The Dialog

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — The goal of politics and economics is to serve all humanity, starting with the poorest, the most vulnerable and the unborn, Pope Francis told British Prime Minister David Cameron, president of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

“Money and other political and economic means must serve, not rule,” the pope said, adding that “in a seemingly paradoxical way, free and disinterested solidarity is the key to the smooth functioning of the global economy.”

The pope also urged the world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, to help broker an immediate cease-fire in Syria and bring warring sides to the negotiating table. The leaders were holding their annual summit at Lough Erne resort in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, June 17-18.

“Peace demands a far-sighted renunciation of certain claims in order to build together a more equitable and just peace,” the pope wrote, adding that peace “is an essential prerequisite” for protecting human life and eradicating hunger.

Pope Francis’ letter, released by the Vatican June 16, was written in response to a letter Cameron sent the pope June 5 outlining some of the priorities the British prime minister intended to push during his one-year term as president of the G-8. Cameron said he wants to emphasize openness in economies, governments and societies through the support of free trade, tackling tax evasion and encouraging greater transparency and accountability in government actions.

In his reply, Pope Francis said if the work of world leaders was to have any impact, all political and economic efforts and policies must be seen as the means, not the end, with the true goal being the protection of the human person and well-being of all humanity.

While freedom and creativity must be guaranteed for people and societies, nations also “must promote and guarantee their responsible exercise in solidarity, with particular attention to the poorest,” the pope wrote.

As Pope Benedict XVI made clear, Pope Francis said, legal frameworks regulating economic activity and measures aimed at remedying the current global financial crisis “must be guided by the ethics of truth.”

“Therefore, concern for the fundamental material and spiritual welfare of every human person is the starting-point for every political and economic solution and the ultimate measure of its effectiveness and its ethical validity,” the pope wrote.

“Moreover, the goal of economics and politics is to serve humanity, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable wherever they may be, even in their mothers’ wombs,” he wrote.

“Every economic and political theory or action must set about providing each inhabitant of the plant with the minimum wherewithal to live in dignity and freedom, with the possibility of supporting a family, educating children, praising God and developing one’s own human potential,” the pope said.

“In the absence of such a vision, all economic activity is meaningless,” he wrote.

Solidarity is the key to a healthy global economy and proper solutions to today’s serious crises will require “a courageous change of attitude” that puts economics and politics at the service of people, not vice versa, he said in his letter.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — When boasting of having Jesus Christ as one’s savior, people shouldn’t pretend they aren’t guilty of sin, Pope Francis said in a morning homily.

The sincere and humble admission of one’s weaknesses, of having “a sliver of Satan in my flesh,” shows that the power of salvation comes from God, not oneself, the pope said at Mass June 14 in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

The pope concelebrated Mass with Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy; those in attendance at the Mass included members of the clergy office.

The pope highlighted the day’s reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians in which the apostle said, “We hold this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.”

In fact, the only way to truly receive the gift of salvation is in “an earthen vessel,” that is, in recognizing one’s own sinful nature with real humility, the pope said.

“The dialogue of salvation” happens between Christ and people exactly “as we are,” he said.

He said when St. Paul spoke to the people, he always referred to his past mistakes and sinful nature, and never insinuated that ‘“Now I am a saint.’ No. Even now a sliver of Satan in my flesh” remains.

St. Paul “is a sinner who welcomes Jesus Christ, speaks with Jesus Christ.”

The key to sharing Christ with others is humility, which all priests should reflect, Pope Francis said.

“If we only boast about our resume and accomplishments and nothing else, we will end up being mistaken. We cannot proclaim Jesus Christ the Savior because in the end we don’t feel it” if people don’t really experience salvation, he said.

People have to demonstrate “real humility” and repentance for specific, concrete sins, and not be “sinners with that humility that looks more like a little angel face. No, intense humility,” he said.

If Christians and priests cannot achieve this humility and make “this confession to themselves and the church, then something is wrong;” and the first thing that will fail is “understanding the beauty of the salvation Jesus brings us.”

“We have a treasure, Jesus Christ the Savior, the cross of Jesus Christ, that we are proud of,” he said. “But we hold it in an earthen vessel.

“Jesus Christ didn’t save us with an idea, with an intellectual program, no. He saved us with his flesh, with the concreteness of the flesh.”

