Saturday, December 19, 2015

Pope Francis was in his element when he opened the ‘Door of Charity’ for the poor

Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Jubilee Year of Mercy
at the Vatican Dec. 8. (CNS photo/Maurizio Brambatti, EPA)



By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor December 19, 2015

ROME — Years from now, records will show that the special jubilee Year of Mercy decreed by Pope Francis began on Dec. 8, 2015, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. If you ask the pontiff himself, however, he’d probably tell you it really got underway on Friday.
That afternoon, Francis headed across town to visit a hostel for the homeless run by Caritas, the main diocesan charity in Rome, in order to open a “holy door of charity.” In a sense, it was the natural follow-up to what happened on Dec. 8, when Francis threw open an ornate door to St. Peter’s Basilica that’s otherwise bricked up when jubilees aren’t underway.
That gesture traditionally is how jubilee years commence, but Friday’s rite was a novelty — a pontiff opening a door not to a church, where spiritual indulgences are on offer, but rather a charity center, where the “grace” dispensed is more tangible and this-worldly.
In most of the ways that matter, this was Pope Francis in his element.
Anyone who spends time watching Francis in action realizes he doesn’t particularly care for big ceremonial productions. He’s most comfortable in smaller, more intimate settings, especially with people who don’t qualify as VIPs, where he can set aside whatever speech has been prepared for him and go off-the-cuff in Spanish or Italian.
Celebrating Mass on Friday for a group of 200 people representing the various activities run by Caritas in Rome — homeless people, AIDS patients, mothers with developmentally challenged children, refugees, and so on — was, to hear Francis tell it, an expression of the heart of what the Year of Mercy is supposed to be all about.
“When we get close to those who are suffering, those who’ve been thrown away in society, that’s where Jesus is,” the pontiff said in his extemporaneous homily.
“If you want to find God, you have to seek him in humility, in poverty, where he’s hidden — in the needy, the neediest, the sick, the hungry, the prisoners,” he said.
The hostel Francis visited Friday afternoon is named for Don Luigi di Liegro, the founder of Caritas in Rome who ran it until his death in 1997. He was famed for bringing together disparate groups — the Salvation Army, Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity, Sant’Egidio, among others — into an effective network to serve the city’s poor, its immigrant population, and people often ignored by public institutions, such as residents with mental and psychological difficulties.
The fact that Francis was at home there, however, didn’t mean all was sweetness and light. On the contrary, the pontiff sounded almost like an Old Testament prophet in warning affluent and comfortable Romans about the consequences of indifference.
“Jesus has told us how our judgment will be,” Francis said. “He won’t say: ‘You, come with me because you gave lots of beautiful offerings to the Church, you were a benefactor of the Church, so come into Heaven.’ No, you can’t buy your way into Heaven,” Francis said.
“Jesus won’t say: ‘You were very important, you studied a lot and earned many honors, come into Heaven.’ No. Honors don’t open the door of Heaven.


“What will Jesus say? ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was homeless and you gave me a place to live; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to see me’.”
Francis offered up a prayer that the Lord will help everyone grasp that “the paths of presumption, of wealth, of vanity, of pride, are not the ways to salvation.”
Looking out at a group of people typically seen as “discarded” by society, Francis said that feeling of being tossed aside is actually a “grace.”
“It would be beautiful if every one of us, all Romans, felt discarded, and thus felt the need of God’s help,” the pontiff said.
Francis celebrated the Mass along with four other priests, including the Rev. Tommas Fanti, who, at 96, is still going strong in serving Rome’s poor. The readings and prayers of the faithful were presented by the people whom Caritas serves; the prayers were actually written by a young mother with a disabled child, a refugee requesting asylum in Italy, and a homeless person living in the hostel Francis was visiting.
Basically, the pope’s message was that these folks are not only what the Year of Mercy is all about, but also the Christmas season.
“In choosing how he’d lead his [human] life, the Lord didn’t pick a great city with a grand empire, he didn’t pick a princess or a countess for his mother, somebody important, and he didn’t choose a luxurious palace,” Francis said.
“It seems that it was all done intentionally,” he said, referring to the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth, in order that the Lord would be “hidden” by the usual worldly standards.
Upon leaving the hostel, Francis urged people to go forward during the jubilee year in an “embrace of mercy.”
Over the coming days, Francis will conduct any number of important engagements: his annual speech to the Roman Curia, the Christmas liturgies, his New Year’s Day Urbi et Orbi blessing, a meeting with the diplomatic corps, and so on.
In terms of getting to the core of what he wants his jubilee year to be about, however, it’s hard to imagine that for him anything will top Friday’s encounter with the “hidden” and “discarded” who clearly form this pope’s comfort zone.

