The Dialog

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

ROME — Gazing from a hillside overlooking Rome’s Colosseum, where thousands of people gathered to pray the Way of the Cross, Pope Francis said Christ’s cross is God’s response to evil in the world.

Pope Francis celebrates the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican March 29. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken,” the pope said March 29 at the end of the nighttime prayer service.

God’s response to the evil in the world “is the cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness,” the pope said.

The meditations on the 14 Stations of the Cross were written by young people in Lebanon, and they cried out for respect for human life, an end to violence and war and a possibility of hope for a dignified life for the people of the Middle East.

Pope Francis said that the cross “also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us.”

“If I embrace his love then I am saved; if I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but my own self, because God never condemns, he only loves and saves,” said the pope, who had watched and prayed during the meditations as a cross was carried through and around the Colosseum by a different person for each station. They included nuns from Lebanon, young people from Brazil, a Franciscan from Syria and two seminarians from China.

Pope Francis said the followers of Christ must respond to evil in the world like Jesus did, “taking the cross upon themselves as Jesus did.”

“We now continue this Via Crucis in our daily lives,” he said before leaving. “Let us walk together along the Way of the Cross, and let us do so carrying in our hearts this word of love and forgiveness.”

After the service, which ended about 10:30 p.m., Pope Francis personally greeted each of the people who had read the meditations or carried the cross.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told young inmates that, just as Jesus came to help and serve others, he, too, was at their service as a priest and bishop.

During the evening Mass at Rome’s Casal del Marmo prison for minors, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 young people of different nationalities and faiths, including at least two Muslims and two women, who are housed at the juvenile detention facility.

On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 youth at a Rome detention center for minors. In 2008, when he was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aries, Argentina, the future pope washed the feet of men at a residence for drug addicts. (CNS photo/Enrique Garcia Medina, Reuters)

The ceremony of washing another’s feet “is important,” the pope said, because it shows that “the person who is most high among us must be at the service of the others.”

It also means that “we have to help one another, each one,” he said during the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper March 28.

The pope broke with a papal Holy Week tradition of celebrating the evening Mass at a Rome basilica.

While the prison Mass marked a first for the modern papacy, the practice was nothing new to Pope Francis who, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, used to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which reflects on the call to imitate Christ by serving one another and commemorates Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, in prisons, hospitals or shelters for the poor and marginalized.

Held in the prison’s small chapel, the Mass was the second of two Holy Thursday liturgies over which the pope presided. The first was a morning chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The nearly 50 detainees, including about a dozen women, attended the Mass. Detainees did the readings and led the prayers of the faithful.

A group of young people who volunteer at the prison as well as a local charismatic group provided the music, playing acoustic guitar and leading the singing.

In his brief homily, which he delivered off-the-cuff, Pope Francis explained what the ritual he was about to perform meant and what Jesus was teaching his disciples when he washed their feet at the Last Supper.

“To wash your feet, this is a symbol, a sign that I am at your service,” the pope said. “But it also means that we have to help each other.”

He told the young detainees that it was normal to get mad at others, “but let it be, let it be.” If that person “asks you a favor, do it. Let’s help each other,” he told them.

He added that he would wash their feet with love.

“I do it with my heart because it is my duty as priest and as bishop; I have to be at your service,” he said.

“It’s a duty that comes from my heart because I love doing this, because this is what the Lord taught me,” he added.

“This sign is a caress from Jesus,” he said, “because Jesus came exactly for this, to serve and to help us.”

He said that, while he was washing the feet of the 12 young men and women, all at the Mass should ask themselves, “Am I really willing to help others?”

He urged all the detainees to follow the Lord’s example and help others because that way “we will also do good” in the world.

Vatican Radio reported that the pope knelt on both knees before the youths, washed, dried and then kissed their feet.

The pope later exchanged the sign of peace, a hug and kiss, with the young people whose feet he washed. He also distributed Communion, which he had not been doing at more public Masses.

While media outlets were not allowed inside the facility, Vatican Radio offered a live audio feed and the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, briefed reporters afterward. He said the ritual was “extremely moving” because kneeling on both knees was very demanding for a 76-year-old pope.

