Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate the beatification mass of Pope John Paul II
VATICAN CITY, Apr 28, 2011 - As the countdown continued for the beatification of Pope John Paul II, church and civil authorities put the finishing touches on logistical plans to handle potentially massive crowds at the main events in Rome.
Meanwhile, Vatican officials were heartened at the massive response to online projects designed to make the beatification a universal experience.
Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate the beatification Mass in St. Peter's Square May 1. Because no tickets are being handed out for the liturgy, no one really knows how many people to expect. Estimates range from 300,000 to 1.5 million, and crowd control barriers will be set up for blocks around the Vatican.
Immediately after Mass, the faithful can pray before Pope John Paul's unopened casket, which will be set in front of the main altar in St. Peter's Basilica. The veneration is expected to continue most of the day.
A large crowd is also expected for the prayer vigil April 30 at the site of Rome's ancient Circus Maximus racetrack, where Pope Benedict will make a video appearance. Rome church officials have organized that event to underline the strong connection between the Polish pope and the Diocese of Rome.
The French nun whose healing was accepted as the miracle needed for Pope John Paul's beatification will share her story with pilgrims at the prayer vigil. Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, a member of the Little Sisters of the Catholic Motherhood, had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and believes she was cured in 2005 through the intercession of the late pope.
The morning after the beatification, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, will celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving in St. Peter's Square. That liturgy, too, is expected to attract tens of thousands of people.
While the size of the crowds remained a mystery, Vatican officials said their online initiatives had already taken the beatification to groups and individuals around the world. For example, the Vatican's special beatification Facebook page at www.facebook.com/vatican.johnpaul2 has had more than 6 million visits and has gained nearly 50,000 followers.
Similar pages have been opened at the www.pope2you.net site aimed at younger audiences and on the Vatican's YouTube channel. They offer photos, tributes, key quotes and video highlights of Pope John Paul's pontificate. The beatification events will be live-streamed at many of the sites, ensuring worldwide participation.
"Six years have passed since John Paul's funeral, and the world of communications has changed greatly, with many more online opportunities available to the church," said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, who was coordinating several of the Internet efforts.
"Moreover, John Paul II was much loved by the younger generations who use the new media. He is a figure who adapts well to the Web, because he left us with a wealth of images and spoken words that one is happy to see and listen to again in their original context," he said.
The Diocese of Rome has also launched a multilingual beatification website that offers the diocesan-approved prayer asking for graces of Pope John Paul in 31 languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Swahili.
The beatification date was chosen carefully. May 1 is Divine Mercy Sunday, a day with special significance for Pope John Paul, who made it a church-wide feast day to be celebrated a week after Easter. The pope died April 2, 2005, the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday.
May 1 is also Europe's "labor day" holiday, which meant the beatification events would not disrupt the normal business of Rome. Many Romans were planning to leave the city for the weekend, although church leaders said Italians would still be the biggest national group attending the beatification. Poles were expected to be the second-largest group, followed by pilgrims from Spain and the United States.
The Vatican has used the run-up to the beatification as a teaching moment about the sainthood process, emphasizing that Pope John Paul will be declared "blessed" not for his achievements as pope but for the way he lived the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.
Church officials have announced that in the Diocese of Rome, where Pope John Paul served as bishop, and in all the dioceses of his native Poland, his feast day is to be inserted automatically into the annual calendar. Oct. 22 was chosen as the day to remember him because it is the anniversary of the liturgical inauguration of his papacy in 1978.
Other places can petition the Vatican to insert the Oct. 22 feast day into their liturgical calendar. Likewise, parishes and churches can be named after "Blessed Pope John Paul" in Rome and Poland, with other requests considered on a case-by-case basis.
Throughout the universal church, Catholics will have a year to celebrate a Mass in thanksgiving for the pope's beatification.
The Vatican has published the text of the opening prayer -- formally the "collect" -- for his feast day Mass. The English text reads: "O God, who are rich in mercy and who willed that the Blessed John Paul II should preside as pope over your universal church, grant, we pray, that, instructed by his teaching, we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ, the sole redeemer of mankind. Who lives and reigns."
Following the beatification ceremonies, Pope John Paul's casket will be relocated to the Chapel of St. Sebastian in the upper level of St. Peter's Basilica. He had been buried in the grotto beneath St. Peter's, but the new resting place is more easily accessible to the steady stream of pilgrims who come to see the pope's tomb.
