The Dialog

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Like Jesus who dined with Pharisees and sinners and St. Paul who preached to idol worshippers, true evangelizers build bridges that lead unbelievers into the church, not walls to protect it, Pope Francis said.

The pope’s words came in a homily May 8 during morning Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where he lives. The Vatican employees present included those responsible for furniture and decor in Vatican buildings.

Pope Francis kisses a child as he arrives to lead his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican May 8. (CNS photo/Stefano Rellandini, Reuters)

Commenting on the day’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul preaches to pagan Athenians at the Areopagus, Pope Francis said that “Paul is a pontifex, a builder of bridges. He doesn’t want to become a builder of walls.”

“He doesn’t say: ‘Idolaters, go to hell!’” the pope said. “This is the attitude of Paul in Athens: Build a bridge to their heart, in order then to take another step and announce Jesus Christ.”

Pope Francis said that the apostle followed the example of Jesus himself, who “dined with Pharisees, with sinners, with publicans, with doctors of the law. Jesus heard everyone, and when he said a word of condemnation, it was at the end, when there was nothing else to do.

“Christians who are afraid to build bridges and prefer to build walls are Christians who are not sure of their faith, not sure of Jesus Christ,” he said.

“When the church loses this apostolic courage,” he said, “it becomes a stalled church, a tidy church, nice, very nice, but without fertility, because it has lost the courage to go to the peripheries, where there are so many victims of idolatry, of worldliness, of weak thinking.”

In these terms, the pope said, “now is a good time in the life of the church, the last 50 or 60 years have been a good time.

“Because I remember when I was a child one would hear in Catholic families, in my family: ‘No, we cannot go to their house, because they are not married in the church, eh!’ It was like an exclusion. No, you couldn’t go. Or ‘because they are socialists or atheists, we cannot go,’” Pope Francis said.

“Now, thank God, that isn’t said, right?” he said. “It was like a defense of the faith, but with walls. The Lord made bridges.”

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — All ideological interpretations of Christianity falsify the Gospel by looking at it purely through the intellect, without regard to love or beauty, Pope Francis said April 19.

The pope spoke at morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where he has been living since his election in March, and where he has regularly celebrated morning Mass for different groups of Vatican employees.

Speaking to a congregation of employees of the Vatican printing press and newspaper, Pope Francis commented on the day’s reading from the Gospel of John (6:52-59), in which learned Jews listening to Jesus argue among themselves, asking: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

“They are the great ideologues,” the pope said, according to a report by Vatican Radio. “These ideologues cut off the road of love, and also that of beauty.”

“All a matter of intellect,” he said. “When ideology enters into the church, when ideology enters into our understanding of the Gospel, we understand nothing.”

“Ideologues falsify the Gospel,” the pope said. “Every ideological interpretation, wherever it comes from, from one side or the other, is a falsification of the Gospel. And these ideologues, we have seen them in the history of the Church, end up being intellectuals without talent, ethicists without goodness. And let’s not even speak of beauty, because they understand nothing of that.”

“The path of love, the way of the Gospel, is simple,” he said. “It is the road that the saints understood: … the road of conversion, the way of humility, of love, of the heart, the way of beauty.”

Pope Francis concluded by praying that God might free the church “from any ideological interpretation, and open the heart of the church, our mother church, to the simple Gospel, to that pure Gospel that speaks to us of love, which brings love, and is so beautiful. It also makes us beautiful, with the beauty of holiness.”

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — All the baptized and not just the clergy are called to spread the Gospel, even in times of persecution, Pope Francis said in his morning homily April 17.

The pope spoke at Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where he has been living since his election in March, and where he has been regularly celebrating morning Mass for different groups of Vatican employees.

Pope Francis preaches during a Mass last month in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican residence where the new pontiff resides. Today, April 17, the pope preached on the call of all baptized to spread the Gospel. (CNS photo/L’Ossevatore Romano)

Speaking to a congregation of employees of the Vatican bank, Pope Francis commented on the day’s reading from the Acts of Apostles (8:1-8), in which the early Christians scatter to escape a “severe persecution” and then go “about preaching the word.”

