By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – God wants his disciples to bring his mercy and love to everyone, everywhere on earth, which means it may cost them their “good name,” comfort and their life, Pope Francis said on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Following Christ requires “that we open our hearts to the Father and to all those with whom he has wished to identify,” particularly the downtrodden, the lost and the wounded, “in the sure knowledge that he will never abandon his people,” he said during a Mass in St. Peter’s Square June 29.
“Jesus wants to liberate his disciples, his church, from empty forms of triumphalism: forms empty of love, empty of service, empty of compassion, empty of people,” he said. The Mass was celebrated the day after Pope Francis created 14 new cardinals from 11 different nations.
Both new and old cardinals as well as 30 archbishops appointed over the course of the past year were invited to be in Rome to concelebrate the feast day Mass with Pope Francis. The archbishops came from 18 countries, the majority coming from Latin America and others from Africa, Asia and Europe.
As has become standard practice, Pope Francis did not confer the pallium on new archbishops during the liturgy, but rather, blessed the palliums after they had been brought up from the crypt above the tomb of St. Peter. As each archbishop approached him by the altar, the pope handed each one a small wooden box tied with a thin gold ribbon. The actual imposition of the woolen band was to take place in the archbishop’s archdiocese in the presence of his faithful and bishops from neighboring dioceses.
The pallium is a woolen band that symbolizes an archbishop’s unity with the pope and his authority and responsibility to care for the flock the pope entrusted to him.
Addressing the cardinals and archbishops during his homily, the pope spoke about what Peter teaches them about the life and risks of being Christ’s disciple.
It was Peter who recognized Jesus as “the Christ, the son of the living God,” and it was Peter whom Jesus turned to, saying “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.”
But, when Jesus showed his disciples he must go to Jerusalem, be killed and be risen, it was Peter who protested.
Jesus “kept bringing the father’s love and mercy to the very end. This merciful love demands that we, too, go forth to every corner of life, to reach out to everyone, even though this may cost us our ‘good name,’ our comforts, our status … even martyrdom.”
Peter reacts to this mandate of martyrdom by saying, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you,” which makes him become “a stumbling stone in the Messiah’s path,” the pope said.
“Thinking that he is defending God’s rights, Peter, without realizing it, becomes the Lord’s enemy; Jesus calls him ‘Satan.’” he said.
“Like Peter, we as a church will always be tempted to hear those ‘whisperings’ of the evil one, which will become a stumbling stone for the mission,” the pope said.
Sharing in Christ’s mission, which is to anoint the people, the sick, the wounded, the lost and the repentant sinner, so that they may feel “a beloved part of God’s family,” means sharing Christ’s cross, which is his glory.
“When we turn our back on the cross, even though we may attain the heights of glory, we will be fooling ourselves, since it will not be God’s glory, but the snare of the enemy,” he said.
Do not be Christians who keep “a prudent distance from the Lord’s wounds,” because Jesus touches human misery and “he asks us to join him in touching the suffering flesh of others,” the pope told those assembled.

By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis called on nations working to develop a global compact on refugees to make sure they help ensure migration is safe, legal and humane.
While nations work to forge proper policies, every individual, “each of us, is called to draw near to refugees and find with them moments of encounter, to value their contribution so that they, too, can be better included in the communities that receive them,” the pope said June 17.
“It is by these encounters and with this mutual respect and support that there is an answer many problems,” he said.
The pope’s remarks came at the end of his Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square.
He reminded people of World Refugee Day June 20, which the United Nations promotes, he said, as a way to “call attention to the experience – often lived with great anxiety and suffering – of our brothers and sisters who are forced to flee their homeland because of conflict and persecution.”
The pope noted the ongoing effort by many nations in creating and adopting a global compact on refugees, which would promote “a migration that is safe, orderly and legal.”
“I hope that the states involved in this process may reach an understanding to assure, with responsibility and humanity, assistance to and the protection of those who are forced to flee their own country,” he said.
Pope Francis also led people in a Hail Mary for the people of Yemen and prayed that international leaders would ensure “the already tragic humanitarian situation does not get worse.” CAFOD, the overseas aid agency of the bishops of England and Wales, has warned that a Saudi-led coalition’s assault on Hodeida, Yemen’s main port city, will have a “catastrophic impact” on the ability of relief groups to get food, medicine and other aid to vulnerable Yemeni families in urgent need of assistance.

