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Ostia, Italy, May 19, 2017 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis made a Year-of-Mercy style visit to a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome, blessing the houses of a dozen people, as parish priests do every year during the Easter season.

According to a May 19 Vatican communique, the Pope wanted to continue the “Mercy Friday” visits he made during the Jubilee of Mercy, which are signs “inspired by the corporal and spiritual works of mercy” he performed during the Holy Year.

“As a sign of closeness to the families living on the peripheries of Rome, he decided to bless their houses one-by-one, as the pastor does every year during the Easter season,” the communique read.

Two days ago Fr. Plinio Poncina, pastor of Stella Maris, one of the six parishes in Ostia, posted signs on the outside of the condo building notifying families that he would be stopping by to give the annual Easter blessing.

Only lasting a few minutes, the blessing usually consists of the priest walking through the house and sprinkling holy water in each room, leading the family in a prayer and then handing them a prayer card before moving on to the next apartment.

So it was “a great surprise today when, as the bell rang, instead of the pastor the inhabitants saw Pope Francis.”

According to the communique, the Pope “with great simplicity” met with the families and blessed around a dozen apartments inside the Piazza Francesco Conteduca complex, leaving each of them with a rosary as a gift.

Francis jested at one point, apologizing to families for the disturbance, but reassured them that he had respected the time of silence during which they rest after lunch, which was posted on the sign at the entrance of the condominium.  

Located roughly 20 miles southwest of central Rome, Ostia has a population of around 100,000, among whom is “a lively community of faithful” who live and share the difficulties of a life lived on the peripheries.

The area parish and its adjunct soccer field have often become a reference point for the community and those “social and existential realities which often, suffering forms of exclusion, remain on the margins,” the communique said.

Francis’ visit to Ostia marks the second “Mercy Friday” visit he has made since the close of the Jubilee of Mercy in November 2016.

In March he visited the St. Alessio-Margherita di Savoia Regional Center for the blind in Rome, showing he doesn't think works of mercy are just for special occasions – or years.

Pope Francis kicked off his monthly works of mercy in January 2016 by visiting a retirement home for the elderly, sick, and those in a vegetative state, and a month later traveled to a center for those recovering from drug addiction in Castel Gandolfo.

Other visits throughout the year included refugees, children, formerly sex-trafficked women, former priests, infants, and the terminally ill.

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Vatican City, May 19, 2017 / 11:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis warned that ideologues sow confusion and division in the Church in the name of false clarity, rather than relying on the Pope, the bishops, and Church councils inspired by the Holy Spirit.

“We are human, we are sinners,” he said, adding that there are difficulties even in the Church. Being sinners leads to humility and drawing closer to God who saves us.

Looking to the early Church, Pope Francis made a distinction between those who had “forceful discussions” but “a good spirit,” and those who “sowed confusion.”

“The group of the apostles who want to discuss the problem, and the others who go and create problems,” the Pope distinguished. “They divide, they divide the Church, they say that what the Apostles preached is not what Jesus said, that it is not the truth.”

The Pope's words came in his homily at Casa Santa Martha May 19, Vatican Radio reports. He reflected on the Council of Jerusalem of 49 A.D., recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, which rejected claims that gentile converts to Christianity would have to be circumcised.

In the early Church, he charged, “there were jealousies, power struggles, a certain deviousness that wanted to profit from and to buy power.”

In the end, the apostles' discussion came to agreement.

“They had hearts open to what the Holy Spirit said. And after the discussion 'it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,'” the Pope said.

This is not “a political agreement” but “the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” that led them to reject the “necessities” some would require of Christian converts, like a refusal to eat meat sacrificed to idols and a requirement to abstain from “illegitimate unions.”

The “liberty of the spirit,” however, allowed gentiles to enter the Church without circumcision.

At that first Church Council, Pope Francis said, “the Holy Spirit and they, the Pope with the bishops, all together,” gathered together in order “to clarify the doctrine,” as would be done through the centuries at successive councils so that “what Jesus said in the Gospels, what is the Spirit of the Gospels, would be understood well.”

