Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Pope Francis extols Benedict XVI as Pastor in Historic Two-Pope Vatican Funeral

January 5, 2023

~by Christopher White, National Catholic Reporter

In one of the rarest scenes in two millennia of Catholic Church history, today, Pope Francis presided over the funeral Mass of his predecessor, the late Pope Benedict XVI, and offered a send-off to someone he extolled as a pastor who “spread and testified” to the Gospel for his entire life.

During a brief, seven-minute homily to a crowd of thousands gathered during a cool, foggy morning in St. Peter’s Square, Francis reflected on the life of Christ, marked by “hands of forgiveness and compassion, healing and mercy, anointing and blessing,” seemingly drawing a parallel to the same devotion in which Benedict served the church.

In the years since Benedict’s resignation, Francis has referred to his predecessor as a
“grandfather of all grandfathers” and often praised the wisdom Benedict offered as a retired pope living inside the Vatican walls.

Tens of thousands were present in St. Peter’s Square to witness an occasion that historians say has very little precedent. Before Benedict, the last pope to resign had been Gregory XII, who was forced to step down in 1415 to end a schism. The last pope to resign voluntarily had been Celestine V in 1294.

German Cardinal Walter Kasper was among those in St. Peter’s. “This resignation wasn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength, a greatness because he saw that he was no longer up to the challenges of being pope,” said Kasper.

He added that Benedict’s resignation provided “a more human vision to the papacy, that the pope is a man and is dependent on his physical and mental strengths.”

As Francis offered his final tribute to his predecessor at the conclusion of his homily, the Pope called Benedict a “faithful friend” of God and prayed, “May your joy be complete as you hear his voice, now and forever.” ~ Joshua McElwee contributed to this report
To read the complete account, please click here

‘God is love’: The Key to the Pontificate of Benedict XVI

January 5, 2023

~ by Andrea Tornielli, Vatican News

Not since 1417 has the death of a (former) Pope not brought with it the end of a pontificate. Saturday’s death of Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, comes nearly 10 years after he announced his unexpected resignation on February 11, 2013.

Never before in the Church’s two-thousand-year history had a Pope resigned because he felt physically inadequate to bear the weight of the papal office. In a response given to journalist Peter Seewald three years earlier, Benedict had in some way anticipated it: “If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”

Even though the conclusion of his reign came before the end of his life, creating a historic precedent of enormous magnitude, it would truly be unbecoming to remember Benedict XVI for this alone.

After the death of John Paul II, the conclave held in 2005 elected Ratzinger – already an old man of 78 years – to succeed him in less than 24 hours. Ratzinger was universally esteemed and respected, even by his adversaries.

From the loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Benedict XVI presented himself as “a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord”. He wanted to “listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord.

Pope Benedict continually spoke of the “joy of being Christian”. He dedicated his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to the love of God. “Being Christian”, he wrote, “is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person.”
To read the entire account, please click here

Keep the Creche in Christmas, Pope Francis Urges

December 8, 2022

~ by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) Stopping to gaze at and perhaps pray before a Nativity scene is one of the best ways to remember the real meaning of Christmas, Pope Francis said.

“In its genuine poverty,” the pope said, “the creche helps us to rediscover the true richness of Christmas and to purify ourselves of so many aspects that pollute the Christmas landscape.”

“Simple and familiar, the Nativity scene recalls a Christmas that is different from the consumerist and commercial Christmas. It is something else. It reminds us how good it is for us to cherish moments of silence and prayer in our days, often overwhelmed by frenzy.”

Pope Francis encourages everyone to find some quiet time to spend before a creche at Christmas.

“Silence encourages contemplation of the child Jesus,” the Pope said, and “helps us to become intimate with God, with the fragile simplicity of a tiny newborn baby, with the meekness of his being laid down, with the tender affection of the swaddling clothes that envelop him.”

If we really want to celebrate Christmas,” he said, “let us rediscover through the crib the surprise and amazement of littleness, the littleness of God, who makes himself small, who is not born in the splendor of appearances, but in the poverty of a stable.”