Not long after Pope John Paul's death, Pope Benedict set him on the fast track to beatification by waiving the normal five-year waiting period for the introduction of his sainthood cause. Even so, church experts needed years to review the massive amount of evidence regarding the late pope, including thousands of pages of writings and speeches.
More than 120 witnesses were interviewed, and studies were conducted on Pope John Paul's ministry, the way he handled suffering and how he faced his death. The Vatican took special care evaluating the reported miracle in France, and Vatican officials emphasized that no procedural shortcuts were taken. The process was completed relatively quickly: six years and one month from death to beatification is a modern record in the church.
Pope Benedict XVI prayed for freedom, justice and peace in Easter mass
VATICAN CITY, Apr 25, 2011 - In an Easter blessing to the world, Pope Benedict XVI prayed that Christ's resurrection may open paths of "freedom, justice and peace" for troubled populations of the Middle East and Africa.
The pope urged an end to violence in Libya and Ivory Coast, assistance to refugees flooding out of North Africa and consolation for the victims of the Japanese earthquake. He prayed for those persecuted for their Christian faith, and praised their courage.
He spoke from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica April 24 in his blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city of Rome and to the world), after celebrating Mass for nearly 100,000 people in St. Peter's Square. Broadcast to many countries and live-streamed on the Internet, it was the last major event on the 84-year-old pontiff's heavy Holy Week schedule.
Pope Benedict said the resurrection of Christ must not be viewed as "the fruit of speculation or mystical experience." It happened in a precise moment and marked history forever, giving human events new strength, new hope and new meaning, he said.
"The entire cosmos is rejoicing today," and every person open to God has reason to be glad, he said.
But the joy of Easter contrasts with "the cries and laments that arise from so many painful situations: deprivation, hunger, disease, war, violence," the pope said.
He prayed that "the splendor of Christ reach the peoples of the Middle East, so that the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence." In Libya, he said, diplomacy and violence need to take the place of armed fighting, and the suffering must have access to humanitarian aid.
The pope alluded to the civil unrest that has spread throughout northern Africa and the Middle East, encouraging all citizens there, especially young people, to work for a society where poverty is defeated and where "every political choice is inspired by respect for the human person." The refugees who have fled the conflicts deserve a generous response by other populations, he added.
The pope said the many forms of suffering in "this wounded world" make the Easter message all the more meaningful.
"In our hearts there is joy and sorrow, on our faces there are smiles and tears. Such is our earthly reality. But Christ is risen, he is alive and he walks with us," he said. He then offered Easter greetings in 65 languages, including Chinese, Hindi and Swahili.
The pope arrived at the Easter liturgy in an open jeep, riding through a crowd that overflowed the square into adjacent streets. Many of the pilgrims were Poles who had already arrived in Rome for the May 1 beatification of Pope John Paul II.
As clouds gave way to sunshine, the pope celebrated Mass on an altar surrounded by flower gardens of yellow narcissus, cream-colored roses and blue delphiniums -- all donated and shipped to Rome by Dutch florists.
After the Gospel reading, an Orthodox choir sang a hymn of psalms of the Byzantine liturgical tradition, marking the fact that the Catholic and Orthodox celebration of Easter fell on the same day this year.
In a lengthy Easter vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica the night before, the pope baptized and confirmed six adults from Albania, China, Peru, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland. He poured holy water from a golden shell over each catechumen's head, and later accepted offertory gifts from the newly baptized.
In a sermon, he analyzed why the Christian's sense of environmental responsibility is directly connected to the core beliefs of the faith.
"We relate to God the creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation," he said. "Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives."
The trajectory of salvation history, which reaches a summit with Christ's resurrection, reaches all the way back to creation, he said. For the Christian, he said, the account of creation is not about the scientific process involved, but something deeper: it says that the source of everything is not pure chance, but "creative reason, love and freedom."
The pope rejected an evolutionary account that excludes a divine purpose.
"It is not the case that the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it," he said.
"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then life would make no sense," he said. "Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."
The pope said Easter was a good time for Christians to remind themselves that the faith embraces everything about the human being, from his origins to his eternal destiny.
"Life in the church's faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations," he said.
On Good Friday, the pope presided over a nighttime Way of the Cross liturgy at Rome's Colosseum, where tradition holds that early Christians were put to death. Kneeling on a platform on a hillside facing the ancient amphitheater, the pope opened the ceremony with a prayer that drew attention to the constant struggle between good and evil in human history.
He appeared to refer to the priestly sex abuse scandal when he spoke of the "hour of darkness" when "an emptiness of meaning and values nullifies the work of education, and the disorder of the heart disfigures the innocence of the small and the weak."
