By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – With “rivers of blood and tears” still flowing in Ukraine and with the increasing threat of the use of nuclear weapons, Pope Francis begged Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Stop this spiral of violence and death.”

With the situation being “so serious, devastating and threatening,” the pope did not offer his customary commentary on the day’s Gospel reading before reciting the Angelus prayer Oct. 2. Instead, he focused on the war and the “terrible and inconceivable wound” it is inflicting on humanity.

While constantly calling for peace and offering prayers for the victims since the war began in late February, the pope drew attention in his talk to “the serious situation that has arisen in recent days with further actions contrary to the principles of international law,” a clear reference to Putin’s announcement Sept. 30 that Russia was annexing four occupied territories in Ukraine.

The decision, the pope told people in St. Peter’s Square, “increases the risk of nuclear escalation to the point of fears of uncontrollable and catastrophic consequences worldwide.”

“My appeal is addressed first of all to the president of the Russian Federation, begging him to stop this spiral of violence and death, also for the sake of his people,” the pope said.

But “saddened by the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people as a result of the aggression suffered,” Pope Francis also appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “to be open” to any “serious peace proposals.”

The pope also asked world leaders “to do everything in their power to put an end to the ongoing war, without allowing themselves to be drawn into dangerous escalations, and to promote and support initiatives for dialogue.”

While remembering Ukraine’s “thousands of victims,” including children, the destruction and the displacement of millions of people, Pope Francis also spoke of specifics.

“Some actions can never be justified. Never!” the pope said.

“It’s distressing that the world is learning the geography of Ukraine through names like Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Izium, Zaporizhzhia and other towns that have become places of suffering and indescribable fear,” the pope said, referring to cities previously occupied by Russian troops and where mass graves were found once the areas were liberated.

“And what about the fact that humanity is once again faced with the atomic threat?” the pope asked. “It is absurd.”

“How much blood still must flow before we understand that war is never a solution, only destruction?” the pope asked thousands of people gathered in the square for the midday prayer.

“In the name of God and in the name of the sense of humanity that dwells in every heart,” he said, “I renew my call for an immediate ceasefire.”

Pope Francis prayed for a negotiated settlement of the conflict, one that is “not imposed by force, but agreed, just and stable.”

A just solution, he said, must be “based on respect for the sacred value of human life, as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country, and the rights of minorities and legitimate concerns.”

By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – One cannot love and worship the Eucharist without compassion for the poor and marginalized, Pope Francis said at a Mass concluding Italy’s eucharistic congress.

“Let us recognize that the Eucharist is the prophecy of a new world, it is the presence of Jesus who asks us to dedicate ourselves to an effective conversion,” which includes the conversion from indifference to compassion, from waste to sharing, from selfishness to love and from individualism to fraternity, he said in his homily Sept. 25.

The pope concelebrated the Mass at an outdoor stadium in the southern Italian city of Matera, which was host to Italy’s 27th National Eucharistic Congress Sept. 22-25.

In his homily, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading (Lk 16:19-31), in which Jesus tells the parable about the nameless rich man who “dined sumptuously each day” and ignored the poor man, Lazarus, “who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps.”

Pope Francis said, “It is painful to see that this parable” is still alive today with so many “injustices, inequalities, the unequal distribution of the earth’s resources, the abuse of the powerful against the weak, the indifference to the cry of the poor, the abyss we dig every day creating marginalization.”

All of this, he said, “cannot leave us indifferent.”
The parable talks about the abyss or great chasm that the rich man dug between him and Lazarus when they were alive, so now, “in eternal life, that gulf remains,” the pope said.

One’s eternal destination is determined by one’s earthly life, he said. “If we dig a chasm now,” separating oneself from others, then “we dig our own grave for later; if we raise walls against our brothers and sisters now, we remain imprisoned in loneliness and death later.”

The Eucharist offers a “permanent challenge” to adore and worship God, not oneself, the pope said, and “to put him at the heart” of everything.
“Only the Lord is God, and everything else is a gift of his love,” he said.

“If we worship ourselves, we die, asphyxiated inside our tiny ego; if we worship the riches of this world, they take possession of us and enslave us; if we worship the god of appearance and are inebriated in wastefulness, sooner or later life is going to ask us (to pay) the bill,” Pope Francis said.

