“God weeps, Jesus weeps”, Pope Francis said on Thursday, in a damning critique of a world bent on war. “We pray for the men and women in our cities, in our dioceses, and we pray also for ourselves that God would send a ray of divine love through our tinted windows, touching our hearts so that we understand his message”.
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Middle school teacher Angela Cappone, who brought students to the audience from Lorsarno, Calabria, said some mothers anxious about allowing their children to go on the trip, “but we encouraged them to let them come”.
“If the door of God’s mercy is always open”, we must leave the doors of our institutions open so that “we can go out carrying God’s mercy”. “In a world lacerated by violence this is the right moment to launch a mercy offensive”, says Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the pope’s Secretary of State.
After thanking the bishops, who are in Rome for their five-yearly ad limina visit, for the Church in Germany’s commitment to social and charitable works, the Pope noted that there is “a sharp drop in participation at Sunday Mass, as well as in the sacramental life”. “If there is not priest, there is no Eucharist”, the Pope said.
According to its own statistics, the Catholic Church in Germany lost a greater number of faithful in 2014 than in any previous year in its recent history: 218,000 people, representing 39,000 more defections than the previous year.
Every five years, bishops from each country meet with the Pope to receive his directives pertinent to them.
Pope Francis’ sermon cast a shadow over the start of the holiday season at the Vatican, where an 82-foot Christmas tree was unveiled.
“Excessive centralisation, instead of helping, can complicate the life of the Church and her missionary dynamic”, he observed.
Steiner noted that the Pope’s visit to Kenya will be special in that the spiritual leader – head of the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church – will be speaking from Africa, a continent most affected by climate change. “This confidence leads us first to prayer”.
In confession begins the transformation of each individual Christian and the reform of the Church.
Francis will hold mass at the University of Nairobi’s sports grounds in the center of the city on November 26 and visit a church in Nairobi’s Kangemi slum the following day.
“There are places in the world where doors should not be locked with a key”. The precious collaboration of the lay faithful, especially where vocations are lacking, can not become a surrogate of the priestly ministry or make it seem, in fact, a simple “optional”.
“We are beyond lucky”, she said.
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Meanwhile, Irish priests working in Paris have said that despite a “palpable sense of grief” and underlining fear, Parisians are trying to return to normality.