The lights on the Christmas tree, he said, are a reminder that Jesus came “to lighten our darkness, our existence often enclosed in the shadow of sin, fear and pain.”

The Christmas tree, Pope Francis said, is a reminder of the need to remain rooted in Christ

Pope Francis: Refusal to Help Migrants is Sinful

October 13, 2022

~ by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The refusal to help desperate migrants “is revolting, it’s sinful, it’s criminal,” Pope Francis said as he canonized a bishop dedicated to assisting migrants.

“The exclusion of migrants is criminal. It makes them die in front of us,” the Pope said on October 9th referring to the deaths of migrants and refugees crossing dangerous seas in search of freedom and a dignified life.

At the beginning of the liturgy in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis formally recognized the holiness of St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian who founded the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo to care for migrants and St. Artemide Zatti, an Italian immigrant in Argentina who became a Salesian brother, pharmacist and nurse.

The prayers at the Mass included one for “those forced to leave their homeland,” and asking God to teach people to share “his welcoming gaze toward all people” and “heal the throwaway culture of indifference.”

“With great vision,” the Pope said, St. Scalabrini “looked forward to a world and a church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner.” To read the entire account, please click here
Historical footnote
It was at the time of her first trip to Rome that Mother Cabrini met Bishop Scalabrini. It is said that Bishop Scalabrini was the man who was the single most important individual responsible for Mother Cabrini’s decision to go to America.

On January 23, 1889, Bishop Scalabrini wrote to Archbishop Corrigan of New York: “The Sisters destined for New York will be the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a new community, but stable and well-experienced.” Actually, Mother Cabrini did not finally determine with Bishop Scalabrini an exact departure date for New York until February 1889.

The Sisters arrived in New York harbor on March 31, 1889. Wrote Mother Cabrini’s companion, Sr. Umilia,“Finally, we saw the beautiful Statue of Liberty. Oh, how happy Mother Cabrini was. I could read the joy on her face. She called us together to sing the ‘Ave Maris Stella.”
~ excerpts from Mother Cabrini – Italian Immigrant of the Century, by Sr. M.L. Sullivan, MSC, PhD

The “Father of Migrants” Canonized

October 13, 2022

~ by Claire Giangrave, The Washington Post

VATICAN CITY – On Sunday, October 9th, Pope Francis canonized a 19th-century bishop known as “the father of migrants” sending a message to Catholic leaders of the importance the pontiff places on the care of refugees at a time when immigration is roiling politics, including the Italian government at the Vatican’s doorstep.

Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, bishop of the northern Italian City of Piacenza from 1876 to 1905, lived at a time of mass migrations in Europe brought by economic, industrial and scientific changes that led millions to seek a new life in the Americas. Scalabrini’s advocacy for immigrants created the foundation for the church’s pastoral approach to migration today.

“The Holy Father introduces us to a bishop who was capable of not just fully and capably managing his diocese, but was able to look beyond,” said the Rev. Graziano Battistella, who shepherded Scalabrini’s cause for sainthood.

“With this canonization, I think the Holy Father wants to offer the church a model to imitate,” Battistella said. “A model for bishops, a model for the church.”

Born in Como, Italy, in 1839, Scalabrini was appointed bishop at age 36, as millions of Italians were fleeing their homeland for Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, leaving behind their families, their culture and their faith.

Migration was viewed negatively at the time, but Scalabrini took a different approach, seeing the upheaval as a chance to ease socioeconomic tensions at home while promoting cultural encounter and jump-starting progress. But, he warned that, without the proper laws and protections in place, migration could strip people of their roots, and make them prey to human traffickers.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Scalabrini believed migration is not only “a sacred human right” but a basic fact of human existence.

World Day for Grandparents and Elderly – July 24, 2022

July 20, 2022

Pope Francis has established throughout the Church the celebration of the World Day for Grandparents and Elderly on the fourth Sunday of July, near the liturgical memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus. The announcement of this celebration coincided with the celebration of the Year of Amoris Laetitia Family, which began on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph the husband of Mary, on March 19, 2021, and concluded at the World Meeting of Families in Rome in June of 2022.

