Vatican City, May 19, 2015 / 02:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In his homily Tuesday Pope Francis focused on many different “goodbyes” that happen during life, and asked whether attendees were ready for the final, most important farewell before going to the Father. “Am I prepared to entrust to God all that I have? To entrust myself to God? To say that word which is the word of the son entrusting himself to his Father?” the Pope asked May 19. “I'm thinking of the great farewell, my great farewell, not when I must say 'see you then,' 'see you later,' 'bye for now,' but 'farewell.'” Pope Francis spoke to those present in the Vatican's Saint Martha guesthouse for his daily Mass. He took his inspiration from the day's readings where Jesus says farewell to the disciples before his Passion and death, and when St. Paul bids farewell before going to Jerusalem, and weeps on the beach with those who came to say goodbye to him. He noted how both readings use the word “addio,” meaning “farewell” in the final sense. Paul, he noted, entrusts everything he has to the Lord while Jesus entrusts his disciples to God. “We only say 'addio' at a time of final farewells, be they of this life or be they our final farewell,” he said, and spoke of the various types of small goodbyes we say in our lives. There is the goodbye of a mother who hugs her son before he leaves for war, and every day she wakes up with fear that someone will come and to thank her for the generosity of her child in giving his life for his nation, Francis said. He spoke of the goodbye of the “poor Rohingya from Myanmar,” who fled persecution in their homeland and are now stranded at sea. These people, he noted, have “been in boats for months over there. They arrive in a town where people give them water and food and tell them to go away. That's a farewell.” Rohingya people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group largely from the Rakhine state of Burma, in west Myanmar. Since clashes began in 2012 between the state's Buddhist community and the long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority, more than 100,000 Rohingya's have fled Myanmar by sea, according to the U.N. In order to escape forced segregation from the rest of the population inside rural ghettos, many of the Rohingya – who are not recognized by the government as a legitimate ethnic group or as citizens of Myanmar – have made the perilous journey at sea in hopes of evading persecution. Currently a number of Rohingya people – estimated to be in the thousands – remain stranded at sea in boats with dwindling supplies while Southeastern nations such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia refuse to take them in. In his homily, Pope Francis also spoke of the “great existential farewell is taking place in our times,” particularly for the Christian and Yazidi populations in Iraq who have been “chased out of their homes” and believe that they can never come back. “This is happening now,” he said. He then turned his thoughts to the final farewell each person will make before leaving this world. Francis encouraged attendees to do an examination of conscience, asking themselves: “What will I leave behind?” Saint Paul himself makes an examination of conscience when he speaks of the things he has done during his life and the uncertainty that faces him in Jerusalem, the Pope observed. He said that it is good for each person to imagine their final farewell, saying that “We don't know when it will happen, but it will be that moment when expressions like 'see you later,' 'see you soon,' 'see you tomorrow,' 'goodbye for now,' will become 'farewell.'” The Pope concluded his homily by praying that the Holy Spirit would teach each person how to say “farewell” and how to truly entrust themselves to God at the end of their lives. Read more

Vatican City, May 19, 2015 / 10:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi has said that Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta could be canonized during the upcoming Jubilee for Mercy, although he clarified that no concrete plans have been made. Fr. Lombardi told CNA May 19 that the possible canonization of Mother Teresa during the Holy Year is “a working hypothesis.” “There is no official date but you can say that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints is studying the cause.” When asked if there was a second miracle attributed to the nun’s intercession, the spokesman said, “The cause is in the process.” An Italian cardinal heading one of the Vatican dicasteries who preferred to remain anonymous told CNA May 19 that the canonization was brought up during a Monday meeting between Pope Francis and the heads of various dicasteries in the Roman Curia. According to the cardinal, the Vatican’s prefect of the Congregation of the Causes for Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, suggested Sept. 4, 2016 – which is being observed as a jubilee day for workers and volunteers of mercy – to the others as a possible canonization date, since it is close to Sept. 5, the nun’s feast day and the anniversary of her death. The possible canonization of Mother Teresa was also brought up during the May 5 presentation of the Jubilee for Mercy. A journalist from the Italian publication Citta Nuova noted the date for the jubilee celebration on the eve of her feast day, and asked whether the decision signaled that her canonization could be close. On that occasion Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, which is organizing the Holy Year for Mercy, responded by saying that “everyone is waiting for the canonization of Mother Teresa.” “Who more than Mother Teresa can be recognized today as one who lived the works of mercy, and who more than she could be capable of sustaining the commitment of millions of people – men, women, youth – in various forms of volunteer work express the beauty of the mercy of the Church?” he asked. Although no plans are official, the archbishop expressed his desire that all volunteer organizations would find “an opportunity of encounter” in the Sept. 4 jubilee day. Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia. The youngest of three children, she attended a youth group run by a Jesuit priest called Sodality, which eventually opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun. She joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta, where she taught at a high school. After contracting tuberculosis, she was sent to rest in Darjeeling, and it was on the way that she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and live among the poor. The Vatican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and to live her new call under the guidance of the Archbshop of Calcutta. After she left her convent, Mother Teresa began working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. A year later, some of her former students joined her, and together they took in men, women and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets. In 1950, the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta. In 1952, the government granted them a house from which to continue their mission of serving Calcutta's poor and forgotten. The congregation quickly grew from a single house for the dying and unwanted to nearly 500 houses around the world. Mother Teresa set up homes for prostitutes, battered women, orphanages for poor children and houses for those suffering from AIDS. She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying, and is known to have said, “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God's love.” She died Sept. 5, 1997, and was beatified just six years later by St. John Paul II Oct. 19, 2003.   Read more