And it is only in the flesh, “in earthen vessels that one can understand, one can receive” Christ’s gift of salvation, he said.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — An Argentine rabbi who is a close friend of Pope Francis said he thinks the pope is “wonderful” as leader of the universal church and is also “a spiritual success.”

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, an Argentine biophysicist and rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary was in Rome in mid-June for a four-day interreligious gathering organized by the Focolare movement.

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a leader in the country’s Jewish community, is pictured in a March 18 photo. Rabbi Skorka said soccer formed the initial bridge between he and Pope Francis, but their bond went beyond sport and helped to bring Christians and Jews closer together after a period of less-than-cordial relations in Argentina. (CNS photo/David Agren)

He and two dozen other participants — rabbis, Jews and Catholics from the United States, Italy, Argentina and Uruguay — attended the pope’s weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square June 12.

Rabbi Skorka told reporters after the audience that the pope looked very well and was wonderful as pope.

However, “you don’t need my opinion,” the rabbi said. “You can see with your own eyes the success, the spiritual success,” he has achieved through his words, manners and even “revolutionary acts,” presumably including the pope’s decision not to live in the Apostolic Palace.

The rabbi said he is not at all surprised with the new pope’s popularity.

Not only will Pope Francis continue on in the same vein, the rabbi predicted, but he will be “emphasizing changes, accepting challenges more and more, undoubtedly with God’s help and God’s blessings.”

Then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Rabbi Skorka shared a passion for soccer and worked together for years to bring Catholics and Jews closer together after some episodes of less-than-cordial relations in Argentina.

The Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, which Pope Francis oversaw, awarded Rabbi Skorka an honorary doctorate in 2012, which, the rabbi said, was a watershed moment and could never have been done just a decade before. The achievement was a “revolution” brought on specifically “by Bergoglio,” he said.

The pair co-wrote the book, “On Heaven and Earth,” which is a compilation of conversations between the then-cardinal and rabbi first published in Buenos Aires in 1995. They discussed pastoral views on everyday problems and offered insight into how Judaism and Catholicism answer existential questions and provide guidance to living a moral life.

Rabbi Skorka told journalists in Rome that he could tell people “a thousand things” about the pope that truly stood out for him.

One of the many poignant moments they shared, he said, was working on the book. They spent the course of a year meeting together with a journalist who would record, transcribe and edit the two men’s conversation.

During that year, all three people endured the illness, suffering and death of a loved-one, the rabbi said; the cardinal lost one of his brothers, the journalist lost his mother, and the rabbi lost his mother-in-law.

When they approached the book’s chapter that would deal with death, “we all looked at death in these people we lost,” which helped them further develop their ideas, the rabbi said.

He said that the pope saw death as detachment from the world, which is not easy, but faith helps people know God is there to take their hands when they are ready to leap and abandon themselves to his embrace.

This “simple concept” contributed to the rabbi’s perspective of death as “handing over one’s spirit to the Father.” But this moment is also accompanied by “a fight,” especially in younger people who think about all the things they didn’t get to do yet in life, the rabbi said.

The rabbi said one day when the three men sat down to work on the book, the future pope asked the journalist how his mother was doing. The journalist replied, “She died.”

“Immediately, like a reflex, without thinking about it, Bergoglio closed his eyes and was silent,” the rabbi said. That moment of silence “was an expression of empathy,” living in the other person’s pain and loss for a moment, “as well as praying for the soul” of the departed, he said.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — A church that is rich and lacking in praise for the Lord is an old, lifeless church that neglects the true treasure of God’s free gift of grace and salvation, Pope Francis said in a morning homily.

“Proclaiming the Gospel must take the road of poverty,” the pope said at Mass June 11 in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Those who preach and share the Gospel need to give witness to poverty, where the only abundant riches in their lives are the free and joyful gifts received from the Lord, he said.

The pope, who concelebrated Mass with Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, highlighted a line from the day’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

When Jesus told his apostles, “Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick,” he was urging them to proclaim the Gospel “with simplicity,” Pope Francis said.

Simplicity allows the power of the Word of God and God’s grace to grab the spotlight, he said. It also shows  the confidence the apostles had in God’s word because without it, “they would probably have done something else.”