At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis greeted the residents and 150 members of the prison staff and other guests in the gym.

The pope thanked everyone for their warm welcome and said he was happy to be with them.

In strong words of encouragement, he told the young people “Press on! Don’t let yourselves be robbed of hope. Understood?”

The pope greeted the residents with hugs and gave each of the young detainees a large chocolate egg and a traditional Italian Easter cake shaped like a dove.

The detainees, who range in age from 14 to 21, then gave the pope a wooden crucifix and kneeler they made in the detention center’s woodshop.

Among those concelebrating with the pope were Cardinal Agostino Vallini, papal vicar for Rome; Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, the No. 3 official at the Vatican Secretariat of State; Capuchin Father Gaetano Greco, prison chaplain; two deacons and two seminarians.

Only eight of the detainees are Italian, the rest are immigrants, many of whom are Muslim while some others are non-believers, Father Greco said. Many come from North Africa or Slavic nations.

Explaining to them who the pope was and why his visit was important “wasn’t easy,” Father Greco told the Vatican newspaper March 27.

“I felt dejected for a bit when I saw faces lacking emotion or others curious as to why I was so enthusiastic,” he said.

But the silence was soon broken, the priest said, when a boy from Naples clutched his own head and shouted, “Oh, Mother of God, the pope here!?”

Once the others saw the boy’s astonishment and happiness, they started to understand “that this was something truly out of the ordinary, and they began to ask questions. Little by little I saw them getting more enthused, and from that moment on it hasn’t died down,” Father Greco said.

The priest, who has been chaplain at the facility for more than 30 years, said he was sure the pope’s visit would make a positive impact on the detainees, as did the visits from Blessed John Paul II in 1980 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

ROME — It took a “papabile” American cardinal as guest celebrant one Sunday to fill the pews of a small Roman church, which is normally trafficked only by hordes of backpack-slinging tourists.

Instead of dog-eared guidebooks in hand, people were actually looking for hymnals, extra copies of which had to be fetched by parish assistants from the sacristy.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston gives Communion as he celebrates Mass at at his titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, in Rome March 10. Cardinal O’Malley is among 11 U.S. prelates expected to enter the conclave March 12 to elect the new pope. (CNS photo/Chris Helgren, Reuters)

The narrow church, which holds about 100 people, was packed standing-room only on the fourth Sunday of Lent with Italians, Americans and dozens of journalists.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston visited his titular church of Santa Maria della Vittoria March 10 with the no-nonsense, businesslike air of a pastor who was there simply to preside over a liturgy.

Wearing his bright scarlet cardinal robes, he alighted from a dark sedan with Vatican City State license plates and strode straight up the steps: no waving or fanfare as he moved confidently through the crowd of cameramen.

Once inside, he put on his cornered-biretta hat and sprinkled holy water as he marched down the center aisle to the sacristy.

Little did he know that, while he was there to celebrate Mass for the local community, the people in the pews and the Discalced Carmelites who run the church were there to unabashedly cheer him on as the next pope.

“Eminence, we wish, and I say this with great hope, that this will be your last visit as titular cardinal,” Discalced Carmelite Father Stefano Guernelli, the church’s rector and former provincial superior, told the cardinal in his opening remarks.

He said they were praying for him to be the next pontiff, “however, without trying to push or overturn the Lord’s plans.”

“But you must promise is that if our prayers are answered, your first visit as pope” will be back to “our church and yours, Santa Maria della Vittoria,” he said to rousing applause.

The priest said he had been telling journalists that “Cardinal Sean” is a “kind and friendly pastor, humble yet decisive in his actions because he truly loves the church.”

The only thing going against him “perhaps is that you are a friar and a Capuchin at that,” he said tongue-in-cheek, as the bearded Capuchin cardinal smiled.

Speaking with his deep, measured voice, Cardinal O’Malley said Mass and his homily in near perfect Italian, stumbling just a few times on the language’s tricky polysyllabic terms.

He began his homily thanking everyone for coming to pray “for our church in these days that are so important for us.”

