Vatican City, Dec 29, 2016 / 04:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When white smoke poured out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel on October 16, 1978, Fr. Eamon Kelly, a seminarian studying in Rome at the time, couldn’t have known that he was witnessing the election of a future saint. Nor did he know that more than a dozen years after that election, he would be reprimanded by that same future saint, John Paul II, during one of his Wednesday general audiences. It was Holy Week of 1992, and Fr. Kelly, a priest with the Congregation of the Legion of Christ, was on his annual pilgrimage to Rome. But this year was different. His youth group had brought along eight Russian young people, the tension of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War just barely in the rearview mirror of history. Fr. Kelly had done some strategizing to make sure the Russian youth got a good seat. “We had our tickets and we went in early, and we did get positions up against the barrier of the corridor,” Fr. Kelly said. “So that was fantastic, we were going to see Pope John Paul II.” His German students gave up all of the seats closest to the aisle, so that the Russian young people would get to shake the Pope’s hand as he walked through the Paul VI audience hall. “I had the kids observe how he did it – he’d shake hands but by that he’d already moved on to talking to the next person, greeting them,” Fr. Kelly recalled. “So I told them this pope knows Russian, and you need to greet him politely when he’s two or three people away; say some nice greeting in Russian.” They did, and it worked: sure enough, the Pope’s ears perked up when he heard the Russian greetings. As soon as he got to the group, he stopped walking. “He started talking to them in Russian, and there was a tremendous chemistry going on, and everybody was super excited. Our six rows of kids had assimilated into about two,” Fr. Kelly said. Eventually the Pope asked, in Russian, how the group was able to make it to Rome. All the Russian students turned and pointed at Fr. Kelly. He was a head taller than most of the students, so Fr. Kelly suddenly found himself in straight eye contact with John Paul II. “There was so much joy and appreciation and gratitude in his eyes that these kids were there,” Fr. Kelly said. “But then, his look turned like a storm with a critical question – ‘Why didn’t you tell me before they came?’” the Pope demanded of the priest. “You know, like I could call up the Pope and tell him we’re coming,” Fr. Kelly recalled with a laugh. “I tried to give an excuse, I said it was hanging by a thread that it was going to happen, I just fumbled my way through it. What are you going to do when the Pope is asking you for accountability?” Fr. Kelly said. In hindsight, Fr. Kelly said he maybe could have called an office in the Vatican to alert them of the Russian students, but he didn’t realize that this visit would be so important for the Pope. But Russia was dear to St. John Paul II’s heart, as he had played a critical role in the peaceful fall of communism and the Soviet Union. Just a few years prior, he had met for over an hour with President Mikhail Gorbachev, who later said the peaceful dissolution of the USSR would have been impossible without the Roman Pontiff. Perhaps their meeting in 1989 had also softened Gorbachev’s heart prior to World Youth Day 1991, when the leader allowed some 20,000 Russian youth to attend the event in Poland for the first time ever. The conciliatory move was the whole reason the Russian students were now meeting John Paul II in Rome. “He said to me, 'This is the first group of Russians I’ve ever greeted in the audience hall',” Fr. Kelly said. It’s possible that it may have been the first youth group from Moscow to visit Rome ever, Fr. Kelly said. “I don’t want to claim that title, because there may have been others, but it’s unlikely that anyone would have been able to come before the start of communism,” he said. He said the Pope was visibly moved by the Russian students. “He was happy, he was happy. He said if he would have known that they were there, he would have greeted them formally from the stage.” And the Russian students? “They were elated.”  This article was originally published on CNA Oct. 22, 2016. Read more

Vatican City, Oct 22, 2016 / 03:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Dialogue is a key element of mercy, Pope Francis said Saturday, explaining that when we interrupt others in order to push our own opinions without truly listening, we risk ruining relationships. Speaking to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 22, the Pope pointed to “a very important aspect of mercy, which is precisely dialogue.” “We don’t dialogue when we don’t listen well or when we tend to interrupt the other in order to prove that we are right,” he said, noting that many times when we are listening to someone, “we stop them and say ‘it’s not like this!’” By not letting people finish explaining what they want to say, “this impedes dialogue, this is aggression,” he said, adding that “if I don't let others say everything they have in their heart, and if I start to scream – and today there is a lot of screaming – this relationship between us won't have a good ending.” Instead, “true dialogue