“They left home, perhaps they brought a few things with them; they had no security but went from place to place announcing the Word,” the pope said, according to Vatican Radio. “They are simple believers, baptized for only a year or maybe slightly longer. But they had the courage to go and announce. And they were believed. And they performed miracles.”

Pope Francis also noted the history of Japanese Catholics, who survived without priests for two centuries after missionaries were expelled in the 17th century. When missionaries were finally permitted to return, the pope said, they found “all the communities in order, all baptized, all catechized, all married in the church.”

The pope wondered aloud whether laypeople today have equal faith in the “strength of baptism.”

“Do we believe in this? That baptism is enough — sufficient to evangelize?” he asked.

All the baptized must “announce Jesus with our life, with our witness and with our words,” the pope said.

“When we do this, the church becomes a mother church that bears children,” he said. “But when we don’t do it, the church becomes not a mother but a baby sitter church, which takes care of the child to put him to sleep.”

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Amid rising concerns about corruption and mismanagement in the central administration of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis named an international panel of cardinals to advise him on the latest reform of the Vatican bureaucracy.

The Vatican Secretariat of State announced April 13 that the pope had established the group, which includes Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley and Sydney Cardinal George Pell,  to “advise him in the government of the universal church and to study a plan for revising the apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, ‘Pastor Bonus.’”

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston (left) and Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, (right) ,are two of the cardinals who Pope Francis has named to an international panel to advise him on church governance. Cardinal Rodriguez will serve as the group’s coordinator. (CNS panel)

“Pastor Bonus,” published in 1988, was the last major set of changes in the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration at the Vatican. It was largely an effort at streamlining by reassigning responsibilities among various offices, rather than an extensive reform.

Complaints about the shortcomings of Vatican governance increased markedly during 2012 following the “VatiLeaks” of confidential correspondence providing evidence of corruption and mismanagement in various offices of the Holy See and Vatican City State. That affair prompted a detailed internal report, which Pope Benedict XVI designated exclusively for the eyes of his successor.

The College of Cardinals extensively discussed the problems in meetings preceding the conclave that elected Pope Francis last month. According to the April 13 Vatican statement, the suggestion for an advisory panel on reform arose during those meetings.

Only one member of the new panel is a full-time Vatican official: Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the commission governing Vatican City State. All of the others currently serve as diocesan bishops.

The group’s coordinator is Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, who is also president of Caritas Internationalis, a Vatican-based umbrella organization for national Catholic charities around the globe.

The other members are Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa, retired archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, India; Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Germany; and Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa, Congo.

They will meet for the first time Oct. 1-3, 2013, the Vatican statement said, but are “currently in contact” with Pope Francis.

The panel’s membership represents five continents, with the largest number, three members, coming from the Americas. Three members, more than any other linguistic group, hail from English-speaking countries (counting India). Two members are native speakers of Spanish. Only one member shares the Italian nationality of the majority of Vatican employees.

Both Pope Paul VI and Blessed John Paul II also named international panels of cardinals to advise them on curial reform.

A 1986 commission of six cardinals, whose recommendations contributed to “Pastor Bonus,” included two Italians, an Austrian, a Canadian, a Venezuelan and a Nigerian. All were serving as Vatican officials at the time.

The 15-member Council of Cardinals for the Study of Organizational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, established in 1981, also contributed to the process that produced “Pastor Bonus.” It has continued to meet twice a year, among other reasons to review the consolidated financial statements of the Holy See and Vatican City State. The council’s members hail from five continents, where they all serve as diocesan bishops.

The Holy See, whose major organs consist of the Secretariat of State, nine congregations, 12 councils and three tribunals, employed 2,832 employees as of the end of 2011. Its financial statements for 2011 showed a deficit equivalent to about $19.4 at current exchange rates.

The commission governing Vatican City State, which is not part of the curia, employed another 1,887 persons at the end of 2011 and reported a surplus of the equivalent of $28.4 million, largely owing to revenues from the Vatican Museums.

