Vatican City, Oct 31, 2015 / 10:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Saturday spoke about the vocation of Christian business executives to be missionaries in the world. He stressed they should respect their employees’ needs. “You are called to live the fidelity to the demands of the Gospel and the social doctrine of the Church in the family, in work, and in society,” the Pope said. He addressed about 7,000 members of the Italian Christian Union of Business Executives gathered in Vatican City’s Paul VI Hall Oct. 31. The Pope encouraged the executives to live out what he referred to as their “entrepreneurial vocation” in a “lay missionary” spirit. “This call to be missionaries in the social dimension of the Gospel in the difficult and complex world of work, economy, and business brings with it an opening and an evangelical closeness to different situations of poverty and fragility,” he said. He urged those present to be attentive to the quality of their employees' work lives, especially with regard to the balance between work and family life. Pope Francis made special mention of women in the workplace. He said they face the challenge of protecting their right to work while “fully recognizing their vocation to maternity and to the presence in the family.” In off-the-cuff remarks, he recounted one challenge: "How many times has a women gone to her boss and said I am pregnant and at the end of the month she is let go?” he asked. The Pope said the business executives’ group aims to be “architects of development for the common good.” He said the upcoming Year of Mercy offers an opportunity for programs to promote charitable works. The year runs from Dec. 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, until Nov. 20, 2016, the Solemnity of Christ the King. However, Pope Francis said it is not enough to simple make small acts of aid and charity. Such acts should be oriented to the “service of the person and the common good.” “You are called to cooperate in order to grow an entrepreneurial spirit of subsidiarity, to deal with the ethical challenges of the market and, above all the challenge of creating good employment opportunities," he said. Pope Francis observed that the economy and companies require ethics in order to function. He explained that these ethics must be centered on the person and the community. The Pope told the business leaders that when they commit to this end, “you will bear the fruit to the extent to which the Gospel will be alive and present in your hearts, in your mind, and in your actions.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 30, 2015 / 10:36 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis reflected on the life and death of Blessed Oscar Romero, who was recognized as a martyr earlier this year, stressing that each Christian ought to be ready to give their life for the faith. “A martyr is not born. It's a grace that the Lord allows, and that in a way concerns every baptized person,” Pope Francis told a group pilgrims from El Salvador Oct. 30. Bl. Oscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador (the Salvadoran capital) from 1977 until his March 24, 1980 martyrdom. Quoting a phrase of Bl. Romero, the Pope said that “We must be willing to die for our faith, even if the Lord does not give us this honor.” To give one's life doesn't only consist of being killed, he said, but rather “to give one's life, to have the spirit of a martyrdom, is to surrender it in duty, in silence, in prayer, in the fulfillment of duty; in this silence of everyday life; to give one's life little by little.” The Salvadorans met with Pope Francis during their pilgrimage to Rome made in thanksgiving for the recent beatification of Archbishop Romero. He was killed while saying Mass, and in February Pope Francis officially recognized his death as having been for hatred of the faith. He was beatified in El Salvador May 23. The same day, Pope Francis declared that the martyr's feast will be celebrated March 24 each year – the day “in which he was born into heaven.” In his speech to the Salvadoran pilgrims, Pope Francis noted that since the beginning of the Church, Christians have been convinced that the blood of the martyrs “is the seed of Christians.” Even today the blood of many Christians continues, in a dramatic way, to be poured out in the world, he said, explaining that these people give their lives with the certainty that it will bear fruit and lead to an increase of holiness, justice, reconciliation, and love of God. Francis noted that a martyr isn’t someone stuck in the past, serving as just “a beautiful image adorned in our churches that we remember with a certain nostalgia.” “No, the martyr is a brother, a sister, who continues to accompany us in the mystery of the communion of the saints and who, united to Christ, does not ignore our earthly pilgrimage, our sufferings, our anguish.” The Pope drew attention to the many others who have lost their lives for the faith in the recent years of El Salvador’s history, including Fr. Rutilio Grande. A Jesuit priest and good friend of Bl. Romero, Fr. Grande was assassinated in 1977, just three years before the archbishop himself. Both Bl. Romero and Fr. Grande, as well as many other Salvadorans who were killed in hatred of the faith, weren’t afraid to die and have therefore “won and have been made intercessors for their people.” In unscripted remarks, Pope Francis said that it mustn’t be forgotten that Bl. Romero’s martyrdom began long before his death, with witness, suffering, and persecution. As a young priest who witnessed what was happening at the time, Francis said that even after the archbishop was assassinated “he was defamed, slandered, his memory despoiled, and his martyrdom continued also for his brethren in the priesthood and in the episcopate.” During his time as Archbishop of San Salvador, Bl. Romero had been a vocal critic of the human rights abuses of the repressive Salvadoran government, and he spoke out on behalf of the poor and the victims of the government. Because of this advocacy for the poor, many accused the archbishop of supporting Marxist interpretations of liberation theology. However, theologians who worked closely with the archbishop have found no proof of the accusations, but rather argue that his love of the poor was rooted in Church teaching and the Gospel. The Pope stressed that the rumors aren’t mere hearsay, but are things that he himself heard, adding that Bl. Oscar Romero is a man who continues to be a martyr even today. “After having given his life, he continues to give it by allowing himself to be assailed by all this misunderstanding and slander,” he said, adding that “this gives me strength.” “Only God knows the stories of those people who have given their lives, who have died, and continue to be stoned with the hardest stone that exists in the world: language.” Pope Francis said that as the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy begins in a few weeks’ time, Bl. Oscar Romero serves as a stimulus for Salvadorans to proclaim the Gospel with renewed vigor, advancing the causes of true justice, peace, and reconciliation. Like Bl. Oscar Romero, Francis said he longs to see the day when “the terrible suffering of many of our brothers, due to hate, violence and injustice, would disappear.” He closed quoting the late archbishop, and praying that the Lord send “a shower of mercy and goodness, with a flood of graces,” which converts the hearts of all Salvadorans. “May the name of the Divine Savior bring conversion in a country where all feel redeemed and as brothers, without differences, because we are one in Christ our Lord.”   Read more

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2015 / 11:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Observing the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council's declaration on Christian education, Pope Francis on Wednesday established a foundation meant to promote Catholic education worldwide. “I am grateful to the Congregation for Catholic Education for the initiatives organised for this 50th anniversary of the declaration Gravissimum educationis,” the Holy Father wrote in an Oct. 28 chirograph, a letter circulated in the Roman Curia. “I am likewise pleased to learn that the same Dicastery wishes to constitute on this occasion a Foundation named Gravissimum educationis, with the aim of pursuing 'scientific and cultural ends, intended to promote Catholic education in the world',” he wrote, quoting the foundation's statutes. The Pope's letter instituted the Gravissimum educationis Foundation in Vatican City, making it subject to canon law, Vatican City civil law, as well as its own statutes. One of three declarations of Vatican II, Gravissimum educationis recognized the Church's role in education, ordered toward man's salvation, and stated fundamental principles of Christian education. The conciliar document, issued Oct. 28, 1965, stated that Catholic schools are meant “to help youth grow according to the new creatures they were made through baptism as they develop their own personalities, and finally to order the whole of human culture to the news of salvation so that the knowledge the students gradually acquire of the world, life and man is illumined by faith.” In his letter Pope Francis quoted from the declaration, saying, “The Church recognises the 'extreme importance of education in the life of man and how its influence ever grows in the social progress of this age', are profoundly linked to the fulfilment of 'the mandate she has received from her divine founder of proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men and of restoring all things in Christ'.”   Read more