During Lent, Pope Francis said, Catholics — and especially Catholic seminarians — should rediscover the joy of simplicity, pay less attention to their appearance than to their prayer lives and make a special effort to get along with everyone they live with.
Pope Francis
St. María Antonia de Paz Figueroa, known as Mama Antula, devoted herself completely to helping others experience God’s closeness and compassion, Pope Francis said after he declared the 18th-century consecrated laywoman a saint. By letting her heart and life be “touched” and “healed” by Christ, he said, “she proclaimed him tirelessly her whole life long, for she was convinced, as she loved to repeat: ‘Patience is good, but perseverance is better.'”
Christians should look to Argentina’s soon-to-be saint to learn how to live charitably in an age of individualism, Pope Francis said.
The fight against human trafficking can be won, but it requires eliminating the root causes of the problem, Pope Francis said. Calling for action, the pope appealed for the mobilization of “all our resources in combating trafficking and restoring full dignity to those who have been its victims,” he said in a written message for International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking, observed Feb. 8.
Mission is tirelessly going out to all men and women to invite them with respect, joy and kindness, to encounter God and enter into communion with him, Pope Francis wrote in his message for World Mission Sunday.
A television or radio network that calls itself Catholic must help people overcome their prejudices, seek the truth with charity and build bridges between people, Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis has expressed his closeness to the small Catholic community in Turkey after gunmen attacked a church during Sunday morning Mass Jan. 28, leaving at least one worshipper dead.
The “first therapy” that must be offered to the sick, and to the world, is a dose of closeness, friendship and love, Pope Francis said in his message for the World Day of the Sick.
A key step in the search for Christian unity is getting to know people of other churches and denominations and coming to appreciate their faith and spirituality, Pope Francis told a group of Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox students studying at Catholic universities in Rome.
It may seem insignificant to some, but praying the rosary every day is huge in the eyes of God, Pope Francis told an association of laywomen dedicated to the Holy Family and prayer.