By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a letter to Catholics in Chile, Pope Francis expressed shame for the church’s failure to listen and defend survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy.
Released by the Chilean bishops’ conference May 31, the letter from the pope said that the time of “revision and purification” in the church was possible through the efforts of abuse survivors “who, against all hope or painted as discredited, did not tire of looking for the truth.”
They are “victims whose cries reached to heaven. I would like to once again publicly thank all of them for the courage and perseverance,” the pope wrote.
The Vatican announced earlier in the day that “the pope will send the president of the Chilean bishops’ conference a letter written personally by him and addressed to all the people of God, as he had promised the bishops.”
The Vatican also announced that Pope Francis will send Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta and Father Jordi Bertomeu Farnos back to Chile and visit the Diocese of Osorno “with the aim of advancing the process of reparation and healing of abuse victims.”
Shortly after, Bishop Juan Ignacio Gonzalez Errazuriz of San Bernardo, president of the Chilean bishops’ commission for abuse prevention, and Auxiliary Bishop Fernando Ramos Perez of Santiago, secretary-general of the Chilean bishops’ conference, held a news conference in Santiago to release the eight-page letter.
In his message, the pope said it has been a “time of listening and discernment” for the church to get to the root of the sexual abuse crisis in the Chilean church and to find concrete solutions and not “mere strategies of containment.”
He also acknowledged the church’s shortcomings in not listening to survivors of abuse.
“Here, I believe, lies one our principal faults and omissions: to not know how to listen to victims. Thus, partial conclusions were built that lacked crucial elements for a healthy and clear discernment. I must say with shame that we did not know how to listen and react in time,” the pope wrote.
In January, the pope sent Archbishop Scicluna and Father Bertomeu to Chile to listen to people with information about Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who, according to survivors, had allegedly witnessed their abuse by his mentor, Father Fernando Karadima.
Pope Francis said their visit was made after “verifying the existence of situations that we did not know how to see and listen.”
“As a church, we cannot continue walking while ignoring the pain of our brothers and sisters,” he said.
The church, he continued, must say “never again” to a culture that not only allowed sexual abuses to occur but also “considered a critical and questioning attitude as betrayal.”
“The culture of abuse and cover up is incompatible with the logic of the Gospel given that the salvation offered by Christ is always an offering, a gift that demands and requires freedom,” the pope said.
The pope also encouraged Chilean Catholics to continue their devotion to popular piety which is “one of the few areas where the people of God is above the influence of that clericalism that seeks to control and restrain the anointment of God upon the people.”
Like Christ, who did not hide his wounds after his resurrection but rather showed them to his disciples, the church must also be willing to show its own wounds to “be able to understand and be moved by the wounds of the world today.”
“A church with wounds doesn’t place itself at the center, it doesn’t think itself perfect, it doesn’t look to cover up and conceal its evil, but instead places them before the only one who can heal wounds and he has a name: Jesus Christ.
After the letter’s release, Juan Carlos Cruz, one of three survivors who met with Pope Francis April 27-29, said he was moved by the pope’s letter.
“There are phrases in the letter that are things that we spoke about with the pope, such as the culture of cover-ups. It is an emotional feeling to know that he was listening to us and it wasn’t just a salute,” Cruz said May 31 in an interview with Chilean radio station Tele 13.

(Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju.)

