Francis celebrates Mass at Saint Peter’s for the cardinals and bishops deceased during the year, “fellowship with the dead is not merely a desire or an illusion, but a reality”
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On the one hand “the way of life”, which “leads to communion with God”. On the other “the way of death”, which instead “leads far from Him”. It is a “crossroads” that even now, in this world, stands before us and that death makes “definitive”.
Angelus on the Solemnity of All Saints: “Saints are our brothers and sisters who have received the light of God in their hearts and have transmitted it to the world”
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Pope Francis, during his Angelus adress on the Solemnity of All Saints on Wednesday, expressed his deep sorrow following recent terrorist attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and on Tuesday in New York.
The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine noted, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Yet pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the superstitious imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members.
Communiqué of the World Lutheran Federation and Pontifical Council for Christian Unity at the end of the 500th anniversary. And the Vatican issues a stamp with Wittenberg.
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The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem explains the reasons for his meeting with the Bishop of Rome. And he also responds to attacks by groups accusing him of selling off the Patriarchate’s properties.
Exodus 22:20-26; Psalm 18:11 Thessalonians 1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Mt 22:36)
Monsignor Ilario Antoniazzi: foreign fighters? There is a risk of indoctrination in prisons; the origin of the problems is not in Tunisia, but in the migrant’s country of origin
In the summer of 2014, while the Isis militias were advancing, they fled to Kurdistan. Now they are starting to return back to their homes. The story of Silvia Batras, an Iraqi Dominican Sister.
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The feast of St. John Paul II was celebrated on October 22, the 39th anniversary of Karol Wojtyła’s formal installation as the Bishop of Rome. This occasion is an ideal time to reflect on St. John Paul the Great’s legacy as public intellectual, pope, and saint.
Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, proposed last week five keys for pastoral education “to respond in depth to the current challenges of society.”
The cardinal participated in Chile's Sixth National Congress on Catholic Education, Oct. 12-13, organized by the Chilean bishops' conference and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