The meditations for the 14 Stations of the Cross were written this year by an Augustinian nun, Mother Maria Rita Piccione. The texts encouraged Christians to develop the ability to listen to the subtle voice of God that speaks through the human conscience, and not to ignore the needs of the poor and suffering in their midst.
In a closing talk, the pope said that reliving the drama of Christ's crucifixion demonstrates that the cross is not a triumphal symbol but rather the sign of "God's immense love" for humanity.
Pope Benedict to visit Rome Synagogue
Rome, Italy, Oct.03,2009 – On the eve of the Jewish New Year, which was celebrated on September 19 this year, Benedict XVI sent the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, a telegram of good wishes and friendship. In it, he confirmed that he will soon visit the synagogue of Rome, "animated by the profound desire to manifest my personal closeness and that of the whole Catholic Church" to the Jewish community.
The synagogue in Rome will be the third one visited by Benedict XVI, after the synagogue in Cologne in August of 2005 and the Park East synagogue in New York, in April of 2008. Before him, John Paul II had visited the synagogue in Rome on April 13, 1986.
Pakistani President's discussion with Pope Benedict XVI
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, Oct.02, 2009 - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Benedict XVI have discussed anti-Christian violence in Pakistan, emphasizing the need to overcome discrimination.
The leader of the Islamic republic visited the Pope today in Castel Gandolfo.
A communiqué from the Vatican press office characterized the discussion as "cordial," saying it "provided an opportunity to examine the current situation in Pakistan, with particular reference to the fight against terrorism and the commitment to create a society more tolerant and harmonious in all its aspects."
The communiqué added: "Talk then turned to the positive role played by the Catholic Church in the social life of the country through her educational, health care and aid activities.
"Evoking recent episodes of violence against Christian communities in some localities, and the elements that have favored such serious incidents, emphasis was given to the need to overcome all forms of discrimination based on religious affiliation, with the aim of promoting respect for the rights of all citizens."
Christians and Hindus combined make up only 5% of Pakistan's 176 million people.
Pretext
A series of violent incidents in the last few months have resulted in the death of several Christians at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists.
In this regard, Christians are urging the repeal of an anti-blasphemy law, which they claim gives Muslims "an invisible sword."
These laws were at the heart of a conflict in September, for example, when a Muslim mother, enraged at her adolescent daughter's romance with a Christian, accused the young man of desecrating the Quran. The boy was arrested and executed in prison.
The anti-blasphemy regulation went into effect in 1986; it calls for life imprisonment or death for those who blaspheme Mohammed or desecrate the Quran. Most of those who have been prosecuted under the law are Muslims.
However, the World Council of Churches says the law keeps minorities living in a "state of fear and terror" since it is often invoked as a way to punish minorities in business disputes.
In 2000, then President Pervez Musharraf tried to reform the law but failed under the pressure of fundamentalist groups.
Zardari, in office for just over a year, has announced that his government would work against the abuse of the legislation and increase vigilance.
Pope Benedict XVI : Vatican and Italian police like guardian angels
LES COMBES, Italy, Aug 1, 2009 - Pope Benedict XVI said the Vatican and Italian police who watched over him while he was on vacation in the Italian Alps were like "guardian angels, discreet and efficient."
But he was not quite so sure what his own guardian angel was up to.
"Unfortunately, my guardian angel -- certainly following orders from above -- did not prevent my accident," he said, referring to the fact that he tripped in the dark July 17 and broke his wrist.
Before leaving Les Combes to fly to the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo south of Rome July 29, the pope met with the police, firefighters and other officials who were involved in maintaining public order and security while he vacationed in northern Italy.
Still referring to his broken right wrist, the right-handed pope told them, "Perhaps the Lord wanted to teach me greater patience and humility, and give me more time for prayer and meditation."
The pope said he had spent the past 16 days immersed in a "heavenly peace," with the silence interrupted only by the songs of birds, rain falling on the grass and the wind blowing through the trees.
He told the dozens of security officers, "Angels are invisible, but efficient at the same time. And you were the same -- invisible, but efficient."
"I enjoyed a heavenly peace here. No disturbance could enter. But many good things -- both material and immaterial -- got in. Many cakes, cheeses, wines," he said.
Pope Benedict posed for a separate group photograph with each of the public security agencies responsible for patrolling the Salesian-owned chalet where he was staying and with the journalists who followed him to the Alps.
-CNS