“Evangelical preaching flows from gratuitousness, from the wonder of the salvation that comes and that which I have received freely and must give freely,” he said.

This was the experience of the early church as “St. Peter didn’t have a bank account, and when he had to pay taxes, the Lord sent him to the sea to fish and find inside the fish the money for paying,” the pope said.

Also, he said, when Philip met the treasurer of an Ethiopian queen on the road from Jerusalem, Philip didn’t see the moment as an occasion for business, to “set up an organization with him to support the Gospel.”

“No. He did not strike a deal with him: he preached, baptized and left,” the pope said.

However, since the beginning, the temptation has always been there to seek strength elsewhere, beyond the freeness of salvation, he said.

This creates “a little confusion” and proclamation, which the Lord invites people to engage in, can become proselytism.

Pope Francis cited a phrase from Pope Benedict XVI’s homily in Brazil in 2007, when the now retired pope said, “The church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by attraction.”

This attraction, Pope Francis said, comes from the witness of people who freely proclaim the free gift of salvation.

They also must walk the path of poverty, he said, where “I have no riches, my only wealth is the gift I received, God,” and his free gifts of grace and of salvation.

“This gratuitousness, this is our wealth,” he said.

The church must carry out its charitable work, where money is necessary, but it can be done with “a heart of poverty, not with the heart of an investor or an entrepreneur,” he said.

It’s this kind of poverty that “saves us from becoming managers, businessmen,” he added. “The church is not an NGO.”

Poverty and praising the Lord, where “we are not asking, we are only praising,” are two signs that an apostle of Jesus is living out the gift of God’s grace, he said.

“When we find apostles that want to make the church rich and make a church without the gratuitousness of praise, the church becomes old, it becomes an NGO; the church becomes lifeless,” the pope said.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Religious freedom is talked about more than it is protected, Pope Francis said.

“The serious violations inflicted on this basic right are causes of serious concern,” and the world’s nations must act together to uphold “the intangible dignity of the human person against every attack,” he said.

Pope Francis looks over a book with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano during a private meeting at the Vatican June 8. (CNS photo/Maria Grazia Picciarella, pool)

The pope made his comments during an audience with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the Vatican June 8.

The pope said the cooperation that exists between church and state in Italy is built on the daily interaction and rapport between government officials and Catholics, whose main aim is always the promotion of “the interests of the people and society.”

He noted that 2013 marked the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan. This proclamation of tolerance of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire is seen by many, he said, “as a symbol of the first affirmation of the principle of religious freedom.”

However, today “religious freedom is more often declared than achieved,” the pope said.

Religious liberty, in fact, is frequently violated and finds itself “subjected to various kinds of threats,” the pope said. “It’s the duty of everyone to defend religious freedom and promote it for all people.”

Also, everyone benefits when people together safeguard this “moral” right as it “guarantees the growth and development of the whole community,” the pope said.

Pope Francis also told Napolitano that the “profound and persistent global crisis” in the world today worsens current problems, especially for the weaker members of society.

But the most worrying problems today include the weakening of the family and social ties, falling birthrates, the rule of profit in the work world and insufficient attention being paid to younger generations and their education.

In order to face the crisis, he said, “it is fundamental to guarantee and develop” democratic institutions, which are precisely an arena where lay Catholics can make “critical, just and creative” contributions to society.

Pope Francis said it was “urgent” to help foster, especially among young people, a new way of looking at political involvement.

There needs to be “a culture of encounter” in which “believers and nonbelievers may collaborate together to promote a world where injustices can be overcome and every person may be welcomed and may contribute to the common good,” he said.

“We Catholics have the duty to dedicate ourselves even more to a serious journey of spiritual conversion so that every day we get closer to the Gospel” which calls on the faithful to offer “concrete and effective service to people and society.”

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis ditched a 1,250-word prepared speech to students saying it would be “a tad boring” to read out loud and opted instead to just quickly hit the high points and spend the rest of the time answering people’s questions.

“Would you like that?” he asked as some 9,000 students, alumni and teachers from Jesuit-run schools and associations in Italy and Albania yelled “Yes” with cheers and applause.

Youths surround Pope Francis as he meets with students from Jesuit schools June 7 in Paul VI hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Max Rossi, Reuters)

Then over the course of 30 minutes, Pope Francis answered 10 questions, including how to deal with doubt, how to live with hope in a troubled world and whether Christians should be politically active.

