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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has sent a letter to the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, through Cardinal Mario Zenari, Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, appealing for "an end to the violence and the peaceful resolution of hostilities" in the country.

A comuniqué from the Holy See Press Office released on Monday read as follows:

"In naming Archbishop Mario Zenari to the College of Cardinals, the Holy Father sought to show a particular sign of affection for the beloved Syrian people, so sorely tried in recent years.

"In a letter sent through the new Cardinal, Pope Francis expressed again his appeal to President Bashar al-Assad and to the international community for an end to the violence, and the peaceful resolution of hostilities, condemning all forms of extremism and terrorism from whatever quarter they may come, and appealing to the President to ensure that international humanitarian law is fully respected with regard to the protection of the civilians and access to humanitarian aid."

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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Monday evening in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas.

In his homily for the celebration, Pope Francis reflected on how the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us that we are not orphans, saying she teaches us to look on our brothers and sisters with her eyes full of love.

The Holy Father said, “We must certainly learn from [her] receptive and servile faith… learn from this faith which knows how to insert itself within history to be salt and light in our lives and in our societies.”

In contrast, he lamented the current direction of human society, which he said is “ever more marked by signs of division,” calling it “a society of distrust”.

“A society which likes to boast of its scientific and technological advances but which has turned a blind and insensitive eye to the thousands of faces which get lost on the way, excluded by the blinding pride of a few.”

The Holy Father said, “Our beloved American continent has grown accustomed to seeing thousands and thousands of children and young people on the street, begging and sleeping in train stations or wherever they find space… And they feel that there is no space for them on the ‘train of life’”.

He said, “In the face of these situations, we need to say with Elizabeth: ‘Blessed are you because you believed’, and learn from this receptive and servile faith which characterized and characterizes our Mother.”

The Pope went on to say the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us we have a mother.

“Celebrating Mary is, above all, to remember our Mother, to remember that we are not and never will be an orphan people. We have a Mother!... And where there is the Mother, brothers may quarrel but a sense of unity will always prevail.”

Pope Francis concluded by saying Mary’s faith led her to love and serve.

“Celebrating Mary’s memory is to celebrate that we, like her, are called to get up and go towards others with the same vision, with her same bands of mercy, with her same gestures.”

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Vatican City, Dec 12, 2016 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday, Pope Francis celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, pointing to Mary’s faith not as the result of false ideal where everything is rosy, but rather of unwavering strength particularly when life is at its worst.

“In Mary we find the faithful reflection not of a poetically sweetened faith, but of a strong faith especially at a time when the sweet enchantments of things are broken and there are contradictions in conflict everywhere,” the Pope said Dec. 12, marking the Marian feast.

He stressed that we should learn from this “strong and helpful faith that characterized and characterizes our Mother; to learn from this faith that knows how to get inside history so as to be salt and light in our lives and in our society.”

Pope Francis celebrated Mass marking the Dec. 12 feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The celebration featured special elements typical of Mexico’s indigenous regions, including ancient hymns composed in indigenous languages such as Nahuatl, Quechua, Mapuche and Guarani.

Veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe dates back to the 16th century when a “Lady from Heaven” who identified herself as the Mother of the True God appeared to Saint Juan Diego, a poor Indian from Tepeyac, on a hill northwest of Mexico City.

She instructed Juan Diego to have the bishop build a church on the site of the apparitions. As a sign, the now-famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was imprinted miraculously on his tilma, or cloak. Both the image and the tilma remain intact after more than 470 years.

Pope Francis traveled to Mexico earlier this year, a voyage that was made in large part to visit the shrine and adjoining basilica dedicated to Our Lady.

In his homily for Mass, the Pope pointed to the day’s Gospel passage recounting the moment of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would be the Mother of God.

The passage, he said, “bears all the dynamism of the visit of God: when God comes to meet us He moves us inwardly, He sets in motion what we are until all our life is transformed into praise and blessing.”

When God comes to us, he leaves us with a “healthy restlessness” that invites us to proclaim that he lives and is present among his people.

Mary, “the first disciple and missionary,” is a prime example of this, he said, explaining that “far from remaining in the reserved space of our temples,” she goes out to meet and accompany others.

Just as she went in haste to accompany her cousin Elizabeth during her pregnancy with John the Baptist, in 1531 she did the same thing on the hill of Tepeyac, running “to serve and accompany this people who were gestating in pain, becoming their Mother and that of all peoples.”

“Mary is the icon of the disciple, of the believing and prayerful woman who knows how to accompany and encourage our faith and our hope in the distinct stages we must go through,” he said, noting that modern society is increasingly marked by division and fragmentation.

It’s hard to brag about the scientific and technological advances of our culture when society has at the same time become “blind and insensitive” to the thousands of people excluded by “the blind pride of the few,” he said.

A society such as this “ends up establishing a culture of disillusionment, disenchantment and frustration in many of our brothers, and even anguish in many others as they experience the difficulties they need to face so as not to lose their way.”

Society seems to have unconsciously fallen into a perpetual state of distrust with serious implications for both the present and future, Francis said, noting that this distrust “gradually engenders states of apathy and dispersal.”

He pointed to the thousands of children and youth living on the streets who are forced to sleep in train stations, exploited in illegal work or are driven to beg for money at intersections by washing the windshields of passing cars.

“They feel that the ‘train of life’ has no place for them,” Pope Francis said, and pointed to the many families “scarred by the suffering of seeing their children made victims of the merchants of death.”

