Vatican News

Pope Francis to honor Junipero Serra at American seminary in Rome

Vatican City, Apr 16, 2015 / 10:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Since Pope Francis won’t make it to California for the canonization of its great evangelizer, he will join a celebration at Rome’s American seminary to honor the soon-to-be saint and encourage devotion to him.

The Pope will be the guest of honor at a May 2 day of prayer and reflection on the life of Bl. Junipero Serra, set to be held at the  Pontifical North American College, according to the program sent out with invitations to the event.

Papal blessings for Asia Bibi’s family, as death sentence still looms

Vatican City, Apr 15, 2015 / 03:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has blessed the family of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, as they continue to work for her release.
 
Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Masih, said “the Holy Father blessed and encouraged us.”

Masih and the couple’s youngest daughter, 14-year-old Isham, briefly met with Pope Francis after his Wednesday General Audience.

Pope Francis: If men and women aren't different, we have problems

Vatican City, Apr 15, 2015 / 09:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has warned against gender theories which seek to eradicate differences between man and woman, saying they perpetuate the very problems they are trying to solve.

“Experience teaches us: to know each other well and grow in harmony, the human being requires the reciprocity of man and woman,” the pontiff said Wednesday to participants in his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.

Pope Francis: Vocations are about quality, not quantity

Vatican City, Apr 14, 2015 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Well-formed vocations are more important than numerous vocations Pope Francis said in address to religious formators on Saturday at the Vatican.

“There is not a vocations crisis where there are consecrated people able to transmit the beauty of consecration with their own witness,” the pontiff said, according to Vatican Radio's translation.

Evangelization isn't a synonym for advertising, Pope says

Vatican City, Apr 13, 2015 / 02:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Giving witness to Jesus Christ is more than mere advertising, Pope Francis said: it's the act of courage in proclaiming the Gospel “with frankness” even to the point of martyrdom.

Christians do not simply “advertise Jesus Christ” with the aim of increasing our numbers, the pontiff noted during his daily Mass homily on April 13. “This is not necessary.”

Pope recalls slaughter of Armenians in 'first genocide of the 20th century'

Rome, Italy, Apr 12, 2015 / 08:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis today referred to the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 as a “genocide,” prompting the Turkish government to summon the Vatican’s ambassador for questioning.

“In the past century our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies. The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the twentieth century,’ struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation,” the Pope said April 12.

Touch and be healed by the merciful wounds of Christ, Pope says

Rome, Italy, Apr 12, 2015 / 05:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his homily on Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis said that Jesus’ scars are full of mercy, and encouraged attendees to imitate the apostle Thomas in touching them and allowing their hearts to be converted.

“The Lord shows us, through the Gospel, his wounds. They are wounds of mercy. It is true: the wounds of Jesus are wounds of mercy,” the Pope told attendees of his April 12 Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday.

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