“OF ALL VICES, PRIDE IS THE GREAT QUEEN,” SALVATION IS THROUGH HUMILITY

“OF ALL VICES, PRIDE IS THE GREAT QUEEN,” SALVATION IS THROUGH HUMILITY

Today’s general audience was held in St. Peter’s Square. It was a nice day but for pilgrims who have to arrive early to get their seats in the square, the morning temperatures can be cold. The audience generally runs from 9 to 10am and the temps are not that warm in that hour!

As you can see by these photos from EWTN’S Daniel Ibanez, Pope Francis toured the square in the white papal jeep before ascending to the stage area.

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Once seated, the Holy Father began the weekly audience by stating, “today’s catechesis will be read by Monsignor Giroli, one of my helpers, because I still have a cold and cannot read well. Thank you!”

Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli is an official from the Secretariat of State. The multi-language summaries of the main catechesis were read by Vatican employees.

The weekly audience catechesis cycle on virtues and vices closes today with the pope looking at pride and humility.

“In our catechetical journey on the vices and virtues, today we come to the last of the vices: pride,” he began. “The ancient Greeks defined it with a word that could be translated “excessive splendor.” Indeed, pride is self-exaltation, conceit, vanity. The term also appears in that series of vices that Jesus lists to explain that evil always comes from the heart of man. The proud man is one who thinks he is much more than he really is; one who frets about being recognized as greater than others, always wants to see his own merits recognized, and despises others, deeming them inferior to himself.

“Of all vices, pride is the great queen,” continued the Pope. “It is no accident that, in the Divine Comedy, Dante places it in the very first level of purgatory: those who give in to this vice are far from God, and the correction of this evil requires time and effort, more than any other battle to which the Christian is called.

The Holy Father then outlined what he called “the long list of symptoms that reveal a person’s succumbing to the vice of pride, noting it is an evil with an obvious physical appearance: the proud man is haughty, he has a “stiff neck,” that is, he has a stiff neck that does not bend. He is a man easily led to scornful judgment: with no reason, he passes irrevocable judgments on others, who seem to him hopelessly inept and incapable.

Continuing that thought, Francis said the haughty man, “forgets that Jesus in the Gospels assigned us very few moral precepts, but on one of them he was uncompromising: never judge. You realize that you are dealing with a proud person when, on offering him a little constructive criticism, or making a completely harmless remark, he reacts in an exaggerated manner, as if someone had offended his majesty: he goes into a rage, shouts, interrupts relations with others in a resentful manner.

Concluding the catechesis on pride, the Pope said “salvation comes through humility, the true remedy for every act of pride. In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the God who by His power scatters the proud in the sick thoughts of their hearts. It is useless to steal anything from God, as the proud hope to do, because after all He wants to give us everything. This is why the apostle James, to his community wounded by infighting originating in pride, writes, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”

Pope Francis then urged “dear brothers and sisters, let us take advantage of this Lent to fight against our pride.”

 

“OFFER THE GOOD BREAD OF TRUTH, NOT ROTTEN FOOD OF MISINFORMATION”

A powerful papal speech over the weekend to members of the Foreign Press Association in Rome as you will see below (I did change the title of the Vatican media report). But what a lot of people were waiting for over the weekend were some words from Italy’s bishops, either individually or from the CEI (Italian Episcopal conference) or even something from Pope Francis – perhaps a sentence at the Sunday Regina Coeli – about Saturday’s March for Life in Rome.

Nor was it mentioned, even one line, in the Vatican media!

This was the 9th March for Life and the first that EWTN televised from the Eternal City.

Once again, for the 9th time, an important Italian or Vatican voice was missing.

As Robert Royal of the Faith and Reason Institute wrote recently:
“Something out of the ordinary happened this past week. On Saturday, over 10,000 people walked the streets of Rome in defense of children in the womb. Italian lay people have organized a march for nine years now, and it grows – despite no support from the Italian bishops – including the pope.

On Friday, Francis did encourage members of the Catholic Medical Association to ”defend life,” though so vaguely that you couldn’t tell whether he was talking about abortion, euthanasia, immigration, climate, poverty – or all of them (more of this below).

But as usual no Italian bishops participated in the Marcia per la Vita – they’ve been saying that they don’t want it to be seen as only “Catholic,” though why is not clear. And that they prefer to work through elected officials rather than public protest (though they seem to support other public demonstrations, e.g., on immigration and poverty, and don’t have any natural partners in government now that the Christian Democrats have splintered). Italian television, accordingly, didn’t even mention the march occurred.

The lone Italian prelate in the past, Archbishop Viganò, was missing, for good reasons.”