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Taken from: http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/12/19/pope-francis-was-in-his-element-when-he-opened-the-door-of-charity-for-the-poor/

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Pope Francis opens St Peter’s Holy Door to launch jubilee

 
Image result for holy year door

  Pope Francis pushed opened the huge bronze Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome to launch the Catholic Church’s “Year of Mercy”.

Tens of thousands attended a Mass in St Peter’s Square for the start of the Pope’s “revolution of tenderness”.
It took place place amid tight security with extra police and soldiers deployed, and a no-fly zone imposed.
Under the year’s theme of mercy, the Pope has said priests can absolve women who have had abortions.
During the jubilee celebrations, one of the most important events in the Roman Catholic Church, pilgrims travel to Rome and religious sites around the world.
At the end of the Mass, Francis opened the basilica’s Holy Door. He said that by passing through it, Catholics should take on the role of the Good Samaritan.
Image copyright EPA
Image caption Pope Francis, centre, has long signalled his wish for the Church to be more forgiving and understanding of its flock
Image copyright AFP/Reuters
Image caption Workers had to reveal the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica, which had been behind a brick wall

It is the first time the Holy Door has been opened since the Great Jubilee in the 2000 called for by St John Paul II. It has been bricked up since then.

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, 88, attended Tuesday’s event.

Jubilee Years:

Jubilee years are rooted in the Old Testament tradition of freeing slaves and prisoners once every 50 years, a concept that died out within Judaism but was taken up by Pope Boniface VIII for the Catholic Church in 1300.
Pilgrimages to Rome were at the heart of the original jubilee years, and attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the city, many willing to pay for “indulgences” – the eradication by the Church of the spiritual debt arising from sin.
It was a tradition that not only contributed copious cash to the Vatican’s coffers, but also contributed to the theological turmoil that led to the establishment of rival Protestant churches across much of northern Europe.
The last Jubilee was called by St John Paul II to mark the millennium, and this Holy Year of Mercy starts on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December 2015 and will end on the Feast of Christ the King on 20 November 2016.


What is the Catholic Year of Mercy? – by Caroline Wyatt, BBC Religious affairs correspondent

Italian security forces are on high alert following recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
Visitors to St Peter’s Square had to pass through metal detectors and under go bag and body checks.

More forgiving

Announcing the extraordinary jubilee in March, the Pope said the Holy Door was a “Door of Mercy, through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons and instils hope”.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (centre) was among those to pass through the Holy Door as Pope Francis (left) looked on
Image copyright AP
Image caption Ten of thousands of people packed into St Peter’s Square for the Mass before the Holy Door was opened
For the first time, he has instructed churches and cathedrals to take part in the tradition of the Holy Door, to help Catholics mark the jubilee at home rather than coming to Rome.
Pope Francis has long signalled his wish to change the Church’s approach from condemnation of wrongdoing to a Church that is more forgiving and understanding of its flock, our correspondent says.
This extraordinary jubilee year is seen as a practical way of giving expression to that wish.
Pope Francis took many by surprise when he announced in September that, as part of the jubilee, parish priests across the world would be allowed to absolve repentant women who asked for forgiveness for having an abortion, even though Church teaching still terms abortion a grave sin.


