Child soldiers, men and women tortured and persecuted. Poor, hungry, orphaned. Wars and bombs dropped like candy. What a bad scenario the world of today presents. “I don’t think our times are better than those of the flood; I don’t think so. Calamities are more or less the same; the victims are more or less the same”, Francis says in todays’ Santa Marta mass.
Let us meditate on the words of Jesus who today tells us: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you, have received your consolation.
The Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reflects on the meeting between the Pope and the Great Imam in the United Arab Emirates: now we must transmit that spirit to the people.
The new president of the Federation of Bishops’ Conferences of the “continent of continents” relaunches the proclamation of the Gospel in the face of injustice and conflict, according to Pope Francis’ Magisterium.
The Indian Church will soon have a new saint: Blessed Maria Teresa Chiramel Mankidiyan, foundress of the congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family. Msgr. James Pazhayattil, bishop of Irinjalakuda [deceased in 2016], said: "She is like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Apart from the fact that they share the name, they have in common not only having founded a religious congregation - one the Missionaries of Charity, the other the Sisters of the Holy Family - but above all they have distinguished themselves for the service for the disadvantaged : poor, sick, marginalized, dying ".
“Hunger has no present or future. Only the past”: a phrase that must not be a “slogan but a truth”. The Pope said so by inaugurating the IFAD governing council at the meeting that took place at the headquarters of the United Nations agency for food and agriculture (FAO). Francis - who next October convened a Synod on the Amazon in the Vatican - then met a delegation of indigenous peoples from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific.
Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous, a little 14-year-old shepherd girl.
On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady told Bernadette: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” This declaration, whose meaning St. Bernadette did not understand, came as a sort of confirmation of the recent proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception that Pope Pius IX had solemnly defined four years earlier, on December 8, 1854.
February 11, 2019 was the 90th anniversary of the Lateran Treaty signed by the Holy See and Benito Mussolini’s government. This treaty put an end to the “Roman Question” that had gone unresolved since 1870 when Rome was taken by the Italian revolutionaries.
Benito Mussolini, the Prime Minister of the Italian government, and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State, signed three documents at the Lateran Palace.
Guaidó’s delegation from Venezuela was received yesterday on both sides of the Tiber: at the Viminale (Seat of Italy’s prime minister and of the ministry of interior), at the Farnesina (headquarters of Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and at the Vatican. While the provisional president wrote an open "Letter to the Italian people" to obtain support, recognition and humanitarian aid.
What distinguishes the United Arab Emirates? According to a Church official in Jordan, it is its welcome, even with its restrictions, to Christians worldwide, who seek a good livelihood and a safe haven.
Speaking to ZENIT, Fr. Rif’at Bader, Director of the Catholic Center for Studies and Media (CCSM) in Jordan, stressed this, explaining how the Pope’s visit was significant to the Christian community.