needs moments of silence in order to welcome the extraordinary gift of the presence of God in our brother.” Pope Francis spoke to the roughly 100,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Jubilee general audience, according to the Vatican Gendarmerie. The extra audience is held once a month in addition to the Pope’s weekly audience for the duration of the Jubilee of Mercy. In his address, the Pope focused on the Gospel passage from John in which Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well who, after speaking with him, tells the entire region about her conversation with the Messiah. One of the things that stands out most in the passage, Francis said, is the dialogue between the Jesus and the woman. “Dialogue allows people to know and understand the needs of others,” he said, explaining that to dialogue is a sign of respect, because it puts people in “a position to listen” and to receive the best of others. It’s also a sign of charity, because although dialogue doesn’t ignore differences, “it can help in searching for and sharing the common good,” he said.   “Many times we don’t encounter our brothers, despite living beside them, above all when we allow our position to dominate over that of the other,” Francis continued. When we listen to what others are saying and then, “with meekness,” explain our own thoughts, “the family, the neighborhood and one’s place of work are better.” However, if we interrupt and start “to scream,” the relationship won’t end well. Dialogue helps “to humanize relationships and to overcome misunderstandings,” he said, adding that there is a great need for dialogue within families. “How much easier questions are resolved if they learn to listen to each other,” he said, noting that this goes for every relationship, including husband and wife, parents and children, teachers and students, and managers and employees. The Church is also in dialogue with the men and women of every age, in order to understand “the needs that are in the heart of every person and to contribute to the realization of the common good,” he said. Pope Francis also pointed to the importance of dialogue with other religions and of caring for creation, saying that “dialogue on such an important theme is an unavoidable requirement.” He concluded by emphasizing that all forms of dialogue “are an expression of the great need for the love of God,” because dialogue “breaks down walls of division and misunderstanding.” Truly listening to others “creates bridges of communication and doesn’t allow anyone to be isolated, locking themselves inside their own little world.” Jesus understood well what was in the Samaritan woman’s heart, but “nevertheless, he did not deny her the ability to express herself and he entered a little bit into the mystery of her life,” the Pope said, explaining that this teaching “also goes for us.” “Through dialogue, we can make signs of God’s mercy grow and render them an instrument of welcome and respect.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2016 / 03:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- When it comes to promoting vocations in the Church, Pope Francis said it all begins with an encounter with God – and that pastoral ministry in the area should focus on listening to youth and being there to answer their questions.   Pointing to his own papal motto “Miserando atque eligendo,” meaning “he sees by having mercy and choosing,” the Pope said Oct. 21 that he chose the motto “in memory of my youthful years in which I strongly felt the call of the Lord.”   The call, he said, “didn't occur as a result of a conference or a beautiful theory, but by having experienced the merciful gaze of Jesus on me.”   Francis confessed that when he hears words used in common Church-speak such as “vocational ministry,” he is always “a little afraid,” because the phrase “could make one think of one of the many sectors of ecclesial action, of a curial office or, rather, of setting up a project.”   While these are certainly important, the Pope stressed that “there is much more: vocational ministry is an encounter with the Lord!”   “When we welcome Christ, we live a decisive encounter which sheds light on our existence, pulls us out of the anguish of our small world and makes us become disciples enamored with the Master.”   Vocational ministry, he said, means learning the style of Jesus, “who passes in the places of everyday life, stopping without haste, and looking at his brothers with mercy, guiding them to an encounter with God the Father.”   Pope Francis spoke to participants in an Oct. 19-21 conference on vocational ministry, organized by the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy.   On Oct. 6 the Vatican announced “Young People, the Faith and the Discernment of Vocation” as the theme for the next synod of bishops, set to take place in 2018. The Pope's speech to the conference participants, then, likely contains themes that will come up in the discussion.   In his address, Francis recalled how when Jesus first called the tax collector Matthew to be his disciple, he first went out to preach, then saw Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth and called him.   The Pope pointed to the three verbs of going out, seeing and calling, “which indicate the dynamism of every vocational ministry,” and offered a reflection on each.   