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — A “double life” that honors both worldly values and the teachings of Jesus is not an option for Christians, even when obedience to God leads to persecution, Pope Francis said in a morning homily April 11.

The pope spoke at Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where he has been living since his election in March.

Speaking to a congregation of employees of the Vatican newspaper, Pope Francis commented on the day’s reading from the Acts of Apostles (5:27-33), in which Peter refuses an order to stop preaching in Jesus’ name, saying: “We must obey God rather than men.”

“In our life, we also hear things that do not come from Jesus, that do not come from God,” said the pope, according to a report on Vatican Radio. Such “proposals of sin” lead us away from the Lord, he said, and “this will not make us happy.”

At times we try to lead a double life, nurtured by “what Jesus tells us” as well as “what the world shows us,” the pope said. But God the father “gives us the (Holy) Spirit, without limit, to listen to Jesus and go along Jesus’ road.”

Following that road requires the “grace of courage,” the pope said, not only because obedience to God often entails persecution and the anger of the world, but because it means admitting one’s weakness. Yet failure should not be cause for despair.

“The Lord forgives us,” the pope said, “because he is so good.”

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

ROME — Celebrating his first Mass in the cathedral of Rome, Pope Francis called on Christians to trust in God’s endless patience and mercy.

“God always waits for us, even when we have left him behind. He is never far from us, and if we return to him, he is ready to embrace us,” the pope said in his homily April 7 at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Pope Francis greets a family as he celebrates Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome April 7. The pope formally took possession of the basilica, his seat as bishop of Rome. (CNS photo/Paul Haring

The pope commented on the Gospel reading (Jn 20:19-31) for Divine Mercy Sunday, in which the risen Christ appears to St. Thomas and lets him touch his wounds, dispelling the apostle’s doubts about Jesus’ resurrection.

“Jesus does not abandon Thomas in his stubborn unbelief,” Pope Francis said. “He does not close the door, he waits.”

“God is patient with us because he loves us, and those who love are able to understand, to hope, to inspire confidence,’ the pope said. “They do not give up, they do not burn bridges, they are able to forgive.”

In response, Pope Francis said, the faithful must show the “courage to trust in Jesus’ mercy, to trust in his patience, to seek refuge always in the wounds of his love.”

“How many times in my pastoral ministry have I heard it said: ‘Father I have many sins,’” the pope said. “I have always pleaded: ‘Don’t be afraid, go to him, he is waiting for you, he will take care of everything.’”

The Mass was the occasion for Pope Francis to take formal possession of the “cathedra” (chair) of the bishop of Rome. Shortly after the start of the liturgy, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, papal vicar for Rome, read a profession of obedience to the pope on behalf of the diocese.

Then the pope sat on the raised marble chair in the basilica’s apse, where he received representatives of his flock, including clergy and laypeople. The pope exchanged a few words with each, taking a bit of extra time with a Franciscan friar and married couple accompanied by their four children.

Following the late-afternoon Mass, the pope appeared at the balcony in the basilica’s facade, where he briefly addressed a crowd of several thousand people, wishing them a good evening and urging all to “go forward together … in the joy of the resurrection.”

Before the Mass, Pope Francis was joined by Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, in a brief ceremony rededicating the square on the west end of the basilica in memory of Blessed John Paul II.

Also on Sunday, the pope led a crowd in St. Peter’s Square in praying the “Regina Coeli” at noon. Speaking from the window of his private office in the Apostolic Palace, the pope commented on the day’s Gospel reading, observing how the apostles had taken courage from the resurrection.

“May we too have more courage to testify to faith in the risen Christ,” he said. “We should not be afraid to be Christians and live as Christians. We should have this courage, to go and announce the risen Christ, because he is our peace, he has made peace, with his love, with his forgiveness, with his blood, with his mercy.”

By Francis X Rocca

Pope Francis greets the crowd as he arrives to lead his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 3. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Women have a privileged role in the church because of their ability to pass on the faith through love, Pope Francis said.

“Women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord, in following him and communicating his face, because the eyes of faith always need the simple and profound look of love,” the pope told an estimated 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square April 3.