The next World Day for Grandparents and Elderly is July 24, 2022. The theme for this year’s celebration is “In Old Age They Will Still Bear Fruit” (Ps. 92:15). The theme is meant to emphasize how grandparents are a gift both to society and the Church. For more information on the theme please see the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life’s announcement. Read the Holy Father’s message for the Second World Day for Grandparents and Elderly.

This year, Pope Francis is also extending the opportunity for a plenary indulgence “to the faithful who devote adequate time to visit, in presence or virtually, through the media, their elderly brothers and sisters in need or in difficulty” on July 24.

Mother Cabrini Canonized on July 7, 1946

July 7, 2022

Following the exhaustive Vatican processes of beatification and canonization, Mother Cabrini was declared Blessed on November 13, 1938, and on July 7, 1946, she became the first United States citizen to be canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Today we celebrate that anniversary.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII formally proclaimed St. Frances Xavier Cabrini as the “Patroness of Immigrants.”

In his homily, Pope Pius XII said, “She gathered endangered youth in safe houses, and taught them holy and rightful principles. She consoled the spirit of the imprisoned, giving them the comfort of life eternal, and urging them to resume the right path and to remake an honest life. She consoled the sick and the infirm gathered in hospitals, and cared for them assiduously. Especially towards immigrants, who had left their own homes… did she extend a friendly hand, a sheltering refuge, relief and help.”

Pope Francis, in a letter to Sr. Barbara Staley, MSC, General Superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, writes, “Catholics today cannot forget that [this] is the vocation of every Christian and of every community of the disciples of Jesus.”

The late Sr. Mary Louise Sullivan, MSC, PhD, writes in her book, Mother Cabrini: “Italian Immigrant of the Century” that “Cabrini was a modern woman. Her interests were extensive. She certainly did not adapt readily to the role expected of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century women religious. She was an entrepreneur and world traveler, keenly aware of the currents of thought in the world of her time. Cabrini foresaw the twentieth century as one of revolution, and tailored her philosophy of education, healthcare, and social service to accentuate the intrinsic value and dignity of each human being touched by her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

Pope Francis’ Synodality Could Be Key to Reaching Young Catholics

June 23, 2022

~ by Br. Ernest J. Miller for National Catholic Reporter

Inspired by Pope Francis’ call for greater listening, presence and curiosity among the global church, nearly 400 students from more than 40 campuses across the Philadelphia metropolitan region joined a multipart listening process that culminated in an all-campus listening session at LaSalle University. Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez participated in the listening session and delivered some thoughts at the end.

A major highlight of the event was the small discussion groups self-selected by students focused on six themes identified from the reports of cross-campus listening sessions: journeying from exclusion to inclusion, from fragmentation to wholeness, from discord to unity, from performance to integrity, from broken trust to account, from being led to leading.

Following the Pope’s call
With the theme “For a synodal church: communion, participation, and mission,” the church’s process of synodality is positioned to capture the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of young people as they navigate uncertainty, transcend traditional religious boundaries and encounter a sense of wholeness. Recognizing the unique role colleges and universities play in the dialogical and listening processes that make synodality possible, Pope Francis encouraged Catholic higher education institutions to create spaces to listen to the joys and hopes, grief and anxieties of young people in our care.

Why Young People Need Synodality
There is a continuing trend of young Catholics disassociating not only with institutional Catholicism and Christianity, but all religion. Young Catholics find themselves in a holy frustration, wrestling with disjointed elements of reality afflicting the church, nation and world.

Katherine Angulo V., who prepares pastoral leaders for long-term ministry at the University of Notre Dame writes:

“Young people desire to be listened to… Like Jesus’ listening on the road [to Emmaus], our listening as teachers and ministers must take place on the road young people are traveling. We must go out to them. We must ask questions first, and then we must be prepared to answer the questions young people will inevitably ask us: Why do you stay? Why do you still believe?”