The Pope also pointed to the exclusion of the elderly and the “precarious situation” affecting the dignity of women, many of whom since childhood and adolescence “are subject to many forms of violence inside and outside the home.”

These situations “can paralyze us,” casting doubt on our faith, our hope and our way of looking toward and facing the future, he said.

However, when faced with all these or similar circumstances, we must look to and learn from “this strong and helpful faith that characterized and characterizes our Mother.”

Celebrating Mary above all means remembering that she is a mother, and that “we are not and never will be an orphaned people,” he said.

While there will always be fighting among brothers, with the presence of the mother “the sense of unity will always prevail,” the Pope said, adding that has always been impressed by women from different areas of Latin America who often struggle on their own, but still manage to raise their children.

This is the same way Mary acts with us, he said, calling her “a woman who fights against the society of mistrust and blindness, the society of apathy and dispersion; a woman who fights to strengthen the joy of the Gospel, who fights to give ‘flesh’ to the Gospel.”

“Mary, because she believed, loved; because she is the handmaid of the Lord and the servant of her brothers,” he said, explaining that part of honoring Mary means to imitate her in going out to meet others with the same merciful gaze and actions.

“Her presence leads us to reconciliation, giving us the strength to create bonds in our blessed Latin American land, saying ‘yes’ to life and ‘no’ to all kinds of indifference, exclusion, or the rejection of peoples and persons,” he said.

Pope Francis closed his homily by urging those present to go out “and look upon others with the same gaze. A gaze that makes us brothers.”

“We do so because, like Juan Diego, we know that here is our mother, we know that we are under her shadow and her protection, which is the source of our joy, and that we are in the cross of her arms.”

 

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis described Mary as a strong woman who inspires believers to give "flesh to the Gospel" in societies often marked by distrust and blindness.

"To look at the Guadalupana is to remember that the presence of the Lord always passes through those who manage to make his word flesh, who seek to embody the life of God within themselves, becoming living signs of his mercy," Pope Francis said Dec. 12 during an evening Mass marking the feast day.

The Mass began with a procession of the flags of the nations of South, Central and North America -- a sign that Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness of the Americas.

Like the U.S. bishops' had asked their faithful to do, the pope's Mass included a special prayer "for our Hispanic brothers and sisters and for the migrants of our lands that their dignity would be recognized and protected" and that their family unity and social and ecclesial integration would be promoted.

Another prayer intention asked God, through Our Lady of Guadalupe, to end violence on the continent and guarantee "land, work and a roof" over the heads of all.

The pope himself ended his homily with an improvised prayer that Our Lady of Guadalupe would intercede to give peace, bread, a home and a strong faith to all the continent's people.

The Mass was celebrated primarily in Spanish, although some of the prayers were in Portuguese and English. And the music, in addition to Latin, included Marian hymns in the indigenous Quechua, Nahuatl and Mapuche languages.

The feast day's Gospel reading was the story of Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth, a story Pope Francis said illustrates how, whenever God "visits," people are moved and their very being "is transformed into praise and blessing."

"When God visits us, he leaves us restless with the healthy restlessness of those who feel they have been invited to proclaim that he lives and is in the midst of his people," the pope said. Mary, "the first disciple and missionary," goes out to Elizabeth to share the good news.

She did the same in 1531 when she appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac in Mexico, the pope said. She reached out to the continent's native peoples who were in pain, "becoming their mother."

Mary is "the icon of the disciple, of the believing and prayerful woman who knows how to accompany and encourage our faith and our hope," the pope said. Mary's is not a "poetically sweetened faith," but a faith that is strong and courageous in the face of brokenness and conflict.

The same kind of faith is needed today, the pope said, if the peoples of the Americas are to build a society that overcomes the increasing "signs of division and fragmentation," where so many people are excluded and poor, "a society that likes to vaunt its scientific and technological advances, but that has become blind and insensitive to the thousands of faces that are there along the way, excluded by the blind pride of the few."

Pope Francis questioned how the peoples of the Americas can boast of their societies' well-being when there are "thousands and thousands of children and young people on the streets, begging and sleeping in railway stations, in the subway or wherever they find space. Children and young people exploited in illegal work or driven to seeking a few coins at intersections, cleaning the windshields of our cars."

Too many families, he said, "are scarred by the suffering of seeing their children made victims of the merchants of death," and too many elderly are abandoned to solitude. In addition, he said, there is "the precarious situation that affects the dignity of many women. Some, since childhood and adolescence, are subject to many forms of violence inside and outside the home."

Yet, celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he said, Christians are called to remember that they have a mother -- "we are not and never will be an orphaned people" -- and where there is a mother, there is a strong force pushing children to behave like brothers and sisters.

"I have always been impressed to see, in different peoples of Latin America, those struggling mothers who, often alone, manage to bring up their children," Pope Francis told the congregation. "This is Mary with us, with her children: a woman who fights against the society of mistrust and blindness, the society of apathy and dispersion; a woman who fights to strengthen the joy of the Gospel, who fights to give 'flesh' to the Gospel."

Celebrating the feast, he said, Christians make a commitment to proclaiming hope and trust in God's ultimate victory and pledge to love like she loved.

"Her presence leads us to reconciliation, giving us the strength to create bonds in our blessed Latin American land, saying 'yes' to life and 'no' to all kinds of indifference, exclusion or the rejection of peoples and persons," Pope Francis said. "Let us not be afraid to go out and look upon others with the same gaze, a gaze that makes us brothers and sisters."

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