Vatican City, May 19, 2015 / 02:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to the Italian bishops' general assembly on Monday, Pope Francis urged them to support the laity through Christian formation, so that they can assume their proper responsibilities in the public square. An “ecclesial and pastoral sensibility” is “reflected in reinforcing the indispensible role of the laity, who are disposed to take on their responsibilities,” the Pope said May 18 in the Vatican's Synod Hall. “In truth, the laity who have an authentic Christian formation do not have need of a 'bishop-pilot' or a 'monsignor-pilot', or of clerical input to assume their proper responsibilities, on all levels: from the political to the social, from the economic to the legislative! They have, rather, all the need of a shepherding bishop!” The Italian bishops' general assembly, being held May 18-21 at the Vatican, is focused on the reception of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. “Our Christian and episcopal vocation is to go against the tide,” the Pope reflected: “to be joyful witnesses of the Risen Christ, so as to transmit joy and hope to others.” Pope Francis then quoted from Christ's sermon on the mount: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” With that introduction, the Pope told the bishops that “it is very unsightly to encounter a dejected consecrated person, demotivated or shut down: he is like a dry well where the people cannot find water to quench their thirst.” He said his questions and concerns “come from a global vision” gleaned from his meetings with bishops conferences worldwide throughout the past two years, “where I noticed how important is what might be called the ecclesial sensibility: namely the appropriation of the very sentiments of Christ, of humility, compassion, mercy … and of wisdom.” This ecclesial sensibility implies that bishops be neither “shy nor irrelevant in disavowing and defeating the widespread mentality of public and private corruption, which has so shamelessly impoverished families, retired persons, honest workers, Christian communities, and discarded the young, who are systematically deprived of any hope for their future, and has marginalized the weak and the needy.” Continuing to reflect on this sensibility, the Pope emphasized that the shepherds must “go out to the people of God, to defend them from ideological colonization, which strips away human dignity and identity.” Ecclesial sensibility “is also manifested in pastoral choices and in the elaboration of documents,” he said, reflecting that abstract, theoretical, and doctrinal aspects “should not prevail” in pastoral documents “as if our guidelines are not destined for our people or our country – but are only for a few specialists and scholars – instead, we must pursue the effort to translate them into concrete and understandable proposals.” Pope Francis' final point in ecclesial sensibility was its manifestation in collegiality: between bishops and priests; among bishops and dioceses; the peripheries and the center; and between bishops and bishops conferences, and the Successor of Peter. He denounced a lack of collegiality both in “designing pastoral plans” and in financial commitments, and his other example of “a lack of ecclesial sensibility” was found in asking “why religious institutes, monasteries, and congregations let themselves grow so old that they are no longer faithful, gospel witnesses to their founding charisms?” “I will stop here,” Pope Francis stated, “having wanted to offer only a few examples of the ecclesial sensibility which is weakened because of a continual confrontation with the enormous problems of the world and because of the crisis which does not spare even the same Christian and ecclesial identity.” “May the Lord – during the Jubilee of Mercy which will begin next December 8 – grant 'the joy of rediscovering and rendering fruitful God’s mercy, with which we are all called to give comfort to every man and every woman of our time.'” Read more

Vatican City, May 18, 2015 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One day after canonizing the first two Palestinian saints since the early days of Christianity, Pope Francis met with a group of sisters from the Holy Land – urging them to pray for peace against “white-gloved terrorism” and persecution. Speaking of the newly canonized women, Saints Mariam Baouardy and Marie Alphonsine Danil Ghattas, the pontiff said: “I give you a mission: pray to the two new saints for peace in your land, in order that this never ending war may end, and that there may be peace among your people.” He made these remarks during a May 18 audience with members of the Religious Carmelites of Bethlehem and the Middle East, and the Sisters of the Rosary of Jerusalem, who were in Rome for Sunday's canonization. Meeting with them in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope urged the religious present to also pray for persecuted Christians suffering at the hands of what he described as “white-gloved terrorism.” These Christians, he said, are “driven from their homes, from their lands, and are victims of persecution 'with white gloves.' It is hidden, but it is done!” This is not the first time Pope Francis has made reference to “white-gloved terrorism.” In June 2014, he spoke of this persecution with “white gloves,” referring to those Christians forced out in a so-called “elegant way.” The sisters present at the audience with the Holy Father were among the tens of thousands in attendance for the canonization Mass of the Palestinian sisters on May 17. Saint Mariam Baouardy (1846-1878), canonized Sunday, was a mystic and stigmatic also known as Mary Jesus Crucified. She was a  Palestinian and foundress of the Discalced Carmelites of Bethlehem. She and her family were members of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. She spent time in France and India before helping to found the Carmelite congregation in Bethlehem in 1875. The other new Palestinian saint, Sister Marie Alphonsine Danil Ghattas (1843-1927), was a co-founder of the Congregation of the Rosary Sisters. Born in Palestine, she spent much of her life in Bethlehem and its area, where she helped the poor and established schools and orphanages. Pope Francis expressed his happiness that the sisters had made the pilgrimage for the canonization. He then recounted a story told him by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the State of Palestine, of how he left Jordan in a plane full of nuns. “Poor pilot,” the Pope joked. “Many thanks!” The pontiff urged those present once again to “pray much for peace,” and invited them to recite the Hail Mary with him, each in their own language. The Palestinian women were canonized alongside two others: Saint Jeanne Emilie de Villeneuve (1811-1854) and Saint Maria Cristina Brando (1856-1906), from France and Italy, respectively. Read more

Vatican City, May 17, 2015 / 06:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church’s celebration of the canonization of two new women saints from Palestine on Sunday helps recognize both women’s important role in Arab culture and Arabs’ impo... Read more

Vatican City, May 17, 2015 / 01:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday morning, Pope Francis called for prayers for the people of Burundi, where violent clashes have broken out following a failed coup last week. “I also wish to invite you to pray f... Read more