Pope Francis addresses pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square for his Wednesday general audience on April 17, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican MediaRome Newsroom, Apr 17, 2024 / 09:14 am (CNA).Pope Francis on Wednesday presented the fourth and final cardinal virtue of temperance in his ongoing catechetical series of vices and virtues by noting that temperance itself is crucial for living a happy, balanced life."The gift of the temperate person is therefore balance, a quality as precious as it is rare. Indeed, everything in our world pushes to excess. Instead, temperance combines well with Gospel values such as smallness, discretion, modesty, meekness," the pope said to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday. "In a world where many people boast about saying what they think, the temperate person instead prefers to think about what he says," the pope said. "He does not make empty promises but makes commitments to the extent that he can fulfill them."...
Pope Francis addresses pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square for his Wednesday general audience on April 17, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Apr 17, 2024 / 09:14 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday presented the fourth and final cardinal virtue of temperance in his ongoing catechetical series of vices and virtues by noting that temperance itself is crucial for living a happy, balanced life.
"The gift of the temperate person is therefore balance, a quality as precious as it is rare. Indeed, everything in our world pushes to excess. Instead, temperance combines well with Gospel values such as smallness, discretion, modesty, meekness," the pope said to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday.
"In a world where many people boast about saying what they think, the temperate person instead prefers to think about what he says," the pope said. "He does not make empty promises but makes commitments to the extent that he can fulfill them."
The pope noted that "the temperate person succeeds in holding extremes together: He affirms absolute principles, asserts nonnegotiable values, but also knows how to understand people and shows empathy for them."
The pope opened his reflection on temperance by looking to Aristotle's "The Nicomachean Ethics," an ethical treatise on the art of living. Francis noted that according to the Greek philosopher, man's flourishing and the ability to live a happy life is realizable only by "the capacity for self-mastery, the art of not letting oneself be overcome by rebellious passions."
This reflection on Artistolean ethics sets the foundation for an understanding of virtue present in the Church's teaching. "Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods," the pope said, quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
For the pope, temperance, as expressed in ancient thought and in the Church, can be summarized as "the virtue of the right measure," a point he made by contrasting it with those who are "moved by impulse or exuberance," which makes them "ultimately unreliable."
Francis explained that being temperate does not always require one to be "peaceful" or with a "smiling face." Instead, in certain situations, "it is necessary to be indignant, but always in the right way."
"A word of rebuke is at times healthier than a sour, rancorous silence. The temperate person knows that nothing is more uncomfortable than correcting another person, but he also knows that it is necessary; otherwise, one offers free reign to evil," the pope observed.
Following the blessing at the end of the general audience, Pope Francis renewed his appeal for peace in Ukraine and in Gaza, imploring that "prisoners of war" and the "tortured" be freed.
"The torture of prisoners is a very bad thing; it is not humane," the pope said. "Let us think of the many tortures that harm the dignity of the person and of the many tortured people."
Pope Francis meets with 300 priests taking part in the World Meeting of Parish Priests on May 2, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican MediaRome Newsroom, May 2, 2024 / 12:41 pm (CNA).Pope Francis published a letter on Thursday addressed to all parish priests in the world with his advice for building a missionary Church in which all the baptized share in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel."Parish communities increasingly need to become places from which the baptized set out as missionary disciples and to which they return, full of joy, in order to share the wonders worked by the Lord through their witness," Pope Francis wrote in the letter published on May 2.The pope presented the letter to 300 priests participating in the Synod on Synodality's "World Meeting of Parish Priests" during an audience at the Vatican, saying that their meeting is "an opportunity to remember in my prayers all of the parish priests in the world to whom I address these words with great affection."P...
Pope Francis shared a stage with Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on May 12, 2023, to speak at a two-day conference on "The General State of the Birth Rate," held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNARome Newsroom, May 2, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).The Vatican announced on Thursday that Pope Francis will speak at an event on Italy's demographic crisis as the country's birth rate sits at a historic low.Pope Francis will address "The General State of the Birth Rate" conference on May 10 at the Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican.The two-day event organized by the Forum of Family Associations and the Foundation for Births seeks to address the 50 years of steady decline in births across Europe, and especially in Italy, and what can be done to reverse it. Births in Italy dropped to a historic low in 2023. Italy's national statistics bureau recorded 379,000 births last year, a 3.6% decline from 2022 and a 34.2% drop from 200...
Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/ Stigmatines) and former Media and Communications Officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC), was found dead of gunshot wounds in South Africa, on April 27, 2024. / Credit: SACBCACI Africa, May 2, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).Father Paul Tatu Mothobi, a member the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata (CSS/Stigmatines) and former media and communications officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC), was reportedly murdered last weekend in South Africa.According to a notice from the congregation's South Africa-based provincial secretary, Father Jeremia Thami Mkhwanazi, Tatu died on Saturday, April 27, "after sustaining a gunshot."Tatu, a native of Lesotho's Archdiocese of Maseru, was ministering in South Africa's Archdiocese of Pretoria. According to reports, his lifeless body was found with gunshot wounds in his car on a national road in South Africa, which r...