“Instead,” he said, “when we adore the Lord Jesus present in the Eucharist, we receive a new way of looking at our lives as well: I am not the things I possess and the successes I am able to achieve; the value of my life does not depend on how much I can show off nor does it diminish when I go through failures and setbacks.”

“Every one of us is a child who is loved” and blessed by God, “who wanted to clothe me with beauty and wants me free from all enslavement,” he said. Those who worship God are free and are slaves to no one, he added.

The pope asked people to rediscover the prayer of adoration and to pray for a church that is “eucharistic, made up of women and men who break themselves like bread for all those who gnaw on loneliness and poverty, for those who are hungry for tenderness and compassion, for those whose lives are crumbling because the good leaven of hope has been lacking.”

The ideal, he said, is “a church that kneels before the Eucharist and worships with awe the Lord present in the bread, but which also knows how to bend down with compassion and tenderness before the wounds of those who suffer” and to become the “bread of hope and joy for all.”

By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The liturgy must be nurtured with care and never be neglected or abused, Pope Francis said.

“The liturgy is Christ’s work and the church’s, and as such, it is a living body,” he told members of Italy’s Association of Professors of Liturgy.

The liturgy “is not a monument made of marble or bronze, it’s not a museum piece. The liturgy is alive like a plant, and it must be nurtured with care” and never be “neglected or mistreated,” he said.

The pope made his remarks during an audience at the Vatican Sept. 1 with members of the association, which was founded 50 years ago to promote the study and teaching of liturgy at seminaries, departments of theology and other educational institutions.

Pope Francis underlined the importance of progress being rooted in a true sense of tradition.
“Progress in the understanding of, and even in the celebration of, the liturgy must also be rooted in tradition, which always advances in the way the Lord wants,” he said. Like with a tree, growth comes from the roots – from tradition, which is “the assurance of the future.”

However, the pope warned there are “many who say, ‘According to tradition …,’” when talking about the liturgy, and “at most they will be traditionalists.”

There is a “worldly spirit” of going backward that is “disguised as tradition” and is “fashionable today,” he said.

This “backwardism,” he said, “is a temptation in the life of the church that leads you to worldly restorationism, disguised as liturgy and theology.”

According to the New Testament’s Letter to the Hebrews, “We are not among those who draw back,” he said. All Christians are called to “go forward, according to the line that tradition gives you. To go backward is to go against the truth and also against the Spirit.”

The association, which was founded after the Second Vatican Council to help promote the reception in Italy of the council’s teachings on the liturgy, continues to assist the church in this “season” of liturgical reform, the pope said.

This ongoing process “requires time and care, passionate and patient care; it requires spiritual intelligence and pastoral intelligence; it requires formation for a celebratory wisdom that cannot be improvised and must be continually refined,” he said.

Their work as experts, researchers and professors requires “synodal” dialogue with others in the fields of theology and the humanities, and with the people of God, who always need the formation and growth that helps their own understanding see “what comes from God and what really leads to him, even in the realm of the liturgy,” the pope said.

“We need more than ever today an exalted vision of the liturgy, so that it is not reduced to rambling about rubrical detail” or liturgical rules, he said.

The liturgy must not be “worldly” nor must it turn its back on the world with “worldly exclusivity,” he said.
The liturgy must make “people raise their eyes to heaven, to feel that the mystery of Christ dwells in the world and life” and, at the same time, it must be a liturgy for the good of humanity, with its “feet on the ground” and not removed from people’s lives, he said.

The liturgy should be “serious (and) close to the people,” he said. “The two things together: turning our gaze to the Lord without turning our backs on the world.”

The liturgy is not a worldly festivity, nor should it feel “gloomy” or funereal, he said. It is filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, he said, and it celebrates “the beauty and grandeur of the mystery of God, who gives himself to us.”

By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christians must never give in to fear when evangelizing, especially when reaching out to those in need in the digital space, Pope Francis said.

“Do not be afraid to make mistakes,” the pope said in a video message sent Aug. 6 to participants of Hechos 29, a youth conference in Monterrey, Mexico, on evangelization in the digital age.

