The Cardinal and Prefect of the Clergy interviewed in the book “Tutti gli uomini di Francesco”, speaks of this hypothesis for the Amazon and some Pacific islands, “We would recover a structure which already existed in the early Church. Celibacy is not in question”
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“I apologies if I have hurt the victims of abuse with my words on the Barros case”. Pope Francis, answering the journalists’ questions on the flight from Lima back to Rome, admits that he made a mistake in expressing himself on the case of Juan Barros, the Chilean bishop of Osorno, challenged by groups of faithful in his diocese who believe he was aware of the sexual abuse committed by his mentor Father Fernando Karadima and that he had covered them up.
After three trying days in Chile, facing a sex abuse crisis and several layers of political tension, not to mention the specter of churches being attacked while he was in town, Pope Francis might be forgiven for hoping he could throttle back a bit as he heads to Peru on Thursday.
And in many ways, the atmosphere is more relaxed. The welcome Pope Francis received in Lima on Thursday night, for instance, was marked by a ceremony full of honors - diametrically different from the one he received in Santiago, that was perfunctory at best.
The theme of this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is "Your Right Hand, O Lord, Glorious in Power." (Exodus 15:6). The octave of prayer for the promotion of Christian unity takes its impetus from Exodus 15:1-21, the words of Moses:
Matthew:6:9-10 NKJ 9 "In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
LUKE 11:2 NKJ 2 So He said to them, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
These verses make two things clear.
God's will is not automatically done unless we pray. Otherwise it is pointless for Jesus to tell us to pray that God's will be done.
Pope Francis meets the young people in the sanctuary of Maipù: without Christ “we end up drowning our thoughts and ideas, our dreams and our faith, and so we get frustrated and annoyed”.
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“Without a connection to Jesus, we end up drowning our thoughts and ideas,
The very private meeting, without the presence of other people, took place after lunch in the apostolic nunciature of Santiago. They are people raped by men of the Church.
On the day in which he expressed his shame at the sexual abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy and religious, asking for forgiveness and assuring that the Church will do everything to ensure that these facts do not happen again, Francis met and embraced some victims in a strictly private form. We do not know how many they were (it was a small group), nor do we know their names.
There is always a lot to mediate upon from the Lord Jesus’ words and actions; there are, furthermore, there are many things to learn in order to eventually try to live life according to His will, and live it happily.
We read in the Bible that Jesus Christ said: "I am the light of the world", then in other places He said: "You are the light of the world and the salt of Earth." Jesus Christ is telling those who have ears that to be the “light” is simply to unite with Him.
But how? This begins by inward focus, and then unity.
The chaos of the Latin American scenarios alone is enough to make the framework - that reads Bergoglio’s international projections with the same formulas used in the reading of Karol Wojtyla’s pontificate - appear misleading. The icon of “Superstar Pope “ is now used by those who want to polarize attention on Francis, by separating him from the Church, to then rattle off his “failures”. It wouldn’t take much, however to get rid of this pre-established “script.
In the face of migrations, the Pope invites us to "overcome our fears so that we can go out to meet others, welcome them, know them and recognize them", an invitation that "offers the opportunity to draw close to each other to see where and how they live". "It is not easy to enter the culture of others, to put oneself in the shoes of people so different from us, to understand their thoughts and experiences", Francis says in the Mass homily celebrated in the Vatican Basilica on the World Day of Migrant and Refugee.