By Cindy Wooden
ROME (CNS) – After months of study and discussion, the parishes of the Diocese of Rome have recognized “a general and healthy exhaustion” with doing the same things over and over, touching the lives of fewer and fewer people as time goes on, Pope Francis said.
Changing the way parishes – and their priests and involved laity – operate will not be easy, the pope said, but members of the diocese must set out to follow the Lord more closely, deal with the reality in their neighborhoods and learn how to show everyone living within the parish boundaries that they are recognized and loved.
Pope Francis addressed some 1,700 diocesan leaders, both clergy and laity, May 14 at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the diocese of Rome.
In the process of identifying the “spiritual illnesses” of the diocese, the pope said, the priests and parish leaders made it clear that they are tired of being content with what they have been doing for years.
A renewed outreach, the pope said, must begin by “learning to discern where God already is present in very ordinary forms of holiness and communion with him.”
There are people in the parishes, he said, who might not know their catechism, but they see the basic interactions in their lives through a lens of faith and hope. Calling for a “revolution of tenderness” in parishes and the diocese, Pope Francis said that while “guiding a Christian community is the specific task of the ordained minister – the pastor – pastoral care is based in baptism and blossoms from brotherhood and is not the task only of the pastor and priests, but of all the baptized.”
The pope’s speech marked his formal reception of a diocesan report on “spiritual illnesses” afflicting the city. Through a process that began in Lent, parishes identified the main challenges as “the economy of exclusion, selfish laziness, comfortable individualism, wars among us, sterile pessimism and spiritual worldliness,” according to a statement from the diocese.
The priest who summarized the findings at the evening meeting told the pope that a lack of education in the faith was identified by many of the groups; that lack was seen regarding basic church teachings but also regarding how the Gospel and its values could be brought to bear on modern problems.
Pope Francis told them the process of identifying the problems had two benefits: a recognition of “the truth about our condition as being in need, sick,” but, at the same time, a recognition that even if people have failed, God is still present and is calling his people to come together and to move forward.
“Our parishes,” he said, “must be capable of generating a people, that is, of offering and creating relationships where people feel that they are known, recognized, welcomed, listened to, loved – in other words, not anonymous parts of a whole.”
To move forward, he said, Catholic communities must look at “the slaveries – the illnesses – that have ended up making us sterile.”
Often, he said, parishes are slaves to doing things the ways they always have been done and to investing time and energy in projects and programs that no longer meet the needs of the people.
“We must listen without fear to the thirst for God and to the cry that rises from the people of Rome, asking ourselves how that cry expresses the need for salvation, for God,” he said. “How many of the things that emerged from your studies express that cry, the invocation that God show himself and help us escape the impression that our life is useless and almost robbed by the frenzy of things that must be done and by time that keeps slipping through out hands?”
Too often, he said, evangelization also is stifled by “faith understood only as things to do and not as a liberation that renews us at every step.”
Pope Francis asked the diocesan leaders to dedicate the next year to “a sort of preparation of your backpacks” for setting off on a multiyear process that would lead to a “new land,” a place marked by new pastoral action that is “more responsive to the mission and needs of Romans today, but also more creative and liberating for priests and those who directly collaborate in their mission and in the building up of the Christian community.”

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has asked the president of the German bishops’ conference to come to Rome to discuss pastoral guidelines for possibly allowing some non-Catholics married to Catholics to receive the Eucharist, the conference spokesman said.
Reports that “the document was rejected in the Vatican by the Holy Father or by the dicasteries are false,” said Matthias Kopp, the conference spokesman.
For one thing, Kopp said April 19, the guidelines still have not been finalized and, therefore, they have not been reviewed by the Vatican. Members of the German bishops’ conference were asked to submit proposed amendments to the draft document by Easter; the heads of the conference’s doctrinal and ecumenical committees and the president of the conference were to formulate a final draft and present it to the conference’s permanent council April 23.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, conference president, had announced Feb. 22 at the end of their plenary meeting that three-quarters of the German bishops approved the development of pastoral guidelines for determining situations in which a non-Catholic spouse married to a Catholic could receive Communion.