The Pope encouraged the congregation not to be afraid in the face of “the opinions of the ideologues of doctrine.” He stressed that the Church has “its proper Magisterium, the Magisterium of the Pope, of the bishops, of the councils.” They should follow the path “that comes from the preaching of Jesus, and from the teaching and assistance of the Holy Spirit.” This path is “always open, always free,” because “doctrine unites, the Councils unite the Christian community” but “ideology divides.”   

Pope Francis further warned against divisive elements in the Church.

“But there were always people who without any commission go out to disturb the Christian community with speeches that upset souls: 'Eh, no, someone who says that is a heretic, you can’t say this, or that; this is the doctrine of the Church,'” he said.

“And they are fanatics of things that are not clear, like those fanatics who go there sowing weeds in order to divide the Christian community.”

He said their “great error” results from when Church doctrine, which comes from the gospel and is inspired by the Holy Spirit, “becomes an ideology.”

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San Salvador, El Salvador, May 19, 2017 / 01:14 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A nearly 40 year-old murder case was reopened this week to properly prosecute the suspected killer behind the Salvadorian archbishop's martyrdom.

Because of an amnesty law that prohibited the prosecution of criminal acts stemming from the El Salvador Civil War, the alleged murderer of Archbishop Oscar Romero was never convicted of any crime. The law was lifted last year by the country’s constitutional court, reopening cases from 1980 to 1992.

Judge Ricardo Chicas reopened the case on Thursday and ordered that charges be sought against the main suspect, whose case was dismissed in 1993 because of the amnesty law.

Alvaro Rafael Saravia was a soldier and is the main suspect tied to a right-wing death squad who killed the priest at a hospital in San Salvador. Blessed Romero was killed while saying mass at the hospital’s chapel. The archbishop was well known for preaching against the country’s poverty and corruption from the pulpit.

Social and economic inequality of the 1970s resulted in demonstrations and rebellions against the El Salvador government. The protests were encountered by government repression, leading to death squads and forced disappearances. Pro-government forces fought against left-wing guerilla groups from 1979 to 1992.

The El Salvadoran Civil War claimed an estimated 75,000 lives before a peace agreement was established in 1992.

Many of the clergy spoke against El Salvador’s inhumane practices, and many Catholic leaders faced backlash once they denounced the government. Blessed Romero especially decried both the social injustices which heavily oppressed the poor and the military's oppressive tactics.

Blessed Romero became exceedingly outspoken once a close friend and teacher to the archbishop was gunned down by military forces on the way to Mass. Before he died in 1980, 30 priests in his archdiocese were either murdered or expelled from the state, and many more lay faithful were subject to the same fate.

Investigation into Archbishop Romero’s canonization officially opened in 1993, but was delayed until the early 2000s because of complex politics and false reports. In January of 2015, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously recognized the priest as martyr due to the hatred towards the faith identified within the act, and Pope Francis approved for the beatification a month later.

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IMAGE: CNS/L'Osservatore Romano

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Like parish priests throughout Italy do during the Easter season, Pope Francis spent an afternoon May 19 going door to door and blessing homes.

Continuing the "Mercy Friday" visits he began during the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis chose a public housing complex in Ostia, a Rome suburb on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Vatican press office said Father Plinio Poncina, pastor of Stella Maris parish, put up signs May 17 announcing a priest would be visiting the neighborhood to bless houses. The signs, which indicate a date and give a time frame, are a common site in Italy in the weeks before and after Easter.

"It was a great surprise today when, instead of the pastor, the one ringing the door bells was Pope Francis," the press office said. "With great simplicity, he interacted with the families, he blessed a dozen apartments" and left rosaries for the residents.

"Joking, he apologized for disturbing people, however he reassured them that he had respected the hour of silence for a nap after lunch in accordance with the sign posted at the entrance to the building," the press office said.

