Pope Francis Biography
Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) is the head of the Catholic church sovereign of the Vatican City. He is the 266th Pope.He is the first Pope from America, First from the Southern Hemisphere and is the first Jesuit pope, Born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina’s provincial superior of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He led the Argentine Church during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. The administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner considered him a political rival. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Pope Francis Age
Born on 17 December 1936 he is 82 years of age as of 2018.
Pope Francis Net Worth
Francis ranks 12th in the list of the worlds wealthiest people with an estimated Networth of $78 million dollars .
Pope Francis Image
Pope FrancisPope Francis A Man Of His Word/Movie
Wim Wenders’ new documentary, Pope; A Man Of His Word is a 1hr 36 min film That tends to be a personal journey with Pope Francis, rather than a biographical documentary about him. The pope’s ideas and his message are central to this documentary, which sets out to present his work of reform and his answers to today’s global questions. From his deep concern for the poor and wealth inequality to his involvement in environmental issues and social justice, Pope Francis engages the audience face-to-face and calls for peace.
Pope Francis Quotes
The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, he said, but that’s normal because ‘a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.
I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.
God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.
No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.
Life is a journey.
When we stop, things don’t go right.
Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification.
To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.
A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just,
We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love.
Be poor among the poor.
We need to include the excluded and preach peace
Pope Francis Letter
Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis
To the People of God
“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
1. If one member suffers…
In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.
With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).
2. … all suffer together with it
The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).
I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.
Together with those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.[1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.
It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.[3] Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.
It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).
It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.
Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. Fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. Fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.
In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).
“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice, prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ.
May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.
FRANCIS
Vatican City, 20 August 2018
Pope Francis Education
In the sixth grade, Francis attended Wilfrid Barón de Los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco, in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires. He attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial N° 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen,[15] named after a past President of Argentina, and graduated with a chemical technician’s diploma.
Pope Francis Last Pope
It is said that according to the St Malachy the Pope Francis might be the last Pope St. Malachy (1094–1148) was the archbishop of Armagh (now in Northern Ireland). He was a monastic reformer and a friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in whose monastery he died on a trip back from Rome. Malachy was canonized in 1199. The Prophecy of St Malachy was first Published in 1595. Some say that the 16th-century prophecy is a Forgery.
Pope Francis Retirement
Pope hinted that he may retire when it’s to his family.
Pope Francis Young
Francis was born on 17 December 1936 in Flores, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of five children of Mario Jose and Bergoglio Regina María Sívori Mario José’s family left Italy in 1929 to escape the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini.In the sixth grade, Bergoglio attended Wilfrid Barón de Los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco, in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires. He attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial N° 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen.
Pope Francis Movie Near Me
Wim Wenders’ new documentary, POPE FRANCIS – A MAN OF HIS WORD,is a 1hr 36 min film That tends to be a personal journey with Pope Francis, rather than a biographical documentary about him. The pope’s ideas and his message are central to this documentary, which sets out to present his work of reform and his answers to today’s global questions. From his deep concern for the poor and wealth inequality, to his involvement in environmental issues and social justice, Pope Francis engages the audience face-to-face and calls for peace.Pope Francis Today
Pope Francis Falls
Pope Francis News
Rome, Italy, Mar 3, 2019 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- In a visit to a Roman parish on Sunday, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to stop gossiping and ruminating on the shortcomings of other people, and to instead focus on repenting of their own sins.
“The Lord wants to teach us not to go criticizing others, not to look at the defects of others: look first at yours, your faults,” the pope said in an unprepared homily March 3.
Imagining that someone might say to him, “But, Father, I do not have any [faults]!” he responded: “Ah, congratulations! I assure you that if you do not realize here that you have them, you will find them in Purgatory! Better to see them here.”
“We are specialists at finding the bad things of others, without seeing our own [faults],” he said, which often leads to gossip and speaking badly about others.
Gossip is not new, the pope said, noting that it goes back all the way to the start of original sin. But gossip is also not just gossip, it goes further. It “sows discord, sows enmity, sows evil,” he warned.
“This is why Jesus says: ‘Before speaking badly of others, take a mirror and look at yourself; look at your faults and be ashamed of having them,’” he said.
Pope Francis spoke at the parish of San Crispino da Viterbo in the northern outskirts of Rome. Before saying Mass, Francis met the children preparing for First Communion and Confirmation, the youth of the post-Confirmation group, and the parents of newly or soon-to-be baptized babies.
He spent some time answering questions from the older boys and girls and listening to a song performed by the younger children. Afterward he greeted the priests and the sick and disabled of the parish, as well as a group of poor and homeless. He also heard the confessions of five parishioners.
In his homily, the pope referenced the arrival of Lent, which begins Wednesday, and advised people to use this time to reflect on how they treat others. “How do I behave with people? How is my heart in front of people? Am I a hypocrite, that faces with a smile and then from the back criticizes and destroys with my tongue?” he asked.
If Catholics reach Easter having improved in this area – criticizing others less, gossiping less, “the Resurrection of Jesus will be seen more beautiful, greater among us,” he said.
Noting the difficulty that breaking such a habit can pose, Pope Francis gave two pieces of advice. The first was to pray, especially for the person one is tempted to criticize. “Ask the Lord to address that problem, and to you, to close your mouth,” he said, adding that “without prayer, we cannot to anything.”
When faced with the temptation to speak badly about someone, the second recommendation is to “bite your tongue. Strong! Because this will swell the tongue and you will not be able to speak,” he said with a laugh.
This does not mean, he said, to just be silent when others do something they should not. But, “be brave,” he urged, and speak to that person face-to-face, do not speak about it behind their back. “Indeed, gossip does not resolve anything,” he said. “It makes things worse…”
“Think about it,” he stated. “And pray to the Lord, pray that he may give us the grace not to speak ill of others.”
Pope Francis News Today
Pope Francis prays for storm victims in Nepal
By Lydia O’Kane
Pope Francis on Friday expressed his closeness to all those who have been affected by the recent storm to hit Southern Nepal which left dozens of people dead and caused extensive damage to homes.
In a telegramme, signed on his behalf by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis conveys “his solidarity with all affected by this disaster and assures those grieving for deceased and injured family members of his prayers at this difficult time.”
He also offers his prayers “especially for the victims and encourages the emergency personnel as they continue to aid those in need.”
The storm hit the district of Bara and surrounding areas last Sunday leaving destruction in its wake. Many of the deaths were caused by walls that collapsed in on homes. The injured were brought to local hospitals and the more serious cases were airlifted to the capital Kathmandu for treatment.
Caritas Nepal providing relief
Laxmi Joshi is Programme Manager with Caritas Nepal. He told Vatican News the race is on to provide shelter and basic needs to those affected ahead of the coming monsoon rains.
Although many lives are claimed by landslides and floods during Nepal’s monsoon season, storms causing such high casualties at this time of year have been described as rare.
As relief efforts continue, the provincial government has announced 2,725 dollars in financial aid for the families of each of the dead.
Source;vaticannews.va
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