April 16, 2015, Thursday — Benedict Turns 88 "Preparing for one's death means preparing to meet God." —Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, speaking with an Italian television station this week, on how an elderly Emeritus Pope Benedict is spending his time preparing for death. The Emeritus Pope turned 88 today Today, April 16, Emeritus Pope Benedict turned 88. [...]
March 19, 2015, Thursday — Letter from a Prisoner "I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." —Gospel of Matthew, 25:36, the words Christ tells us he will speak at the end of time. Happy Feast Day! Today, March [...]
March 13, 2015, Friday — Pope Francis Announces Jubilee Year of Mercy “This is the time of mercy. It is important that the lay faithful live it and bring it into different social environments. Go forth!”—Pope Francis, speaking on New Year's Day, 2015, in words which foreshadowed the announcement today of a Jubilee Year of Mercy [...]
We publish below extracts of a recent interview Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gave to Wlodzimierz Redzioch in which he pays tribute to the newly-canonized Pope John Paul II. The complete interview appears in a book just published in Italian entitled Beside John Paul II — Friends and Collaborators Speak (Ares 2014). The interview, one of 21 with the late Pontiff’s close friends and associates, runs to 12 pages in total. It is entitled: “It Became Ever More [...]
Sergeant Stephan Probst speaks about his experience in the Pontifical Swiss Guard, in charge of the Pope’s safety. Serg. Stephan Probst on duty while Pope Francis greets the faithful from his popemobile in St. Peter’s Square before his weekly general audience. Most of the young Swiss men who decide to come to the Vatican [...]
“We might, perhaps, set out on a part of the journey together”: these words are the heart of the letter that Pope Francis wrote to the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari on September 11, and they reveal a central part of the Holy See’s current strategy for dealing with a Western culture which has entered a profound [...]
On Christmas Eve in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI preached a powerful homily in St. Peter’s Basilica, saying that Christmas shows God’s will to save people from sin and violence. The next day, Pope Benedict XVI repeated the message in his “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world) Christmas message. “The child whom we contemplate [...]