of the Pope’s video message on behalf of the charity, ACN:
“I want to appeal to all men and women of good will all around the world for a work of mercy to be done in each town, in each diocese, in each association. We, men and women, need God’s mercy, but we also need each other’s mercy. We need to take each other’s hand, caress each other, take care of each other and not make so many wars. I am looking here at the dossier prepared by Kirche in Not, a papal foundation, to carry out works of mercy in the whole world. I trust Kirche in Not with this work… I also entrust them to carry on the spirit they have inherited from Father Werenfried van Straaten who had the vision at the right time to carry out in the world these gestures of closeness, of proximity, of goodness, of love and of mercy. So I invite all of you, together with Kirche in Not, to do, everywhere in the world, a work of mercy but one that stays, a permanent work of mercy; a structure for so many needs that there are today in the world. I thank you for everything you do. And do not be afraid of mercy: mercy is God’s caress.”
ACN projects supported during the four-month “Be God’s Mercy” campaign in 2016 include prison ministry, drug rehabilitation centres and support groups for women who have suffered violence.
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(Vatican Radio) Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, is on a six day official visit to Ukraine where he will meet with both Church and state officials. On Friday morning he celebrated Holy Mass at the Cathedral church of St Alexander in Kiev and delivered a homily on the theme of the gospel warning “not to store up treasures on earth.”
Cardinal Parolin sympathized with the challenge of following this command of the Lord. Many countries of the world, including the Ukraine, must struggle against dishonesty, unfair wealth, theft of community assets, all for the accumulation of individual fortunes. Corruption and the concentration of money in the hands of a few are among the causes that impoverish the people, destroy our freedom, kill the dreams for a better world and the right to life for all.
Christians, Cardinal Parolin said, must always fight to ensure that justice is done, but without ever resorting to violence. We are also called to detach from what might be hidden in our hearts. We can preach justice but what good is it if on the inside we are victims of jealousy, envy and the desire for success at any cost?
We must instead render the way we look at others in a simple, pure way, being transparent and without ulterior motives. Bishops, priests, religious men and women must do this above all because of the respect and honour given to such people. “We risk most of all,” said the Cardinal, “because we are respected and honored, and therefore we believe we are above every judgment …” Often, he says, we allow ourselves things that create scandal: wealth that we do not deserve, pride and arrogance in the use of authority granted to us, a way of life that Pope Francis calls “worldly.”
Moths and rust destroy all of these false riches. To find true freedom we must look up to the sky: our treasure is there, it is God’s love. This love caused the master to lose everything, to be nailed to a cross while being spat upon and ridiculed. But this love is faithful and saves us.
Everything that takes us away from the God who awaits us in heaven, at the end of the few days of our lives, should be cut with a sword, and separated from us. Also because it makes us lose time and vitality. Frustrations and petty desires prevent us from seeking the things above; we have infinitely more value than what we can accumulate on this earth.
Cardinal Parolin concluded that the Eucharist that we celebrate is the gift of the Bread of heaven. In him, in Jesus who offers himself to us, we have the anticipation of the heavenly treasure, one of the goods that no one can take away from us who constitute the “tent” which was planted in the field of our human history.
Cardinal Parolin’s visit to Kiev lasts until Monday, 20 June.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis opened the annual Ecclesial Convention of the Rome Diocese on Thursday evening at Rome’s cathedral: the Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. During the course of the inaugural event, the Holy Father responded to questions from several participants, each centered on specific aspects of the over-arching theme of the three-day event: the family and the joy of love.
In one response in particular, Pope Francis renewed his criticism of our “provisional” and “throw-away” culture, which has largely become incapable of thinking that any good – even one’s word – could possibly be lasting and worth preserving no matter what the cost.
“We too live a culture of the provisional,” said Pope Francis in response to a question from the floor regarding what needs – and what can – be done in order better to ensure the success and flourishing of marriages, and of people in married life within the Church and the broader society. In answer, the Holy Father told a story of a bishop from whom he recently heard tell of a young fellow who had finished his university studies and told the prelate he was interested in the priesthood, “but [only] for ten years,” the Holy Father reported his unnamed interlocutor as having quoted the nameless young fellow as saying. “This is the culture of provisional,” said Pope Francis, “and this happens everywhere, even in the priesthood, religious life – the provisional – is why a large majority of our sacramental marriages are null: because they say, “Yes, all my life,” but they do not know what it is they are saying, because they have another culture.”