Known for a sharp wit delivered with a poker face, the cardinal continued off-the-cuff, talking about the time he took possession of the Roman church in 2006 and teased the Carmelites that he was thinking of taking the church’s famed statue of St. Teresa of Avila, sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, back to Boston.

But he said the friars told him Napoleon had tried and, like the emperor, he, too, would fail.

“So it seems to me that (the friars) have never forgiven me” because the church rector wants him to become pope, the cardinal said.

“I want to assure him that after the conclave I will come back as your cardinal and perhaps I will take St. Teresa back to Boston,” he insisted with a wry smile.

He imperceptibly then switched gears to his serious side and gave a homily based on the day’s Gospel reading of the Prodigal Son, noting how many children of God today leave their father’s house, the church, because of “ignorance, a lack of feeling welcome, negative experiences, scandals, spiritual mediocrity” and other reasons.

Just like the father in Jesus’ parable, the church, too, must demonstrate a welcoming evangelical joy toward its lost sheep “without creating a difficult life toward those who have drifted and who ask to return.”

Because often they have suffered a lot after being far from God and they, like all people, are looking for real joy, the kind only God can give, he said.

Lent is the perfect time to return to one’s family “and feel that joy of being at home,” he said.

He ended his 13-minute homily by praying the Holy Spirit would help him and the other cardinal electors choose a new pope “who will confirm us in the faith, do the utmost possible to make visible the love of the Good Shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep, to heal the sick and to embrace the prodigal son.”

Giulia Varrasso of Rome, who belongs to a nearby parish, said she had come to Santa Maria della Vittoria because she greatly admired the cardinal and wanted “to know him better.”

Cardinal O’Malley was her pick for pope, she said “because he’s a Franciscan” and she loves his humility, witty and laid-back style, and the religious order’s attention to the “weak and vulnerable.”

“I also like that he’s an American,” who can lead the Vatican out of its old ways of doing things and leave behind “the old mechanisms of power,” she said.

He also can renew the church “because he really understands these scandals” and has fought for more transparency, she said.

“I’m cheering for Cardinal Sean,” said Luigi Segoloni, who is originally from near Assisi, the home of St. Francis.

“We need fresh air, enough with these Italians and Europeans, for goodness sake,” said the Roman resident.

The U.S. cardinal is “very good, he made a very good impression with his homily; he has energy and he’s very fatherly,” said Segoloni.

Daughter of St. Paul Sister Germana Santos, who lived in Boston many years, praised the “very courageous measures” the cardinal took after he arrived at an archdiocese that was reeling from the spiritual and financial fallout of the sex abuse crisis.

“He sold all the prelates’ big residences and moved into the cathedral rectory,” a simple residence where he lived among his own priests “giving them an example of humility” and fraternity, she said.

An Italian woman, who asked her name not be used, said she wanted an American for pope.

Cardinal O’Malley “speaks from the heart.” While there are many good homilists out there, ‘you can feel his sincerity,” she said.

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

ROME — Two U.S. cardinals who will vote in the upcoming papal election say there is no rush to set a date for voting, which could start as late as March 20.

“This is the most important decision that some of us will ever make, and we need to give it the time that’s necessary,” Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston told journalists March 5, after the second day of the pre-conclave meeting known as the general congregation.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston lead a news conference at the Pontifical North American College in Rome March 5. The cardinals addressed members of the media following a second day of general congregation meetings held in advance of the conclave. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“I believe the feeling of the cardinals is we want to have enough time in the general congregation so that when we go to the conclave itself, it’s a time of a decision,” Cardinal O’Malley said. “The general congregation is the time of discernment, and as much time as we need for discernment in prayer, reflection and getting information, then we need to use as much time as we have.”

The rules for papal elections state that voting must begin between 15 and 20 days after the Holy See falls vacant; but shortly before he resigned Feb. 28, Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree permitting the cardinals to move the date up if they choose.

Some cardinals have said that starting earlier would be an advantage for residential bishops among the cardinal-electors, since that would make it more likely that they could get back to their dioceses in time for Palm Sunday, March 24.

