Photograph: Franco Origlia/Getty God’s love for us is not ‘abstract’, but concrete – Pope
Jesus’ love for each person is a concrete love, a love that is addressed to each person “with their first and last name”, Pope Francis has said.
Celebrating Mass on October 31 in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae where he lives, Pope Francis focused on the day’s first reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans and particularly on St Paul’s conviction that nothing can “separate us from the love of Christ”. God sent Jesus into the world “to save us” and “he did so with love”, the Pope said.
“He gave his life for me. There is no greater love than to give your life for another person. Think about a mother – a mother’s love, for example – who gives her life for her child, accompanying him or her through life in difficult moments.” In the same way, the Pope said, “Jesus’ love is near to us, and is not an abstract love”. St Paul understood and experienced God’s love as tender, the Pope added.
Jesus “loves even the worst sinners with this tenderness”, the Pope said, encouraging people to think more about the Jesus who cries.
Vatican official ‘firmly’ rejects accusations of money tampering
Nearly a month after private documents about a property deal involving the Vatican leaked to the press, a Vatican official has rejected accusations that he “played and tampered with the money of the poor”.
In an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA last week, Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, said the Peter’s Pence collection “is not only for the Pope’s charity but also for the sustenance of his pastoral ministry”.
Accusing him of misusing the fund for investments instead of direct aid to the poor are “muddy accusations that I firmly and disdainfully reject. I have a clear conscience and I know that I have always acted in the interest of the Holy See and never in my personal interest. Those who know me closely can attest to that”, Cardinal Becciu said.
According to its website, donations to Peter’s Pence – a collection taken on or near June 29 every year in dioceses around the world – are used to “sustain the work of evangelisation and, at the same time, to help the poor in whatever way is possible”.
Feast of Our Lady of Loreto added to liturgical calendars
Pope Francis has approved adding the December 10 feast of Our Lady of Loreto to all calendars and liturgical books for the celebration of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.
Putting the celebration of the feast day on the universal calendar “will help all people, especially families, youth and religious to imitate the virtues of the perfect disciple of the Gospel, the Virgin Mother, who, in conceiving the head of the Church also accepted us as her own”, the decree said. The decree was published last week by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
According to tradition, the Holy House of Loreto was carried by angels from Nazareth to the Italian hillside town of Loreto the night of December 9-10 in 1294 after making a three-year stop in Croatia.
Tradition holds that the small house, made of three stone walls, is the place where Mary was born, where she was visited by an angel and conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and where the Holy Family later lived.