Pope Francis went on to tell of how he banned matrimonios de apuro – or “rush marriages” usually celebrated when a young unmarried couple found themselves expecting a child – in Buenos Aires when he was archbishop there, because he felt the couples were in general acting out of social pressure rather than an informed understanding of the weight and significance of Christian marriage. “The crisis in marriage,” he said, “is because people don’t know what the sacrament is, what the beauty of the sacrament is: people do not know that it is indissuluble, they do not know that it is for life – it is difficult.”
The Convention will continue until Friday with a series of thematic workshops on dedicated to a series of sub-themes, including: love between adolescents; marriage preparation; spousal love; fidelity; the joy of giving life; family and brotherhood.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said that prayers are not magic words for Christians and when we pray the ‘Our Father’ we can feel God looking at us and this prayer should be the cornerstone of our prayer life. His words came during his mass celebrated on Thursday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence.
Jesus always turned to the Father in the most challenging moments
Taking his inspiration from the gospel reading where Jesus teaches his disciples to pray the “Our Father, the Pope’s homily was a reflection on the value and meaning of prayer in the life of a Christian. He noted that Jesus always used the word “Father” in the most important or challenging moments of his life, saying our Father “knows the things we need, before we even ask Him.” He is a Father who listens to us in secret just like Jesus advised us to pray in secret.
“It’s through this Father that we receive our identity as children. And when I say ‘Father’ this goes right to the roots of my identity: my Christian identity is to be his child and this is a grace of the Holy Spirit. Nobody can say ‘Father’ without the grace of the Spirit. ‘Father’ is the word that Jesus used in the most important moments: when he was full of joy, or emotion: ‘Father, I bless you for revealing these things to little children.’ Or weeping, in front of the tomb of his friend Lazarus: ‘Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer,’ or else at the end, in the final moments of his life, right at the very end.”
Pope Francis went on to stress how the word ‘Father’ was the one most used by Jesus in the most important or challenging moments of his life. He warned that “unless we feel that we are his children, without considering ourselves as his children, without saying ‘Father,’ our prayer is a pagan one, it’s just a prayer of words.
Praying the ‘Our Father’ is our cornerstone
In the same way, the Pope stressed that the ‘Our Father’ prayer is the cornerstone of our prayer life. If we are not able to begin our prayer with this word, he warned, “our prayer will go nowhere.”
“Father.” It’s about feeling our Father looking at me, feeling that this word ‘Father’ is not a waste of time like the words in the prayers of pagans: it’s a call to Him who gave me my identity as his child. This is the dimension of Christian prayer – ‘Father’ and we can pray to all the Saints, the Angels, we can go on processions, pilgrimages … all of this is wonderful but we must always begin (our prayers) with ‘Father’ and be aware that we are his children and that we have a Father who loves us and who knows all our needs. This is that dimension.”
Turning next to the part of the ‘Our Father’ prayer where Jesus refers to forgiving those who “trespass against us” just as God forgives us, Pope Francis explains that this prayer conveys the sense of us being brothers (and sisters) and part of one family. Rather than behaving like Cain who hated his own brother, he said, it’s so important for us to forgive, to forget offences against us, that healthy attitude of saying ‘let’s forget this’ and not harbour feelings of rancour, resentment or a desire for revenge.
In conclusion, the Pope said the best prayer we can say is to pray to our God to forgive everybody and forget their sins.
“It’s good for us to sometimes examine our own consciences on this point. For me, is God my Father? Do I feel that He is my Father? And if I don’t feel that, let me ask the Holy Spirit to teach me to feel that way. And am I able to forget offences, to forgive, to let go of it, and if not, let us ask the Father: ‘these people too are your children, they did something horrible to me … can you help me to forgive them’? Let us carry out this examination of our consciences and it will do us a lot of good, good, good. ‘Father’ and ‘our’: give us our identity as his children and give us a family to journey with during our lives.”
(from Vatican Radio)…