For young people, the experience of encountering a listening, curious and compassionate church becomes the yeast for fostering communion, participation and mission – the three markers that characterize the synod process in the church. To read the entire article, please click here

Pope Francis Embraces Limitations of Aging

May 12, 2022

~ Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, National Catholic Reporter

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis’ willingness to work despite knee pain that has made walking nearly impossible shows other older adults that they have wisdom and experience to offer younger generations, a top Vatican cardinal said.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell offered the assessment as he introduced Francis’ message for World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. In the message released on Tuesday, May 10, the 85-year-old pope urged older people to consider advanced age a blessing.

Pope Francis is struggling to cope with strained ligaments in his right knee that have greatly limited his mobility. Last week, he was seen in public for the first time using a wheelchair. He recently said he can no longer walk and must rest his knee on doctor’s orders.

Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s office for laity and a trusted papal adviser, said that Francis’ willingness to acknowledge and display his limitations while continuing to hold audiences could encourage others to continue contributing as they age.

Pope Francis instituted the day honoring elderly people (World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, July 24th ) to drive home his belief that younger generations should value older ones as a resource and not treat them as part of modern “throwaway culture.”

In his message, Pope Francis noted that advanced age is a time of life that isn’t understood even “by those of us who are already experiencing it. Even though it eventually comes with the passage of time, no one prepares us for old age, and at times it seems to take us by surprise,” he wrote.

But Francis urged all his contemporaries to embrace their advanced ages as a gift and not to lament the diminishment of their strengths or sense of usefulness.

“Along with old age and white hairs, God continues to give us the gift of life and to keep us from being overcome by evil,” he said. “Aging is not a condemnation, but a blessing!”

Francis closed the message by noting that the war in Ukraine has brought another conflict to Europe as the generation that experienced World War II is dying out.

He prayed that all elderly people are made into “artisans of the revolution of tenderness, so that together we can set the world free from the specter of loneliness and the demons of war.”

Pope Francis: ‘I am ready to go to Moscow’ to end the war in Ukraine

May 5, 2022

Pope Francis greets the crowd during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 27, 2022. (CNS photo/Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters)

~ by Gerard O’Connell, AMERICA

Pope Francis is deeply concerned that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of slowing and said he is ready to go to Moscow to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in attempt to bring it to an end. He revealed in an interview with Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian daily, that he let the Russian leader know this 20 days after the war started, but said that he has not yet received a reply from him.

In the interview, Francis recalled that “on the first day of the war I called the Ukrainian President Zelensky by phone, but I did not call Putin. I had spoken with him in December, but this time no. I did not call him.” Instead, he said, I wished to make a clear gesture that the whole world could see, and for this reason I went to the Russian ambassador. I asked him to explain to me [the reason for the war]. I told him, ‘Please stop [the war[.’ Then, after 20 days of war, I asked Cardinal Parolin to get the message to Putin that I am ready to go to Moscow.”

“Certainly, it is necessary that the leader of the Kremlin should open a window (for this to happen), but we have not yet received an answer,” Pope Francis said. “But we continue insisting, even though I fear that Putin cannot and does not wish to have this encounter at this moment. But how can one not stop such brutality?”

Asked whether it was right for Western countries to send so much weaponry to Ukraine, Francis said he “was too far away (from the war)” to respond to this question. But, he remarked, “one thing is clear they are trying out new weapons” in this conflict. Moreover, “the Russians now know that tanks are of little use and so are thinking of other things,” perhaps alluding to the supersonic missiles or nuclear weapons that the Kremlin has publicly threatened it could use.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also invited Francis to come to Kyiv, but Francis feels the moment is not right. “I feel that I should not go (now). I must first go to Moscow. I must first meet Putin,” he said. “I am a priest, what can I do? I do what I can. If Putin opens the door…”

Pope Francis described the Ukrainians as “a proud people” that “paid a heavy price” during World War II, and that today are a “martyred people, with many who have died.”