Vatican City, 17 December 2014 (VIS) – The Pope, at the end of today’s general audience, asked for prayers for the victims of the inhuman terrorist acts that have occurred in recent days in Yemen, Australia and Pakistan. “May the Lord receive the souls of the departed in His peace, console their families and convert the hearts of the perpetrators, whose violence does not cease even before children”. At the end of the audience, 2,500 people danced the milonga to the sound of the bandoneon in St. Peter’s Square to celebrate Pope Francis’ 78th birthday. The initiative, “A tango for Francis”, emerged on the social networks and, as was shown today, thousands of people joined in….
(Vatican Radio) There was a festive atmosphere at the weekly General Audience on Wednesday, as Pope Francis celebrated his 78th birthday.
As he made his way through the crowds, Pope Francis stopped by a group of seminarians from the Legion of Christ, who offered him a birthday cake, complete with lighted candles. The Holy Father also took the opportunity to take a sip of maté, a traditional Argentinian drink, offered my pilgrims at the Audience. On the Via della Conciliazione, which leads up to St Peter’s Square, tango enthusiasts danced in the street to celebrate the Pope’s birthday.
Among those sending birthday greetings from around the world was Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster. “I would like to sing happy birthday for him,” the Cardinal said. “And if I could, I’d join in the dancing in St Peter’s Square that I believe is taking place this morning.”
Cardinal Nichols said the Catholic community in England and Wales wants “to wish Pope Francis a very, very happy birthday. We want to wish him every health and blessing, and we want to thank him for all this remarkable leadership that he’s giving.”
Pope Francis didn’t mention his birthday during the audience, but his reflections on the importance of simple, humble family life, lived on the peripheries, was certainly appropriate for the occasion.
Vatican Radio joins Catholics and well-wishers from around the world in wishing Pope Francis a very happy birthday. Ad multos annos !
A prayer for the Pope:
V. Let us pray for Francis, the Pope.
R. May the Lord preserve him, give him a long life, make him blessed upon the earth, and may the Lord not hand him over to the power of his enemies.
V. May your hand be upon your holy servant.
R. And upon your son whom you have anointed.
Let us pray. O God, the Pastor and Ruler of all the faithful, look down, in your mercy, upon your servant, Francis, whom you have appointed to preside over your Church; and grant, we beseech you, that both by word and example, he may edify all those under his charge; so that, with the flock entrusted to him, he may arrive at length unto life everlasting. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) As anticipated, the Holy Father Pope Francis has named new members of the Commission for the Protection of Minors. The new members have been chosen from different parts of the world in order to have a full representation of diverse situations and cultures.
The next plenary session of the Commission will take place in the Vatican from 6-8 February 2015.
Below, please find the complete list of members of the Commission for the Protection of Minors, with brief biographical information provided by the Holy See Press Office:
Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM Cap. (United States) as the Archbishop of Boston and serves as the President of the Commission and a member of the Council of Cardinals which advises His Holiness, Pope Francis.
Mons. Robert Oliver (United States) serves as the Secretary of the Commission, following many years in child protection work for the Archdiocese of Boston, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the Promoter of Justice.
Rev. Luis Manuel Ali Herrera (Colombia) is the Director of the Department of Psychology, professor of pastoral psychology in the Conciliar Seminary of the Archdiocese of Bogotá, and as a parish priest.
Dr. Catherine Bonnet (France) is a child psychiatrist, psychotherapist, researcher, and author on child sexual abuse and perinatal violence and neglect.
Marie Collins (Ireland) is a survivor of child sexual abuse. A founder Trustee of the Marie Collins Foundation she served on the committee which drafted the Catholic Church’s all-Ireland child protection policy, “Our Children Our Church.”
Dr. Gabriel Dy-Liacco (Philippines) is an adult and adolescent psychotherapist and pastoral counselor for various mental health concerns including of individuals, couples, families and groups, including victims and perpetrators of abuse.
Prof. Sheila the Baroness Hollins (England) has worked as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with children and adults with intellectual disabilities including those who have been sexually abused, and is a life peer in the House of Lords.
Bill Kilgallon (New Zealand) is Director of the National Office for Professional Standards of the Catholic Church in New Zealand where he has lived for the last four years. Prior to that he had a long career in social work and health services in the UK.
Sr. Kayula Gertrude Lesa, RSC (Zambia) is a Development Professional, trainer and author on child protection, human trafficking, refugee rights and the right to information. She served as a member of the African Forum for Church Social Teaching (AFCAST).
Sr. Hermenegild Makoro, CPS (South Africa) is a member of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood in the Diocese of Mathatha in South Africa. She works as a high school teacher and for several years in the diocese as a trainer in pastoral work. After serving as an Associate Secretary General of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference for six years, Sr. Hermenegild was appointed as the Secretary General of the SACBC in 2012.
Kathleen McCormack am (Australia) is a social welfare worker who served as Director of Welfare of CatholicCare in the Diocese of Wollongong for 29 years and held leadership roles in Family Services, Child Protection, Out Of Home Care and Ageing and Disability Services.