The special event in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall June 7 was an occasion for young people, parents and educators to highlight the Jesuit charism, particularly in the field of education, and to celebrate the election of the first Jesuit pope in the church’s history.

The pope is well-versed in the field since when he was Jesuit Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he spent a number of years teaching literature, psychology and other subjects at Jesuit-run schools in Argentina.

The event’s presenters seemed hesitant about the pope’s request, saying no questions had been prepared in advanced and warning him that the students from elementary, middle and high school would just be “winging it.”

One girl asked him why he chose not to live in the apostolic palace.

“It’s not just a question of wealth,” he responded, adding that the now uninhabited papal apartment “is not that luxurious, don’t worry.”

His decision to live in a simple Vatican-run residence wasn’t motivated by trying to live up to some kind of “personal virtue,” but rather “it’s for psychiatric reasons,” he said teasingly.

Living alone or in an isolated setting “would not do me any good” and he said he’s the kind of person who prefers living in the thick of things, “among the people.”

But he did add that he tries to live as simply as possible,”to not have many things and to become a bit poorer” like Christ.

He urged everyone to try to live more simply saying, “In a world where there is so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it’s incomprehensible how there can be so many hungry children, so many children without an education, so many poor.”

Extreme poverty in the world “is a scandal” and “a cry” for help, he said. That is why “each one of us must think how we can become a little bit poorer” and more like Christ.

One teenage boy told the pope that he was trying hard to believe in God and be faithful, but that he often struggled with doubt. “What can you say to help me and others like me?” he asked the pope.

Pope Francis said the journey of life “is an art” that isn’t easy because it requires juggling the need to move forward with the importance of taking time to reflect.

“If we walk too quickly, we’ll get tired and won’t be able to reach our destination,” yet if we stop or take our time “we won’t get there either.”

Life’s journey “is truly the art of looking at the horizon, reflecting on where I want to go, but also putting up with the fatigue from this journey,” he said.

“Don’t be afraid of failure,” he said. The problem with the journey of life and faith isn’t falling; it’s not getting back up.

“Get right back up, immediately and keep going,” he said.

Don’t embark on this journey alone either, he said, because that would be “awful and boring.” Go as a “community with friends and people who care about you very much because that will help us get to our destination,” he said.

One little girl wanted to make sure the pope had friends growing up in Argentina and, wanted to know if, now he was pope, whether he was still friends with them.

Laughing, the pope said he’s only been pontiff for two and a half months, but as she rightly imagined, all his friends were now far away, “14 hours by plane” to be exact.

However, so far, three friends have come to visit him and he stays in touch with the others who all write to him.

“I love them very much,” he said, “You can’t live without friends, this is important.”

Another little girl asked, “Eh, Francis, did you want to become pope?”

He laughed and said a person who wants to become pope doesn’t have his own best interest at heart. “God doesn’t give him his blessings. No, I didn’t want to become pope,” he said.

A young woman asked how it was possible to stay hopeful in a country plagued by so many crises.

The pope said crises are good when they force people to address their root cause, the complete disregard for the human person.

“Today people don’t count, money counts,” he said. However, God gave the world and its resources to men and women, “not to money.”

People have become slaves, and Christians have the duty to defend the human person.

“We have to free ourselves from these economic and social structures that enslave us.”

The one adult, a Spanish and religion teacher, who asked the pope a question, wondered what kind of role, if any, Catholics should play in politics.

The pope said Catholics have “an obligation to get involved in politics.”

“We can’t play the role of Pontius Pilate and wash our hands of it,” he said. “Politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good.”

He said those who complain that politics is “too dirty” should ask themselves why. Perhaps it’s “because Christians haven’t gotten involved with an evangelical spirit.”

It’s easy to blame others, he said, but people need to ask themselves: “Me? What am I doing” about it?

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Getting caught up in worldly things is like being an adulterer, cheating on God and his love, Pope Francis said in a morning homily.

The only path that will lead people to God is faithfully putting him before everything else with “nuptial love,” the pope said at Mass June 6 in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

“Idolatry is subtle,” he said, and “all of us have our hidden idols,” big and small, getting in the way of one’s journey toward God’s kingdom.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘But I believe in God, God is the only God,’” the pope said. “That’s all fine, but how do you live this out on your life’s journey?”