“This is the mission of women, of mothers and women, to give witness to their children and grandchildren that Christ is risen,” he said. “Faith is professed with the mouth and heart, with the word and love.”

In the second weekly public audience of his pontificate, Pope Francis resumed a series of catechetical talks on the creed begun by Pope Benedict XVI in January.

Commenting on the words, “rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” the pope noted that the New Testament gives women a “primary, fundamental role” as witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. He cited the passage in Mark Chapter 16 in which women find an empty tomb and an angel who tells them that Jesus is alive.

“Here we can see an argument in favor of the historical truth of the resurrection,” Pope Francis said. “If it had been an invention, in the context of that time it would not have been linked to the testimony of women,” since the Jewish law of period did not consider women or children as “reliable, credible witnesses.”

“This tells us that God does not choose according to human criteria,” the pope said. “The first witnesses of the birth of Jesus are the shepherds, simple and humble people, and the first witnesses of the resurrection are women.”

Jesus’ male apostles and disciples “find it harder to believe in the risen Christ,” the pope said. “Peter runs to the tomb, but stops before the empty tomb. Thomas has to touch the wounds of the body of Jesus with his own hands.”

By contrast, the “women are driven by love and they know to accept this proclamation (of the resurrection) with faith,” the pope said. “They believe and immediately transmit it; they do not keep it for themselves.”

“Let us also have the courage to go out to bring this joy and light to all the places of our lives,” the pope said, eliciting cheers from the crowd, as at several other moments in his talk. “The resurrection of Christ is our greatest certainty, it is our most precious treasure. How can we not share this treasure, this beautiful certainty with others?”

“Unfortunately, there have often been attempts to obscure faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and doubts have crept in even among believers themselves,” Pope Francis said, lamenting what he called a “rosewater”-like faith, diluted by superficiality, indifference, other priorities or a “purely horizontal vision of life.”

Hope in the resurrection, he said, enables Christians to “live everyday realities with more confidence, to face them with courage and commitment.”

Following the audience, the pope spent about 45 minutes personally greeting prelates and other dignitaries, as well as members of the general public, including many small children and disabled people in wheelchairs.

In what has already become a common sight during his young papacy, a number of pilgrims, including a group of Jesuit deacons studying in Rome, broke Vatican protocol by embracing Pope Francis and kissing him on both cheeks.

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — An Italian priest who died in a Nazi concentration camp and two victims of Soviet-bloc regimes during the Cold War were among those recognized as martyrs by Pope Francis March 27.

According to a statement released by the Vatican March 28, the pope authorized decrees stating that Franciscan Father Giuseppe Girotti, an opponent of Italy’s fascist government who died at Dachau in 1945, was killed “in hatred of the faith.”

Pope Francis likewise recognized the martyrdom of Romanian Father Vladimir Ghika and Hungarian Salesian Brother Stephen Sandor, who were killed by their country’s communist regimes, in 1954 and 1953, respectively.

The decrees prepare the way for the martyrs’ beatification, probably later this year.

Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for Saints’ Causes to promulgate equivalent decrees for Rolando Rivi, an Italian seminarian killed by communist partisans in 1945, during the last days of World War II; and for 58 persons, including the bishop of Jaen, killed between 1936 and 1938 during the Spanish Civil War.

The church normally requires a miracle to be attributed to the intercession of a deceased Catholic before he or she may be beatified, but that requirement does not apply to recognized martyrs. A miracle is required before any blessed may be canonized.

Also on March 27, Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to German Sister Maria Teresa Bonzel, founder of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, who died in 1905.

Among the seven whom the pope recognized for their “heroic virtues” were Mexican Father Moses Lira Serafin, founder of the Missionaries of Charity of Mary Immaculate, who died in 1950; and Oblate Brother Anthony Kowalczyk, who was born in Poland but died in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1947. Brother Kowalczyk spent the last three-and-a-half decades of his life working as a blacksmith and gardener at a frontier school in western Canada.

Now recognized as “venerable,” each is eligible for beatification if a miracle can be attributed to his intercession.

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass as pope March 24, telling an overflow crowd in St. Peter’s Square that Christ’s death on the cross is a source of eternal consolation and joy.