Dr. Claudio Papale (Italy) is a canon lawyer and a civil lawyer, professor of canon law at the Pontifical Urban University, and an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Peter Saunders (England) was abused throughout his childhood in Wimbledon, South West London. Later in life, after earning a Business Studies degree, Peter discovered that he was one of millions who had suffered such abuse and who could not find any appropriate support. So he set up NAPAC, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, for supporting all survivors and for developing greater resources for responding to child abuse.
Hon. Hanna Suchocka (Poland) is a professor of constitutional law and specialist in human rights at the University of Poznan, and was formerly Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland and Ambassador of Poland to the Holy See.
Dr. Krysten Winter-Green (United States) is a New Zealander with post-graduate degrees in Theology, Human Development, Social Work, Religion and Pastoral Psychology. She has served in dioceses around the world with homeless persons and those living with AIDS. Krysten’s concentration in the areas of child abuse include forensics, assessment and treatment of priest/clergy offenders.
Rev. Dr. Humberto Miguel Yáñez, SJ (Argentina) is Director of the Department of Moral Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, professor of moral theology at the Gregorian and the Pontifical Urban University, and former Director of the Center of Research and Social Action in Argentina.
Rev. Dr. Hans Zollner, SJ (Germany) is President of the Centre for Child Protection of the Pontifical Gregorian University and Director and Professor of the Institute of Psychology. He was Chair of the organizing committee for the Symposium “Towards Healing and Renewal” on sexual abuse of minors (February 2012).
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has asked for prayers for the victims of the “inhuman terror attacks perpetrated in the past days in Sydney, Australia and in Peshawar, Pakistan”.
Listen to the report by Linda Bordoni :
Concluding his address to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly General Audience, the Pope asked those present to join him in his prayers to the Lord to receive the deceased in peace, to bring comfort to their families and to convert the hearts of the violent who do not hold back even before children. ”
Taliban militants in Pakistan killed at least 132 children and 9 staff members at a school in Peshawar on Tuesday, whilst an Islamist militant killed 2 people during a siege on a Café in Sydney on Monday.
The Pope’s appeal came after his second catechesis in preparation for next October’s Ordinary Synod of Bishops.
He said that the Extraordinary Synod that took place last October represented the first step of a journey which will conclude next year with another Synodal Assembly on the theme “Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and in the World”.
Francis said that his weekly Wednesday prayers and meditations are part of that common journey, and that is why he has chosen to reflect, this year, on the family: “this great gift of the Lord to the world, right from the beginning, when he entrusted Adam and Eve with the mission to “be fruitful, increase in number and fill the earth” (Genesis 1, 28). A gift – the Pope said – that Jesus confirmed and put his seal on in the Gospel.
And the Pope pointed out that Christmas brings much light to this mystery. The incarnation of the Son of God – he said – opens a whole new chapter in the universal history of man and woman. This new beginning – he pointed out – took place within a little family, in Nazareth.
The Son of God – he said – chose to be born into a human family in an obscure town on the periphery of the Roman Empire. Not in Rome, not in a great city, but in an almost invisible – even rough – periphery, as described by the Gospels “Nazareth, can anything good come from there?” (John 1, 46).
Perhaps, the Pope said, in many parts of the world we too use that kind of language when we hear talk of some of the urban peripheries of our own cities: “Well, that’s exactly where the most holy of stories began, that of Jesus amongst mankind!”
Jesus – he said – stayed in that periphery for over 30 years as narrated by Luke (2, 51 – 52). There is no talk of miracles or preaching, but of a very normal family life.
And Pope Francis spoke of the tenderness aroused by the descriptions of Jesus’s life as an adolescent who was raised in an atmosphere of religious devotion, learning from the words and examples of Mary and Joseph, and growing in wisdom, age and grace.
In imitation of the Holy Family, the Pope said, every Christian family must make a place for Jesus in its home, for it is through the love of such “normal” families, even in the peripheries of the world, that God’s Son quietly comes to dwell among us bringing Salvation to our world.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Over one hundred bishops, priests, deacons and seminarians will meet in Rome in January 2015 for the Second International Conference of the English-speaking Confraternities of Catholic Clergy.
The conference brings together clergy from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Each of these countries has an active confraternity which assists its members to grow in zeal, learning and holiness.
The 2015 conference takes up Pope Francis’ call for the Church to contemplate Jesus Christ, and to go out from itself toward its existential peripheries. It is entitled: ‘Quo vadis, Domine? The Church, Priests and Mission in the twenty-first century.’
Conference speakers include Cardinal George Pell who heads the Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal Angelo Amato who heads the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, and Archbishop Joseph Di Noia, who is Assistant Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The conference will join the Holy Father for Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on the Feast of the Epiphany.
The US and Australian Confraternities organised their first international clergy conference in 2010, in response to Pope Benedict’s declaration of a Year for Priests. That conference proved so successful that it inspired newly-founded Confraternities in Britain and Ireland.
A highlight of the 2015 conference is the opportunity to celebrate the sacred liturgy in Rome’s major basilicas, assisted by Dublin’s, Lassus Scholars, who excel at choral masterpieces sung in their authentic liturgical setting.
Although booking is now closed, the conference was not restricted to confraternity members. An invitation was extended to all English-speaking clergy; with seminarians enjoying a generous subsidy, which expressed one of the Confraternities’ particular concerns: the promotion of priestly vocations.
For timetable details, and real-time coverage, visit www.ccc2015.com.
(from Vatican Radio)…