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Taken from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35037740

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Gentle revolution: Pope wants Year of Mercy to tenderly transform world

Image result for year mercy

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service
12.3.2015 12:26 PM ET
 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When Pope Francis planned the Year of Mercy and the opening of the Holy Door, he did not mean to give the starting signal for a frenzied wave of pilgrims to Rome.
More than call to sign up for an Eternal City package tour, the pope is inviting people to strike out on a yearlong spiritual journey to recognize a loving God who's already knocking on their door.
He says he wants the Year of Mercy to usher in a "revolution of tenderness."
Once people realize "I'm wretched, but God loves me the way I am," then "I, too, have to love others the same way," the pope said in an interview published just a few days before the Dec. 8 start of the jubilee year.
Discovering God's generous love kick-starts a virtuous circle, which "leads us to acting in a way that's more tolerant, patient, tender" and just, he said.
Speaking with "Credere," an Italian weekly magazine run by the Pauline Fathers, the pope gave an in-depth look at why he sees such an urgent need to highlight God's mercy.
"The world needs to discover that God is father, that there is mercy, that cruelty is not the path, that condemnation is not the path," he said. "Because the church herself sometimes follows a hard line, she falls into the temptation of following a hard line, into the temptation of underlining only moral norms, but so many people remain on the outside," he said.
The pope said the thought of all those people -- sinners, the doubtful, the wounded and disenfranchised -- conjured up that iconic image of seeing the church "as a field hospital after the battle."
"The wounded are to be treated, helped to heal, not subjected to cholesterol tests," he said, meaning a too narrow scrutiny of minutiae delays staving off the broader disease of conflict and indifference. He once illustrated the same concept by painting a visual image of pastors who prefer to coif and comb the wool of the tiny flock in the pews rather than seek the sheep that are outside in danger or lost.
"I believe this is the time for mercy. We are all sinners, we all carry burdens within us. I felt Jesus wants to open the door of his heart," he said in the magazine interview.
The opening of the holy doors in Rome and around the world will be a symbol of how Jesus is opening the door of his heart.
In fact, dioceses have been asked to designate and open their own "Door of Mercy" in a cathedral, an important church or sanctuary. The pope also will send out from Rome "missionaries of mercy" -- priests mandated to the world's peripheries to show patience and compassion in their ministry.
Such gestures suggest the pope still wants people to avoid the expense of travel -- like his post-election suggestion to fans back home in Argentina to give to the poor the money they would have spent for a trip.
To help people at home feel "just like being there" in Rome, the Vatican television center will start broadcasting major papal events during the Holy Year in latest generation "Ultra HD 4K" resolution as well as HD, 3D and standard definition.
With the appropriate displays or TVs, people will be able to watch events with increased depth and detail, and, for the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 8, 19 cameras were to be deployed to capture every angle, including a unique papal point of view.
The Vatican also planned to set up 4K screens in a prison in Milan, a hospital in Rome and possibly in the Holy Land so people who are physically confined could feel part of the opening ceremony.
From the very start of his pontificate, Pope Francis has been showing what the way of mercy means.
The pope's very first Angelus address and homily in 2013 centered on mercy, as he explained God always waits for that day of awakening and conversion, then forgives everything. The real problem is people -- not God -- who give up on forgiveness, he said.
But mercy changes everything, he said; it "makes the world a little less cold and more just."
The pope's own religious vocation is rooted in that concrete experience of mercy, when he -- as a 17-year-old student -- walked out of a confessional "different, changed." It was the feast of St. Matthew, and like St. Matthew, he was overcome, feeling "God looked at me with mercy" and said, "Follow me."
Realizing God knows he's a sinner, but embraces him anyway lies at the heart of Pope Francis' ministry and his motto: "By showing mercy, by choosing," based on "The Call of St. Matthew."
He said in the magazine interview that one Friday of every month during the Year of Mercy "I will make a different gesture" that shows God's mercy. He had asked the world's young people to rediscover the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, like feeding the hungry and counsel the doubtful, and choose one to practice each month as they prepare for World Youth Day in July.
The "Credere" interview reveals that the pope has been championing a more merciful church for decades.
In a small group discussion during the 1994 ordinary Synod of Bishops on consecrated life and its role in the church and the world, then then-Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said it was necessary "to institute a revolution of tenderness," to which one synod father countered, "with reasonable explanations," how "it wasn't good to use this kind of language."
But now two decades later as leader of the universal church, the opening of the Year of Mercy may be his moment to set that revolution into motion.

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Taken from: http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2015/pope-wants-year-of-mercy-to-tenderly-transform-world.cfm