FRANCIS TO THE SALESIANS: BE CLOSE TO THE YOUNG WITH THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

Vatican City, 31 March 2014 (VIS) – This morning, in the the Sala Clementina of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father met with the participants in the General Chapter of the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco, which will take as its theme “Witnesses of Gospel Radicalism”. “When one thinks of working for the good of souls, one overcomes the temptation of spiritual worldliness, and one does not seek other things, only God and His Kingdom. Temperance is a sense of moderation, of acceptance, a simple life”.

The Pope highlighted their work with the young and remarked that the experience of Don Bosco and his “preventative system” helped them in their commitment to living with them. “It is necessary to prepare the young to work in society in the spirit of the Gospel as workers for justice and peace, and to live as agents of the Church. … The presence of the community among them is marked by the tenderness that Don Bosco called 'amorevolezza', kindness, experimenting with new languages, but being well aware that the language of the heart is the fundamental language for being close to them and becoming their friends”.

Before concluding Francis spoke about the vocational dimension and mentioned that next year, which will be dedicated to consecrated life, will be a good opportunity to present the beauty of vocations to the young. Likewise, he gave thanks to God for the fact that they work “not as isolated individuals, but as a community supports the entire apostolate” and encouraged them to revive the charisma of their Founder, the bicentenary of whose birth will be celebrated soon.

PRAYER INTENTIONS FOR APRIL

Vatican City, 31 March 2014 (VIS) – Pope Francis' universal prayer intention for April is: “That governments may foster the protection of creation and the just distribution of natural resources”.

His intention for evangelisation is: “That the Risen Lord may fill with hope the hearts of those who are being tested by pain and sickness”.

PREPARING FOR THE CANONISATION OF JOHN XXIII AND JOHN PAUL II

Vatican City, 31 March 2014 (VIS) – This morning a press conference was held in the Holy See Press Office to present the initiatives forming part of the preparations for the canonisations of Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II, to be celebrated on 27 April. The speakers were Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar of His Holiness for the diocese of Rome, along with Msgr. Giulio Dellavite, secretary general for the Curia of Bergamo, Msgr. Walter Insero, head of the Office for Social Communications for the Vicariate of Rome, and Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office.

The initiatives will include a digital platform, the aim of which is to enable the faithful and pilgrims to have access to news and information regarding the ceremonies as well as a series of spiritual reflections on the life and teachings of both popes. Indeed, the official site www.2papisanti.org is an almost-completed portal which offers contacts, sections for press offices, information, videos and images as well as biographical documentation on John XXIII and John Paul II. It will be available in five languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish and Polish.

The application entitled “Santo Subito”, which may be downloaded free in both Android and IOS formats (in Italian, English, Spanish and Polish) and whose title draws on the famed saintliness of both Popes even during their lifetimes, will offer logistical information, as well as access to the main news on the canonisations, and will allow material relating to the various liturgical events to be downloaded.

Existing media include:

Official page of the Postulation with content in five languages:

https://www.facebook.com/PapaGiovanniPaoloIIpaginaufficiale

Official Twitter page with content in five languages:

https://twitter.com/santowojtyla

YouTube channel for the Postulation:

https://www.youtube.com/user/adminkarol

Portal: www.karol-wojtyla.org

This latter, developed in 2011 for the beatification of Karol Wojtyla, gives a detailed illustration of the stages in the canonical process leading to the recognition of the saintliness of John Paul II and is available in several languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Romanian.

The parallel project #2popesaints, realised in collaboration with the students of communication sciences from the Roman university LUMSA involves a series of networks enabling young people to get to know the lives, teachings and testimony of faith of the two new saints. There will be a Facebook page entitled 2popesaints; on Twitter, the account @2popesaints; on Instagram, #2popesaints; and on YouTube, 2popesaints. Every day each one of the above will propose a theme relating to both popes in the media, starting from 16 April until the canonisation, and each event will be transmitted live on each network.

On Google+ there will be the possibility of following in a “hangout” the daily briefings during the week leading up to the canonisation. A QR code will also be created to allow rapid access to the site 2popesaints.org. The initiative “Rome connecting to the World”, a form of “twinning” between the faithful arriving in Rome and the young people of the city, will make it possible to get to know the most important locations in Rome along with the history of John XXIII and John Paul II, providing information on the Facebook page.

In the diocese of Rome, on 22 April in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Cardinal Agostino Vallini will preside at a meeting addressing young people, with the postulators for the causes of both saints: Msgr. Slavomir Oder (John Paul II) and Fr. Giovangiuseppe Califano (John XXIII). On 26 April, starting at 9 p.m., there will be a “White night of prayer” and the churches throughout the centre of Rome will remain open for prayer and confession in various languages.

Similarly, the diocese of Bergamo will pay homage to XIII with the initiative “Le Opere Segno”, a series of activities dedicated to charity, human development and solidarity which affect daily lives. They include an aid project for Haiti to guarantee three years' education in the John XXIII school; an invitation to priests to contribute a month's salary and all the alms collected by the parish communities on 27 April to a fund set up in aid of families afflicted by the economic crisis; and the commemoration, on 12 April, of the publication of the encyclical “Pacem in Terris”, to be attended by ambassadors representing the countries where Angelo Roncalli carried out his diplomatic mission as an apostolic nuncio (Bulgaria, Turkey, Greek and France), and which will be presented by Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission.