To continue reading: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/05/20/the-new-pro-life-moment/

Saturday was happily a big pro-life day in the Eternal City as Rome was the site of the 9th annual Italian March for Life – Marcia per la Vita – organized by the Italian Families of Tomorrow Association. Thousands of pro-lifers – Italians and people from a number of other countries – marched for over 3 hours through several central Roman streets, starting at Piazza Repubblica and ending in Rome’s central Pza. Venezia where speakers addressed the crowd from a huge stage.

Lay people, priests, men and women religious and numerous missionaries of all ages and many languages gathered behind two cardinals, Raymond Burke of the United States and Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk. Clouds and some rain had started the day but the weather changed to favor the joy-filled marchers as they processed through Rome’s streets, praying the rosary, singing songs and bearing banners with pro-life slogans in different languages: “Life is sacred, defend it from the start,” “Let’s not kill the future,” “Enough of silent genocide!” “Wake up, Europe, wake up in Christ!”

Colorful flags dotted the scenery as pro-life organizations from France, Spain, Poland, Romania and Canada made appearances at the 2019 march. Members of the Order of Malta were also present. Well-known faces included Gianna Molla, the daughter of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a Roman pediatrician who developed a tumor during pregnancy but refused medical intervention as it would have harmed her unborn baby. She told her husband to save the child and that’s what happened. John Paul II canonized her in 2004. Celebrated pro-life actor Eduardo Verastegui taped a message for marchers, encouraging them to keep fighting for the unborn.

“OFFER THE GOOD BREAD OF TRUTH, NOT ROTTEN FOOD OF MISINFORMATION”

Meeting some 400 journalists of the Foreign Press Association of Italy on May 18, Pope Francis urged a humble and free journalism.
By Robin Gomes (vaticannews)

Pope Francis is encouraging a humble and free journalism that does not indulge in selling the “rotten food of misinformation” but rather offers the healthy bread of truth and goodness.

“I therefore urge you to work according to truth and justice, so that communication is truly an instrument for building, not for destroying; for meeting, not for clashing; for dialoguing, not for a monologue; for orienting, for disorienting; for understanding, not misunderstanding; for walking in peace, not for sowing hatred; for giving a voice to those who have no voice, not for being a megaphone to those who shout louder,” said Francis

Pope Francis expressed his and the Church’s esteem for their precious work, saying it “contributes to the search for the truth, and only the truth makes us free.”

Underscoring humility as the fundamental element of their profession, the Argentine Pope said that the search for truth entails many difficulties and much humility. The presumption of already knowing everything, he said, blocks the search for truth. An article, a tweet or a live report, he said, can do good but also evil to others and sometimes to entire communities if one is not careful and scrupulous.

Noting that certain “screaming” headlines can create a false representation of reality, he urged journalists to resist the temptation to publish news that has not been sufficiently verified.

Instead, he said, the humble journalist tries to know the facts correctly and completely before telling and commenting on them. Such journalism does not feed “the excess of slogans that, instead of setting the thought in motion, cancel it out”.

The Pope lamented the use of violent and derogatory language that hurts and sometimes destroys people. In a time of too many hostile words, in which saying bad things about others has become a habit for many, along with that of classifying people, we must always remember that each person has his or her intangible dignity, which can never be taken away.

At a time when many people are spreading fake news, “humility prevents you from selling the rotten food of misinformation and invites you to offer the good bread of truth.”

Emphasizing that, “freedom of the press and of expression is an important indicator of the state of health of a country,” the Pope shared the pain of journalists killed while carrying out their work with courage and dedication to report on what many people face during wars and the dramatic situations.
He said, “We need journalists who are on the side of the victims, of those who are persecuted, on the side of those who are excluded, discarded, discriminated against.

Journalists, he said, are needed to recall the many forgotten situations of suffering and wars, such as those of the Rohingya and the Yazidi.

He thanked them for helping the world not forget the lives that are suffocated even before they are born; those that are just born that are extinguished by hunger, hardship, lack of care, wars; the lives of child soldiers and the lives of children violated.

He called on reporters to help the world remember those persecuted and discriminated against for their faith or ethnicity and the victims of violence and trafficking in human beings. He said those forced to leave their homes because of disasters, wars, terrorism, hunger and thirst, are not numbers, but a face, a story and a desire for happiness.

“There is a submerged ocean of goodness that deserves to be known and that gives strength to our hope,” said Francis, noting that women journalists are particularly sensitive to such stories of life.

At the end of his talk, Pope Francis gifted each journalist with a copy of a book entitled, “Communicare il Bene” (Communicating the Good), containing his talks to various groups of journalists and his messages for World Communications Days.