Catholic News 2

Rome, Italy, Sep 10, 2016 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Among the thousands of people who came to Rome to participate in the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, were Lourdes and Chema: two Spaniards who have always been close to the saint and the Missionaries of Charity, whom they dedicated their honeymoon to help serve.

“We spent four summers helping the Missionaries of Charity. The first summer we went to a home for the mentally ill in Romania. Chema was in one house and I was in the other,” Lourdes told CNA.

“We lived their daily life with the sisters, their life of prayer and their outside work in the homes. Every Saturday for example they went to a psychiatrist to get help for the patients,” she recalled.

“The next year we went to Ethiopia to a home they have in the capital with a thousand sick and dying people where they had different sections: adults, children, women.”

“We went to participate in their spirituality and also to help those children with a childhood development program they taught us prior in Madrid” and “the truth is it was a very special summer,” the young mother of four emphasized, who was in Rome with her eldest son who is four.



“Every day we had Mass early in the morning and then each person went to their place of work, then we gave them (the children) their food until it was time for then to take their nap and then we went to lunch ourselves. Then we gave them their therapy again, played with them and we went to the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament they had every day,” Chema said.

Lourdes could not keep from smiling remembering that “it was very funny because at nine in the evening the sisters let out several watch dogs for security and we all had to be in our place.”

“Daily life was very hard, but the first year has the greatest impact on you. In Romania we helped with seriously ill adults, and in Ethiopia with the children, which was easier. We saw terrible illnesses and a lot of suffering.”

Chema noted that “the missionaries always had a smile on their faces, they never complained and they were constantly working. We never saw them idle. They were very affectionate with us.”

But perhaps what most stands out in their story is that the devoted several days of their honeymoon after getting hitched to help the Missionaries of Charity instead of continuing to travel. “We got married in 2009, that summer we were also in Ethiopia, we decided to also spend our honeymoon  helping the Missionaries of Charity and we spent five days together with them of the fifteen we traveled. They were very grateful because we also brought them a very nice donation from the school where I work in Madrid.”

Chema said that “what gets a lot of people's attention is that we spent five days of our honeymoon doing that because that's not normal.” “We did it as an expression of gratitude and because we knew that when had children it would be really hard to go back there. We had spent several very wonderful summers such that we wanted to do it again,” Lourdes said, at which she was moved to tears.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis administered the Sacrament of Confirmation on a seriously ill young man before his Saturday Jubilee Audience in St. Peter’s Square.

16-year-old Giuseppe Chiolo, a patient of the oncological department of the Meyer Hospital in Florence, travelled to the Vatican on Saturday morning aboard an ambulance.

The Pope embraced Giuseppe before confirming him, and gifted him with a rosary as he asked the boy not to forget to pray for him.

Giuseppe had recently written a letter to Pope Francis in which he revealed his strong desire to meet with the Pope;  he was immediately invited to come to the Vatican.

The Pope also had words of encouragement and comfort for Giuseppe’s parents and for his sister and aunt who were present in the Square together with the Chaplain of the Meyer Hospital and with the vice-director of the local Florentine Caritas office. He also thanked the three volunteers of Mercy who accompanied Giuseppe on his journey to Rome.

During the special Jubilee Audience Pope Francis had special words of greeting for other sick and disabled persons, including Laura Salafia who was shot by mistake six years ago and has had to undergo a series of operations and rehabilitation, and Pompeo Barbieri, a survivor of the 2002 earthquake in the southern Apulia region who has managed to become a swimming champion notwithstanding a disability that constrains him to a wheelchair.

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Vatican City, Sep 10, 2016 / 11:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christ took on our sins so that we might have true freedom, Pope Francis said Saturday during a special audience in St. Peter's Square, where he gave confirmation to a young man in a wheelchair.

“The word 'redemption' is little used, yet it is important because it indicates the most radical liberation that God could perform for us, for all of humanity and the entire creation,” Francis said.

Often, the Pope said, we deny that our sins have any power over us, when in reality they are another type of slavery.

“By becoming one of us, the Lord Jesus not only takes on our human condition, but he raises us to the possibility of being children of God,” Pope Francis said. “By his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ, the Lamb without blemish, has conquered death and sin to free us from their domain.”

The Sept. 10 gathering at the Vatican was the latest in a series of special audiences for the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which are being held throughout the year in addition to the weekly general audiences on Wednesdays.

In addition to the audience, on his way to St. Peter's square Saturday, Pope Francis stopped to greet and confirm as Catholic Giuseppe Chiolo, a young man in a wheelchair, L'Osservatore Romano reported.

Our unwillingness to open ourselves to salvation keeps us from receiving the true freedom provided by God's forgiveness, Pope Francis preached.

“We need God to deliver us from all forms of indifference, selfishness and self-sufficiency,” he continued.

Francis noted that life is often difficult and filled with suffering, however, we are invited to turn our gaze on the crucified Jesus, “who suffers for us and with us, as certain proof that God does not abandon us.”

Even in persecution and distress, or in the pain of daily life, God's merciful hand lifts us up to him and gives us a new life, he said.

“God's love is boundless: we discover new signs indicating his attention towards us and especially its willingness to reach and go before us.”

“Beautiful are these three words: forgiveness, love and joy. All that He has taken has also been redeemed, liberated and saved,” the Pope continued.

“Our whole life, though marked by the fragility of sin, is placed under the gaze of God who loves us,” he said. “The more we are in need, the more his gaze on us is full of mercy.”

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