“I never tire of repeating that I prefer a church that is wounded because it goes out to the existential peripheries of the world, rather than a church that is sick because it remains closed up in its own little securities,” Pope Francis said.

According to its website, the Aug. 5-6 conference is “an international meeting of digital evangelizers that seeks to awaken in all participants (the desire) to become and to build up the church.”

In his message, the pope greeted the young men and women attending Hechos 29 and said the meeting was “an important initiative for missionary work in digital environments.”

“May this meeting help you to feel like a community, as part of the missionary life of the church, which has never been afraid to go out to meet new horizons and frontiers. And, with creativity and courage, announce the mercy and tenderness of God,” he said.

Recalling his address to church leaders during his July 24-30 visit to Canada, the pope emphasized the need to “find new ways to proclaim the heart of the Gospel to those who have not yet encountered Christ.”

Modern-day evangelizers, he said, must use “pastoral creativity to reach people where they live, not waiting for them to come, but where they live, discovering opportunities for listening, dialogue and encounter.”

“The Lord knocks on the door to enter within us, but how often does he knock on the door from the inside, so that we may let him out,” the pope said.

Pope Francis encouraged the young evangelizers to carry out their mission and to be good Samaritans in the digital space, “so that contemporary culture can know God by feeling him within you.

“Go and bring the hope of Jesus, especially to those who are farthest away, giving them reasons for their hope,” the pope said. “May your words be accompanied by charity, and may your virtual presence strengthen your physical presence, so that the network may generate communion, which makes Jesus present in your culture.”

Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The “sense of mystery” and awe Catholics should experience at Mass is not one prompted by Latin or by “creative” elements added to the celebration, but by an awareness of sacrifice of Christ and his real presence in the Eucharist, Pope Francis said.

“Beauty, just like truth, always engenders wonder, and when these are referred to the mystery of God, they lead to adoration,” he wrote in an apostolic letter “on the liturgical formation of the people of God.”
Titled “Desiderio Desideravi” (“I have earnestly desired”), the letter was released June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The title comes from Luke 22:15 when, before the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

In the letter, Pope Francis insisted that Catholics need to better understand the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council and its goal of promoting the “full, conscious, active and fruitful celebration” of the Mass.

“With this letter I simply want to invite the whole church to rediscover, to safeguard and to live the truth and power of the Christian celebration,” the pope wrote. “I want the beauty of the Christian celebration and its necessary consequences for the life of the church not to be spoiled by a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue.”

While his letter offered what he called a “meditation” on the power and beauty of the Mass, Pope Francis also reiterated his conviction of the need to limit celebrations of the liturgy according to the rite in use before the Second Vatican Council.

“We cannot go back to that ritual form which the council fathers, ‘cum Petro et sub Petro,’ (with and under Peter) felt the need to reform, approving, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and following their conscience as pastors, the principles from which was born the reform.”

The liturgical books approved by “the holy pontiffs St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II,” he said, “have guaranteed the fidelity of the reform of the council.”

Although the post-Vatican II Mass is celebrated in Latin and dozens of vernacular languages, he said, it is “one and the same prayer capable of expressing her (the church’s) unity.”

“As I have already written, I intend that this unity be reestablished in the whole church of the Roman rite,” he said, which is why in 2021 he promulgated “Traditionis Custodes” (Guardians of the Tradition), limiting celebrations of the Mass according to the rite used before the Second Vatican Council.

The bulk of the pope’s new letter focused on helping Catholics learn to recognize and be astounded by the great gift of the Mass and the Eucharist and how it is not simply a weekly “staging” or “representation” of the Last Supper but truly allows people of all times and all places to encounter the crucified and risen Lord and to eat his body and drink his blood.

And, the pope wrote, it is essential to recognize that the Mass does not belong to the priest or to any individual worshipper, but to Christ and his church.

Pope Francis said “the non-acceptance of the liturgical reform” of Vatican II, as well as “a superficial understanding of it, distracts us from the obligation of finding responses to the question that I come back to repeating: How can we grow in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action? How do we continue to let ourselves be amazed at what happens in the celebration under our very eyes?”

“We are in need of a serious and dynamic liturgical formation,” he said.