ANGELUS: THE STORY OF THE BLIND MAN CURED BY JESUS IS ALSO OUR OWN

Vatican City, 31 March 2014 (VIS) – At midday the Holy Father appeared at the window of his study to pray the Angelus with the thousands of faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square. Before the Marian prayer he commented on the Gospel reading from St. John, which relates the story of the man blind from birth to whom Jesus gave sight. The apostle narrates the event in just a few verses as his intention is to attract attention not to the miracle in itself, but rather to the questions it raises.

“Many times a good act, a work of charity, provokes gossip and questions from people who do not want to know the truth. … The cured blind man is first interrogated by the astonished crowd – and then by the doctors of the law. … In the end, the healed man attains faith, and this is the highest grace that he receives from Jesus: not only to see, but to know Him, to see him as the light of the world”, said Francis.

"While the blind man gradually approaches the light, on the contrary the doctors of the law slip ever deeper into inner blindness. Locked away in their arrogance, they believe they already have the light, and so they do not open themselves up to the truth of Jesus and do everything they can to deny the evidence. They call into question the identity of the cured man, and then deny God's action in healing, using the excuse that God does not act on the sabbath and even casting doubt as to whether the man was indeed born blind. Their shunning of the light becomes aggressive and leads to expulsion of the healed man from the temple".

The blind man's path is instead “a journey in stages, starting from knowledge of the name of Jesus. ... Following insistent questioning by the doctors of the law, he first considers him a prophet and then a man close to God. After being removed from the temple, he encounters Jesus again, Who 'opens his eyes' for the second time, revealing his true identity. 'I am the Messiah', he says. At this point, the previously blind man exclaims 'Lord, I believe!', and bows down before Jesus".

“At times our life is sometimes similar to that of the blind man who opens up to the light of God and His grace. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is rather like that of the doctors of law. From the heights of our pride we judge others, even the Lord. Today, we are invited to open ourselves to Christ's light, so that our lives might bear fruit; to eliminate our behaviour that is not Christian; we are all Christians, but we all at times behave in ways which are not Christian, which are sins. We must repent of this, and eliminate these forms of behaviour … to behave like 'children of light', with humility, patience and mercy. … Those doctors of the law had neither humility, nor patience, nor mercy. … We must not be afraid! Let us open ourselves to the light of the Lord, He Who always awaits us, to let us see better, to offer us more light, to forgive us … so we can be reborn to a new life”.

After the Angelus prayer the Bishop of Rome greeted a group of Italian soldiers who had made a pilgrimage on foot from Loreto to Rome “praying for a peaceful and just resolution of conflicts. And this is very good. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says that blessed are those who work for peace".

“And let us not forget”, he continued, addressing all present, “when we return home, to take the Gospel according to John, chapter 9, and read this story of the blind man whose sight was restored, and of those who supposedly could see yet slipped ever further into blindness”.

THE POPE MEETS PEOPLE WITH VISUAL AND AUDITORY DISABILITIES: JESUS CHOOSES THE MARGINAL AS WITNESSES

Vatican City, 29 March 2014 (VIS) – “Witnesses to the Gospel for a culture of encounter” is the theme of the Day of Sharing organised by the Apostolic Movement of the Blind, with the participation of the Gualandi Mission for the Deaf (the Little Mission for the Deaf-Mute), as well as the Italian Union of the Blind and Partially-Sighted. These organisations were received in audience this morning by Pope Francis, who commented on the theme of the Day.

“The first thing I observe is that this expression ends with the word 'encounter', but first this presupposes another encounter, the one with Christ. Indeed, to be witnesses of the Gospel, it is necessary to have encountered Him, Jesus. … Like the Samaritan woman. … A witness to the Gospel is someone who has encountered Jesus Christ, who knows him, or rather, who feels known by him: recognised, respected, loved, forgiven, and this encounter … fills him with a new joy, a new meaning for life. And this shines through, is communicated, is transmitted to others”.

“I have mentioned the Samaritan woman because she offers a clear example of the type of person Jesus liked to meet, to make them his witnesses: marginalised, excluded, disdained people. The Samaritan woman was this type, inasmuch as she was a woman, and a Samaritan – the Samaritans were despised by the Jews. But let us think also of the many that Jesus wished to encounter, especially people affected by illness and disability, to cure them and to restore their full dignity to them. It is very important that precisely these people become witnesses to a new attitude, that we can call a culture of encounter. A typical example is the man blind from birth … marginalised in the name of a false idea that he had received a divine punishment. Jesus radically refuses this way of thinking – truly blasphemous! - and performs an act of God, giving him the gift of sight. But the important thing is that this man, as soon as this happens to him, becomes a witness to Jesus and His work, that is the work of God, of life, love and mercy. While the Pharisees, from their safe distance, judges both him and Jesus as 'sinners'; the cured blind man, with disarming simplicity, defends Jesus and in the at the end professes his faith in Him, and also shares his fate: Jesus is excluded, and he is excluded too. But in reality the man enters into a new community, based on faith in Jesus and on brotherly love”.

“Here we have the two opposing cultures. The culture of encounter and the culture of exclusion, of prejudice. The sick or disabled person, precisely because of his or her frailty and limits, may become a witness to this encounter: the encounter with Jesus, that opens us to life and faith, and to the encounter with others, with the community. Indeed, only those who recognise their own fragility and their own limits can build bonds of fraternity and unity, in the Church and in society”, concluded the Holy Father.