Build new future with Laudato Si’ say Vatican panelists
The coronavirus pandemic and ongoing global crises clearly indicate that Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for creation urgently needs to be implemented worldwide, a panel of church leaders said.
“After Covid-19, nothing will be the same,” Aloysius John, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, said last week at a Vatican news conference unveiling a new document. “As Pope Francis said, it is time to build a new future and this new future must be built in the light of Laudato Si’. It is time for everyone, governments and civil societies, to make that conversion effort to which the Holy Father exhorts us in this prophetic encyclical,” he said.
John was one of several speakers at the news conference to present the document ‘Journeying Toward Care for Our Common Home. Five Years after Laudato Si’ ’.
Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister, said the pandemic “has highlighted many, many things, many, many areas in which we have a lot of work to do”.
“The question is whether we are going to pick up on these questions” and work to address them, he said at the news conference.
Global rosary sees prayers offered for Pope
A global rosary initiative dedicated to praying for priests offered prayers from around the world for Pope Francis.
The annual Global Rosary Relay last week was sponsored by the Worldpriest Global Apostolate and was to include a gathering of people on Zoom video chat platform praying for the Pope’s intentions, said a statement from the apostolate.
According to its website, the Worldpriest Global Apostolate was founded by Marion Mulhall in 2003 to “affirm the dignity, beauty and gift of the priesthood of Jesus Christ to humanity”.
The day was also inspired by St John Paul II’s establishment of the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests on the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 19.
“The idea is a simple one: each of the participating shrines around the world prays a particular mystery of the rosary at a particular half-hour in thanksgiving to God for our priests and to implore the protection and loving care of Our Lady, mother of all priests, for all her priestly sons,” the website said.
Retired Pope Benedict XVI visits brother in Germany
Retired Pope Benedict XVI, who is 93 years old, travelled to Germany to visit his ailing older brother, Msgr Georg Ratzinger, who is 96.
The Vatican press office confirmed that Pope Benedict went to Germany on June 18 to visit his brother.
“The Pope emeritus is now in the city of Regensburg, where he will spend the time necessary,” said Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office.
Pope Benedict was accompanied by his personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, one of the consecrated laywomen who cares for him and his household, a doctor, a nurse and the vice commander of the Vatican gendarme corps, Bruni said.
The two brothers, who were ordained to the priesthood together in 1951, have always been close.
While his brother was Pope and even after he stepped down from the papacy, Msgr Ratzinger would come to the Vatican to spend Christmas and a summer holiday with his brother.
The two also had a sister, Maria, who died in 1991.