March 1 - 15, 2019
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY
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Pope begins Lenten
spiritual exercises
A Benedictine abbot is lead-
ing Pope Francis and the Roman
curia in Lenten spiritual exercis-
es this week, with the theme of
Christ’s gaze and gestures in the
life of the world.
“Let us allow ourselves to be
looked at by Him. Jesus is our hu-
manism,” the Italian monk Bernar-
do Francesco Maria Gianni said in
the first of his spiritual reflections
March 10.
Gianni, the abbot of San Min-
iato al Monte Abbey in Florence,
will provide two meditations each
day of this week’s papal retreat,
which also includes daily Eucharis-
tic adoration and Mass.
“Look at how He looked.
Looking at the rich young man,
He loved him; the meeting of eyes
with Zacchaeus, who climbs up a
tree to see the Lord Jesus, who
looks up to meet him,” the Gianni
said.
The monk told the Roman
curia, “Our pastoral action, our
taking care of the people entrust-
ed to us … of the humanity that
is entrusted to us by the Lord, can
really be a new flame of ardent de-
sire, and a return to being a garden
of beauty, peace, justice, measure,
harmony.”
Citing the Italian poet Mario
Luzi and Venerable Giorgio La Pira,
a mayor of Florence in the 1950s
and ‘60s, the abbot said that the
Benedictine tradition “prolongs
the gaze of the monk from the
cloister to the city in front of the
monastery.”
“The perspective of the mon-
astery is not an alternative to the
city, but an exemplary, paradig-
matic, authentic testimony, in
which the city could rediscover the
reasons for its vocation, its mys-
tery, present and future,” he con-
tinued.
The pope’s spiritual exercises
are taking place at the Casa Divin
Maestro in Ariccia, a town just 16
miles outside of Rome. Located
on Lake Albano, the retreat house
is just a short way from the papal
summer residence in Castel Gan-
dolfo. It will be the sixth consecu-
tive year the pope and members
of the Curia have held their Lenten
retreat at the house in Ariccia.
While the practice of the
Bishop of Rome going on retreat
with the heads of Vatican dicast-
eries each Lent began some 80
years ago, it had been customary
for them to follow the spiritual ex-
ercises on Vatican ground. Begin-
ning in Lent 2014, Francis chose
to hold the retreat outside Rome.
All of the pope’s activities
are suspended this week until he
returns from his Lenten retreat
March 15. (C. Gogan, CNA)
Vatican spokesmen: Pope Francis’ sevent
year will be ‘synodal’
On the sixth anniversary of
Pope Francis’ election Wednesday,
the Vatican’s chief spokesman said
Francis will continue to lead the
Church as a synodal “field hospi-
tal” in the year ahead.
Pope Francis “has a vision of
an ‘outgoing’ Church and a ‘field
hospital’ Church,” Alessandro Gi-
sotti, interim director of the Holy
See Press Office told Vatican Me-
dia March 13.
“The outgoing Church pre-
supposes that you walk … and
‘synodal’ means walking together,”
he continued.
Gisotti connected Pope Fran-
cis’ vision of the Church, from the
beginning of his pontificate, as a
field hospital to the Vatican’s re-
cent sex abuse summit on the pro-
tection of minors.
“With the meeting on the
protection of minors we have seen
a Church that has the courage to
bind the wounds of women and
men of our time,” Gisotti said.
The Vatican spokesman re-
affirmed that last month’s Vatican
summit necessitated concrete fol-
low-up on the global is-
sue of the protection of
minors. This next phase
will include the publica-
tion of a motu proprio,
a handbook from the
Congregation on the
Doctrine of Faith with
a series of regulations,
and a task force with
experts that can consult
bishops’ conferences on
the issue of child protec-
tion.
“Many had some
doubts that it was ap-
propriate to hold this
meeting, while the Pope
in this regard showed
courage and also, in
my opinion, a prophetic
courage, because for the first time
- in the face of a terrible scandal
that puts at risk not only the cred-
ibility, but in some respects the
very mission of the Church - he
convoked all the presidents of the
episcopates,” Gisotti said.
Vatican Media Editor Andrea
Tornielli also said that pope’s sixth
year will be “marked at the begin-
ning and the end by two ‘synod-
al’ events,” the Vatican sex abuse
summit and the special Synod on
the Amazon respectively.
“But a look at the past year
cannot ignore the re-emergence of
the abuse scandal and the internal
divisions that led the former nun-
cio Carlo Maria Viganò last August
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to publicly demand the resignation
of the Pope for the management of
the McCarrick case, just as Fran-
cis celebrated the Eucharist with
thousands of families in Dublin
proposing the beauty and value of
Christian marriage,” Tornielli wrote
in an Italian editorial on the eve of
the pope’s anniversary.(C. Grogan
CNA)