Photo courtesy of Bigstock

The cardinal said that “the background is the high proportion of mixed marriages and families in Germany, where we recognize a challenging and urgent pastoral task” to determine if and under what circumstances couples of different denominations who regularly go to church together can receive the Eucharist together.
The possibility, he had said, would require a discussion with the pastor or a designated member of the parish staff to ensure that the non-Catholic receiving Communion “could confess the eucharistic faith of the Catholic Church.”
“This assistance will give help in concrete cases of mixed-denomination marriages and create a greater clarity and security for pastors and married people,” the cardinal had said.
About a month later, however, seven German bishops, including Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, sent a letter to Archbishop Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, asking for confirmation of their belief that a bishops’ conference does not have the authority to expand permissions for non-Catholics to receive Communion.
In general, Catholic teaching insists that sharing the sacrament of Communion will be a sign that Christian churches have reconciled fully with one another, although in some pastoral situations, guests may be invited to the Eucharist.
During Pope Francis’ visit to Sweden in 2016, Cardinal Koch, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, was asked about the situations in which such sharing would be permitted. In reply, he said a distinction must be made between “eucharistic hospitality for individual people and eucharistic communion.”
The term hospitality is used to refer to welcoming guests to the Eucharist on special occasions or under special circumstances, as long as they recognize the sacrament as the real presence of Christ. Eucharistic communion, on the other hand, refers to a more regular situation of the reception of Communion by people recognized as belonging to the same church family, he had said.

By Carol Glatz
ROME (CNS) – If people listen to Jesus and do as he urges them, they can be certain that he will see them through even the darkest times, Pope Francis told members of a Rome parish.
“Jesus always prepares us for our trials and he never leaves us alone. Never,” the pope said Feb. 25 during Mass in the Church of St. Gelasius on Rome’s northeast edge.
Following his usual pattern for Sunday parish visits, Pope Francis reached the church in the early afternoon. After shaking hundreds of hands, blessing dozens of babies and posing for a handful of selfies with young people, the pope went to the parish soccer field to meet the children and teens involved in the parish catechism and sports programs.
After morning sunshine, the skies turned gray and cold, and a heavy rain began to fall.
“You’re soaked!” the pope told the youngsters.
“Life is like this,” he said, explaining that some days will be sunny, some rainy and sometimes storms unexpectedly blow in.
“What’s a Christian to do? Go forward with courage,” knowing that Jesus always is near and is always willing to forgive, he told them.
Moving indoors, the pope met with the elderly members of the parish and greeted each of them individually. He asked couples how long they had been married and asked others how they were feeling. One woman told him that she had a cold she just could not shake. He suggested she try some grappa, a strong grape-based alcoholic drink.
Pope Francis thanked the group of elders for all they do for the church and the world. Even if they do not feel like they are accomplishing great things, he said, they have been charged with “keeping the embers of faith alive” with their prayers and their witness.
After hearing confessions, the pope celebrated Mass in the parish church and gave a brief, extemporaneous homily focused on the day’s Gospel account of the transfiguration of Jesus.
By allowing the disciples to see him transfigured, Jesus gave them a preview of the glory that would be his after the crucifixion and resurrection, the pope said. It was a way to fortify and prepare the disciples for the trials and tribulations that were about to begin.
Remembering that vision, he said, the disciples would be able to “bear the weight of the humiliation” of seeing Jesus condemned and crucified.
In the same way, the pope said, Jesus gives all believers the assurance that he will triumph in the end. And, even in the darkest times, “he is always with us. He never leaves us alone. Never.”
In the Gospel account, he said, after the disciples see Jesus transfigured, they hear God’s voice telling them, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Listening to Jesus is key, the pope said. “In our daily lives, maybe we have problems or have many things to resolve. Let’s ask ourselves this: ‘What is Jesus saying to me today?’ And let’s try to listen to Jesus’ voice, how he inspires us. And that way we will follow the advice of the Father: ‘This is my beloved son. Listen to him.’”
But listening is only the first step, the pope said. Christians then must do what Mary told the servants to do at the wedding feast of Cana when the wine ran out: Listen to Jesus, then “do what he tells you.”