When it comes to “going out,” he said one thing vocational ministry needs is “a Church in movement, able to expand its borders, measuring them not by the narrowness of human calculations or the fear of making mistakes, but on the large measure of the merciful heart of God.”   Vocations, he said, will never flourish as long as we stay closed inside “the comfortable pastoral criteria” of an “it's always been done like this” attitude and if we aren't “audacious and creative” in rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of how we evangelize. “We must learn to go out from our rigidity which renders us incapable of communicating the joy of the Gospel, from standardized formulas that are often anachronistic and from preconceived analysis that pigeonhole people's lives in cold schemes. Get out from all this,” he said.   Francis then turned specifically to the role of bishops and priests, telling them they are the ones primarily responsible for nourishing “Christian and priestly vocations.” This task, he said, “cannot be delegated to a bureaucratic office.”   “It's sad when a priest lives only for himself, closing himself in the safe fortress of the rectory, of the sacristy or a small group of the 'most faithful,'” he said, noting that the Gospel urges us to do otherwise.   The Pope pointed to the importance of seeing, noting how during his ministry, Jesus stops and meets the gaze of others “without haste. This is what makes his call fascinating and attractive.”   Unfortunately today's face-paced world doesn’t always leave space for the internal silence “in which the call of the Lord resounds,” he said, cautioning that at times even in Christian communities we run the risk of being “taken in by the rush, excessively concerned about the things to do.”   By doing this, we risk falling into “an empty organizational activism, without being able to stop and encounter people,” Pope Francis said, noting that in the Gospel, we see that vocations begin from “a merciful gaze that rests on me.”   “This is how I like to think of the style of vocational pastoral,” he said, painting a picture of a pastor who is attentive, not in a rush and is able to stop, read situations “in depth,” and really enter into the lives of other people without ever making them feel threatened or judged.   A pastor's gaze, he said, is “capable of inspiring awe for the Gospel, of awakening from the slumber into which the culture of consumerism and superficiality immerses us and arouse the authentic questions of happiness, above all in the youth.”   It's also a gaze of a discernment that accompanies people without ever “taking possession of their conscience or pretending to control the grace of God,” Francis said, adding that this gaze must always be attentive and vigilant.   When it comes to priestly vocations and entrance into the seminary, the Pope begged bishops to “discern in truth” and to have “a shrewd and cautions gaze, without superficiality or shallowness.”   “Vigilance and prudence,” he said, stressing that the Church and the world “need mature and balanced priests, brave and generous pastors capable of closeness, listening and mercy.”   Francis then turned to action of calling, noting how it's the typical verb used when referring to Christian vocations.   “Jesus doesn't give long speeches, he doesn't deliver a long program to adhere to, and neither does he offer ready-made answers,” he said.   What Christ wants is “to put people on the move, moving them from a lethal inactivity, breaking the illusion that it's possible to live happily staying comfortably seated among one's own securities,” he said, adding that the desire to seek is “a treasure” often found in the most young.   This gift must be cared for and cultivated in order to bear fruit, the Pope said, explaining that “instead of reducing the faith to a recipe book or a set of rules to be observed,” pastors can help youth ask the right questions that will ultimately help them discover “the joy of the Gospel.”   He noted how times pastors and pastoral workers get tired or frustrated by not seeing results, but said that “if we don’t close ourselves in complaints and continue to go out to announce the Gospel, the Lord will remain at our side and give us the courage to cast nets even when we are tired and deluded.”   Turning again to priests and bishops, Pope Francis urged them to persevere in making themselves close to others and in going out with a merciful gaze.   He told them not to be afraid of encounter or of announcing the Gospel, and not to be shy in offering youth the way of priestly life, “showing, above all with your joyful witness, how beautiful it is to follow the Lord and give him your life forever.”   “Vocational ministry is a fundamental task for the Church and calls into question the ministry of pastors and of laity,” he said, adding that “it’s an urgent mission that the Lord asks us to fulfill with generosity.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2016 / 06:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday the Vatican announced they will be sending a representative to Egypt to set plans for the official re-launching of dialogue between the Holy See and the Al-Azhar Mosque and adjunct Unive... Read more