Living as if God weren’t the only God means risking the “danger of idolatry, an idolatry that is brought to us with the spirit of the world,” he said.

Finding the only path that leads to the kingdom of God requires discovering and destroying one’s “hidden idols,” which can lie tucked away “in our personalities, in the way we live,” the pope said.

“These hidden idols cause us to be unfaithful in love,” he said.

The pope quoted the Apostle James, who said: “Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?”

The apostle uses the word “adulterers,” the pope said, because he “who is a friend of the world is an idolater, unfaithful to God’s love.”

People must destroy the idols they place before God because the only way to follow him is with love built on fidelity like that of married love.

“How is it possible not to be faithful to a love so grand?” the pope asked. It all starts with trusting in Christ, who is a model of complete fidelity and “who loves us so much.”

“We can ask Jesus today, ‘Lord, you who are so good, teach me this path for being less far from the Kingdom of God every day, this path for driving out all idols,’” he said.

“It’s difficult,” the pope said, “but we have to start” getting rid of all the hidden worldly idols because they “lead us to become enemies of God.”

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) — For the second straight year, the Pontifical North American College took home the championship title in Rome’s Clericus Cup soccer series.

Captain America, Uncle Sam, Batman and Robin, Wolverine, the Mario Brothers and a fluffy yellow chicken were part of the flag-waving crowd that exploded into cheers when the NAC Martyrs beat the Legionaries of Christ’s Mater Ecclesiae College, 1-0, in the final playoff May 18.

Andrew Mattingly, a second-year seminarian from the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., scored the winning goal, dedicating it to Mary, the Mother of God. Read more »

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis called for global financial reform that respects human dignity, helps the poor, promotes the common good and allows states to regulate markets.

“Money has to serve, not to rule,” he said in his strongest remarks yet as pope concerning the world’s economic and financial crises.

Read more »

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Payback with Satan is rotten as he pushes people to be loveless and selfish, finally leaving them with nothing and alone, Pope Francis said.

“Satan always rips us off, always,” he said during a morning Mass homily.

The pope concelebrated Mass May 14 with Archbishop Ricardo Tobon Restrepo of Medellin, Colombia, in the chapel of his residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

During the Mass, attended by employees of the Vatican Museums and a group of alumni from Rome’s Pontifical Portuguese College, the pope said selfish people don’t understand what giving and love are.

Judas exemplified this self-centeredness when he complained that the expensive oil Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet could have been sold for money to give to the poor, the pope said.

The account from the Gospel of John explains that Judas didn’t care about the poor and wanted the money instead because he was a thief and would steal the contributions.

The account from the Gospel of John suggests that Judas’ attitude toward money was a form of idolatry, the pope said.

“This is the first reference that I have found in the Gospels of poverty as an ideology,” Pope Francis said, according to the Vatican Radio website.

“The ideologist doesn’t know what love is because he doesn’t know how to give himself,” he said.

Judas was “distant in his solitude” and his selfishness grew to the point of betraying Jesus, he said.

The selfish person “takes care of his own life, grows in this egoism and becomes a traitor, but always alone.”

People who isolate their conscience within their egotistical world end up losing their conscience, like Judas who “was an idolater, attached to money.”

“This idolatry led him to isolate himself” from the community and from others.

“This is the ordeal of an isolated conscience, when a Christian begins to isolate himself, he also isolates his conscience from the sense of community, the sense of the church and from the love that Jesus gives us,” he said.

On the other hand, it’s only by giving one’s life and by “losing” it, as Jesus says, that one regains it in fullness, the pope said.

People who “give their lives for love are never alone, they’re always in a community, in a family,” he said, reflecting on the day’s reading from the Gospel of John in which Jesus tells his disciples, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

People, like Judas, who want to keep their life all for themselves end up losing it, he said. That is why “Satan’s payback is rotten,” he’s always tricking people into a bad deal.

If people want to follow Jesus, they have to “live life as a gift” to give to others, “not as a treasure to keep” for one’s own, he said.

Pope Francis asked people to pray to the Holy Spirit “to give me this big heart, this heart that is able to love with humility, with meekness.” May people also call on the Holy Spirit to “always free us from that other path of selfishness, which eventually ends badly.”