The pope's Friday visits to hospitals and hospices, homes for children, rehab centers and other places of care were planned for the Year of Mercy as tangible ways for the pope to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Although the Year of Mercy ended in November, the pope restarted making Mercy Friday visits in March when he visited a home and educational center for the blind and visually impaired.

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By Rhina Guidos

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Decrease military spending and help the poor, said the U.S. bishops in a May 19 letter addressed to Congress, before lawmakers prepare to work on the federal budget for the upcoming 2018 fiscal year.

The budget requires difficult decisions, but lawmakers must "give central importance to 'the least of these,'" said the letter sent to all members of the Senate and the House of Representatives on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and signed by the chairmen of six USCCB committees.

The letter urged lawmakers to "promote the welfare of workers and families who struggle to live in dignity."

Increasing funding for defense and immigration enforcement while cutting "many domestic and international programs that assist the most vulnerable, would be profoundly troubling," said the letter signed by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishops Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Christopher J. Coyne of Burlington, Vermont, Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, George V. Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, and Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas.

Respectively, they chair the bishops' committees on pro-life activities, international policy, communications, domestic policy, Catholic education and migration.

Decisions should be "guided by moral criteria that protect human life and dignity," said the bishops in the letter, and making deep cuts to programs that help the poor "would harm people facing dire circumstances."

"When the impact of other potential legislative proposals, including health care and tax policies, are taken into account, the prospects for vulnerable people become even bleaker," the bishops said in the letter.

An early budget proposal unveiled in March by President Donald Trump's administration called for a $54 billion increase in military spending and cutting nonmilitary programs by an equal amount. The proposal also asked for more money for immigration enforcement, while seeking deep cuts in social safety-net programs as well as environmental programs and dramatically reducing funding for the State Department and its foreign aid programs.

The early draft of Trump's proposed budget, called the "skinny budget" because of its drastic proposed cuts to certain departments, included slashing by 37 percent the $50 billion budget for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. Both departments have anti-poverty programs to help foster democratic societies abroad.

"It is hard to reconcile the need for diplomacy and political solutions with significant cuts to the State Department budget," they said.

The bishops said in the letter that diplomacy and international development are "primary tools" for peace, regional stability and human rights and lawmakers should "not adopt deep cuts to these budgets." As it is, the U.S. spends more than any other country on military and its spending is about a third of worldwide military spending, the bishops said.

"Our nation continues to increase spending on nuclear weapons, despite the moral imperative to verifiably disarm from this class of indiscriminate weapons," they said. "Military force should only be employed in a just cause as a last resort within strict moral limits of proportionality, discrimination and probability of success."

Although there isn't enough money to fund everything, spending money elsewhere, or saving money in the budget shouldn't be done by cutting health care, nutrition or other anti-poverty programs, the bishops said.

"The human consequences of budget choices are clear to us as pastors," they said, calling the federal budget "a moral document with profound implications for the common good of our nation and world."

"Our Catholic community defends the unborn and the undocumented, feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, educates the young, and cares for the sick, both at home and abroad," their letter said. "We help mothers facing challenging situations of pregnancy, poor families rising above crushing poverty, refugees fleeing conflict and persecution, and communities devastated by wars, natural disasters and famines."

And in that fight, "we are partners with government," they said, adding that church institutions around the world help the most marginalized of communities.

"The moral measure of the federal budget is how well it promotes the common good of all, especially the most vulnerable whose voices are too often missing in these debates," the bishops said. "The Catholic bishops of the United States stand ready to work with leaders of both parties for a federal budget that reduces future deficits, protects poor and vulnerable people, and advances peace and the common good."

It's unclear when Congress will take up talks on the budget for the 2018 fiscal year. Both parties expressed criticism of the president's initial proposal. The White House said it would release a full budget for the 2018 fiscal year May 23, while Trump is away on his first foreign trip as president and a day before he meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

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Follow Guidos on Twitter: @CNS_Rhina.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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