“A Christian can never be sad. Never give way to discouragement,” the pope said in his homily, assuring listeners that with Jesus, “We are never alone, even at difficult moments, even at difficult moments when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them.”

Pope Francis carries woven palm fronds as he walks in procession at the start of Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican March 24. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

As he has done with striking frequency since his election March 13, Pope Francis warned against the action of the devil, who he said comes to discourage believers in times of trouble, “often disguised as an angel who insidiously tells us his word. Do not listen to him.”

Recalling Jesus’ triumphant arrival in Jerusalem, acclaimed as a king only days before his crucifixion, the pope stressed the otherworldly nature of Christ’s reign.

“Jesus does not enter the Holy City to receive the honors reserved to earthly kings, to the powerful, to rulers; he enters to be scourged, insulted and abused,” Pope Francis said. “His royal throne is the wood of the cross.”

“Jesus takes upon himself the evil, the filth, the sin of the world, including our own sin,” the pope said, “and he cleanses it, he cleanses it with his blood, with the mercy and the love of God. Christ’s cross embraced with love does not lead to sadness, but to joy,” he said.

Pope Francis characteristically strayed from his prepared text in a personal aside when deploring the sin of greed, adding that money is something “no one can bring with him. My grandmother would say to us children, ‘No shroud has pockets.’”

Noting that “for 28 years Palm Sunday has been World Youth Day,” the pope told young people in the congregation that “you bring us the joy of faith, and you tell us that we must live the faith with a young heart, always, even at the age of 70 or 80.”

Pope Francis confirmed that he would attend the July 2013 World Youth Day celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, saying, “I will see you in that great city in Brazil.” Though the announcement was widely expected, it drew applause from the crowd in the square and the avenue beyond.

Before the Mass, young people carrying woven palm fronds led a procession that included bishops, cardinals and Pope Francis in the popemobile. They processed to the ancient Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square, where the pope blessed palm and olive branches held up by members of the congregation.

After Mass, before praying the Angelus from the altar set up in front of the basilica, the pope made special mention of “people afflicted with tuberculosis, as today is the world day against this disease.”

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Moral relativism “endangers the coexistence of peoples,” Pope Francis told diplomats March 22, and said a common ethics based on human nature is an indispensable condition for world peace.

The pope made his remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Palace’s Sala Regia, the vast “royal hall” where popes traditionally received Catholic monarchs.

Recalling the love of the poor practiced by his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, the pope lamented both material poverty and the “spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the ‘dictatorship of relativism,’ which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples.”

Pope Francis greets a diplomat during an audience with the Vatican diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Palace’s Sala Regia March 22. (CNS photo/Tony Gentile, Reuters)

“Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace,” Pope Francis said. “But there is no peace without truth. There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.”

The pope paid tribute the church’s charitable and social services around the world, and acknowledged his particular responsibility for peacemaking, noting that his title of pontiff means a “builder of bridges with God and between people.”

In a characteristically personal note, the Argentine pope added that his origin in a family of Italian immigrants gave him an impetus to “work for the building of bridges.”

Pope Francis stressed the importance to peacemaking of interreligious dialogue, particularly with Islam.

“It is not possible to build bridges between people while forgetting God,” he said. “But the converse is also true: It is not possible to establish true links with God while ignoring other people.”

The pope also underscored the need to “intensify outreach to nonbelievers, so that the differences which divide and hurt us may never prevail.”

Following his speech, Pope Francis spent nearly an hour individually greeting the ambassadors and their spouses. Most of the men wore white tie, tails, ceremonial sashes and medals, though some from Arab or African countries opted for their traditional dress. Most of the women had covered their heads with a black lace mantilla.

The Vatican currently maintains diplomatic ties with 180 states, as well as the European Union, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Pope Francis voiced hope for closer ties with “those few countries that do not yet have diplomatic relations with the Holy See,” noting that some of them had sent representatives or greetings to his inauguration Mass March 19.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, which do not exchange ambassador with the Holy See, had sent representatives to the Mass.