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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The world and the Catholic Church must respect and defend women and foster a motherly care for others to end dehumanizing cycles of violence, Pope Francis said. "The church needs Mary in order to recover her own feminine face, to resemble more fully the woman, virgin and mother, who is her model and perfect image, to make space for women and to be 'generative' through a pastoral ministry marked by concern and care," the pope said during Mass in St. Peter's Basilica for the feast of Mary, Mother of God, and World Peace Day Jan. 1.The world too, he said, "needs to look to mothers and to women in order to find peace, to emerge from the spiral of violence and hatred, and once more see things with genuinely human eyes and hearts."In his homily, Pope Francis called on all societies to "accept the gift that is woman, every woman" and to "respect, defend and esteem woman in the knowledge that whoever harms a single woman profanes God, who was born of a woman."The Mass ...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- On New Year's Eve, believers and non-believers alike give thanks for all they have received in the last 12 months and express their hopes for the coming year, but Christians are called to cultivate their gratitude and hope following the example of Mary, Pope Francis said. "Faith enables us to live this hour in a way different than that of a worldly mindset," the pope said during an evening prayer service in St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 31. "Faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnated God, born of the Virgin Mary, gives a new way of feeling time and life."Pope Francis said that while many people express thanks and hope on New Year's Eve, in reality, they often "lack the essential dimension which is that of relationship with the Other and with others, with God and with brothers and sisters." With a worldly mentality, gratitude and hope are "flattened onto the self, onto one's interests," he said. "They don't go beyond satisfaction and optimism."Pope Francis encouraged Chr...
As we enter the new year, humanity stands before vast and scarcely mapped oceans of technological augmentation. AI and burgeoning algorithmic systems are already woven into the fabric of our being, influencing how we understand our world and the people around us.In his message for World Peace Day, "Artificial Intelligence and Peace," Pope Francis promotes the pursuit of holistic and inclusive innovations in science and technology as a pathway to peace. In a rapidly evolving world, the pope recognizes the transforming impact of science and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, on all human endeavors including the pursuit of peace. AI offers both promises and perils, so ethical innovation is urgently needed to guide its development from now on.Pope Francis embraces the progress and positive transformations that science and technology have brought and that AI is bringing. From addressing once-insurmountable challenges to revolutionizing communication, education and personal...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis' 2023 was a year of important trips made or postponed, a predecessor's funeral and his own 10th anniversary as pope, a call to the world to act on climate change and a call to the Catholic Church to strengthen its mission by learning "synodality."The Argentine pope, who was born Dec. 17, 1936, was to finish the year as an 87-year-old.As the oldest reigning pope in the last 120 years, Pope Francis' year was punctuated with hospitalizations, breathing difficulties and ongoing mobility challenges. The last pope to serve at his age was Pope Leo XIII, who died at the age of 93 in 1903.For Pope Francis, the year began with mourning Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2013 and died Dec. 31, 2022. Pope Francis touches the casket of Pope Benedict XVI at the conclusion of his funeral Mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Jan. 5, 2023. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)Pope Francis spent the week after his death speaking about his predecessor, lauding his "wisdom, t...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican's affirmation that a priest can give an informal blessing to a gay couple who asks for one is not a first step toward the Catholic Church recognizing same-sex marriages, said Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith."Those who say so either have not read the text or have 'bad blood,' if you will pardon the expression. The statement clearly and ad nauseam states that these blessings are non-ritualized so that they are not interpreted as a marriage," the cardinal told the Spanish newspaper ABC in an interview published Dec. 25.The doctrinal dicastery's document, "Fiducia Supplicans" ("Supplicating Trust"), which was approved by Pope Francis, said that while the church "remains firm" in teaching that marriage is only a life-long union between a man and a woman, in certain circumstances priests can give non-sacramental, non-liturgical blessings to "couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples witho...
WASHINGTON - Catholics in the United States will have an opportunity to show solidarity and share their faith by giving to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) annual Collection for the Church in Latin America next month. Last year, the collection delivered more than $6.5 million in grants to help people who reside in regions where poverty, political and religious persecution, and other hardships make it difficult for the Church to support itself."In an era with too much focus on what divides us from our sisters and brothers in Latin America, Catholics across the United States continue to strengthen our bonds of faith, hope, and love through their gifts to the U.S. bishops' annual Collection for the Church in Latin America," said Bishop Octavio Cisneros, emeritus auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn and chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America.Last year, this collection funded 251 grants supporting evangelization, catechesis, family ministry, pro-life wo...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The devil is sly and sneaky like a serpent and subtly entices people to sin, Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience Dec. 27.Beginning a new series of audience talks about vices and virtues, the pope said that evil grows "when one begins to fantasize about it, to nurse it in the imagination and in thoughts, and one ends up being ensnared by its enticements."One of the devil's first lines of attack, he said, is to go after one's pride just like the serpent who tricked Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden did.When God told them they could eat the fruit of any tree except "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," God was not telling them they could not use their ability to reason, the pope said. Instead, God was telling them: "Recognize your limits; do not think you are the master of everything, because pride is the beginning of all evil."God made Adam and Eve the guardians of creation but wanted "to preserve them from the presumption of omnipotence, of...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican publishing house announced it will release a book of some 130 homilies given by the late Pope Benedict XVI at private Sunday Masses -- 30 given while he was pope and more than 100 given to members of his household once he retired.The homilies were recorded and transcribed by the consecrated women, members of Memores Domini, who lived with him and ran his household, said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, president of the board of directors of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation.Announcing the publication Dec. 23, the foundation and the Vatican publishing house did not give a date for its release, but they published a homily Pope Benedict XVI had given Dec. 22, 2013, the fourth Sunday of Advent of his first year of retirement.The homily focused on St. Joseph and the biblical description of him as a "just man," which, before the birth of Jesus, would have signified that he followed the Torah, the law given to the people of Israel."The d...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- More than two millennia after the Holy Family was denied a room at the inn and Jesus was born in a manger, war once again renders his birthplace in the Holy Land inhospitable, Pope Francis said. "Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world," the pope said Dec. 24 during his homily for Christmas Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.The nighttime liturgy began with preparatory prayers that included Old Testament readings telling of the Messiah's coming, invocations of the Savior and the proclamation of his birth. Children, who entered the basilica as part of the procession dressed in traditional garments from different continents, placed flowers around a figurine of Jesus that rested in front of the basilica's main altar. In his lengthy homily, the pope reflected on Jesus' birth occurring after Caesar decreed a census in w...
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Celebrating the birth of Jesus, the prince of peace, should mean making a commitment to opposing all war, to cherishing human life, feeding the hungry and speaking up for those who have no voice, Pope Francis said."To say 'yes' to the Prince of Peace, then, means saying 'no' to war -- and doing so with courage -- saying no to every war, to the very mindset of war, an aimless voyage, a defeat without victors, an inexcusable folly," the pope said Dec. 25 as he read his Christmas message and offered his blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world).As he stood on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica with an estimated 70,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square, the pope began his message speaking of Bethlehem where celebrations of Jesus' birth are muted this year because of the Israeli-Hamas conflict.But he also used his message to preach the hope of Christmas, which he said was found in God, who loved humanity so much that he sent his son to be born...