“The question about trying to be home for Holy Week has to do with simply practical matters,” Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston told the same gathering of journalists at the North American College in Rome. “And practical matters always will fall by the wayside when more serious matters are at stake.

“It takes as long as it takes,” the cardinal said. “If it takes longer to do the work of discernment that we’re supposed to do, it will take that amount of time.”

Cardinal DiNardo said that formal discussions on the conclave date had not begun, since not all the cardinal-electors had arrived in Rome. Under the revision of the rules issued by Pope Benedict, all the electors must be present before the College of Cardinals can change the date of the conclave.

According to the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, 110 of the 115 cardinals under 80 who are eligible and expected to vote for the next pope were present at the general congregation March 5.

Father Lombardi indicated that the remaining five were expected soon. He told Catholic News Service that, contrary to rumors, Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was expected to arrive March 7.

By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — The next pope must be “very aware” of the need for vigilance in preventing clergy sex abuse and accept a policy of “zero tolerance” as the universal law of the church, said Chicago’s Cardinal Francis E. George.

The cardinal, who will vote in the upcoming papal election, spoke to journalists March 4 between sessions of the first day of pre-conclave meetings at the Vatican.

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago speaks during a press conference at the Pontifical North American College in Rome March 4. The U.S. cardinals spoke after attending the first general congregation meeting of the world’s cardinals at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Asked if he would consider a candidate’s approach to “sexual misconduct by clergy” when choosing the next pope, Cardinal George said “that will be an important issue” because sex abuse is a “terrible wound on the body of the church.”

“Whoever’s elected pope,” the cardinal said, “obviously has to accept the universal code of the church now, which is zero tolerance for anyone who has ever abused a minor child, (who) therefore may not remain in public ministry in the church. So that has to be accepted.”

“I think that will not be a problem,” he added. “There’s a deep-seated conviction, certainly on the part of anyone who’s a pastor in a diocese, that this has to be continually addressed.”

The cardinal noted that U.S. bishops lobbied to make their own zero-tolerance policy part of the church’s canon law and convinced bishops’ conferences in other countries, such as India, to adopt similar norms.

Although the “incidence of abuse is practically zero right now as far as we can tell,” the cardinal said, “there are still the victims. And the wound, therefore, is deep in their hearts and minds very often, and as long as it’s with them it’s with all of us, and that will last for a long time. So the next pope has to be very aware of this.”

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council with a Mass outdoors was a reminder of the fact that the council called the Catholic Church to live and work in the world, said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz.

“One of the things that was beautiful today was that we were outdoors, outside the beautiful Basilica of St. Peter, which is what I think John XXIII really wanted: to open the doors, to have the church in the world and transforming the world,” the bishop said Oct. 11.

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By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez and 35 other cardinals, bishops and priests to serve as full members of the Synod of Bishops.

The papal appointees, whose names were announced Sept. 18, will join more than 200 other synod members who were elected by their national bishops’ conference, serve as the head of a Vatican office or were elected by the Union of Superiors General, the organization for the heads of men’s religious orders.

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By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — A newly announced reform of an association of women’s religious congregations in the U.S. offers the sisters and their bishops an opportunity to communicate and work together more closely, said the archbishop named by the Vatican to oversee the reform process.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle spoke to Catholic News Service in Rome April 22, a day after arriving for a periodic “ad limina” visit to the Vatican.

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By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — The take-away message from a Vatican-backed symposium on clerical sex abuse was clear: Victims, truth and justice come first. And the church can no longer wait for a crisis to erupt before it begins to address the scandal of abuse.

“We do not need to wait for a bomb to explode. Preventing it from exploding is the best response,” said Philippine Archbishop Luis Tagle.

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By Catholic News Service

ROME — A Vatican cardinal will lead a penitential vigil to show contrition for the sexual abuse of children by priests and for the actions of Catholic officials who shielded the perpetrators from justice.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, will preside over the vigil Feb. 7, during a weeklong symposium attended by representatives of 110 bishops’ conferences and 30 religious orders.

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