Pope Francis pleads for migrants calls the Mediterranean Sea the largest cemetery in the world

Reported in ClickOrlando.com from an Associated Press article by Colleen Barry and Luigi Navarra.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Sunday October 9, 2022, denounced Europe's indifference toward migrants who are risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea, as he elevated to sainthood an Italian bishop and Italian-born missionary- health care provider, whose work and life paths illustrated the difficulties faced by 19th Century Italian emigrants.

In the first seven months of 2021, up to 1000 migrants have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Europe.

Francis departed from prepared remarks to slam Europe's treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal". 

Moreover, the Pope noted that desperate people from outside the continent are often left to die during perilous sea crossings or pushed back to Libya, where they wind up in camps he referred to as “lager,” the German word referring to Nazi concentration camps.

He also recalled the plight of Ukrainians fleeing war, which he said “causes us great suffering.”

Pope slams treatment of migrants as 2 Italians become saints:

President Joe Biden meets with Pope Francis

Pope Francis said the two new saints “remind us of the importance or walking together.”

Saint John Baptist Scalabrini (b. 1839 - d.1905/Canonized a saint on October 9, 2022) 

Francis said Saint John Baptist Scalabrini showed “great vision,’’ by looking forward “to a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner." And the Pontiff called Saint Artemide Zatti “a living example of gratitude” who devoted his life to serving others after being cured of tuberculosis.

Scalabrini founded the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo, known as the Scalabrian Fathers, and the Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo Scalabrians, to minister to the many Italians who left their homeland due to what he wrote were the combined effects of an agricultural crisis, social change, a poorly managed economy, exorbitant taxation and “the natural desire to improve one’s condition.”

Disturbed by statistics on Italian emigration that swelled to 84,000 in 1884 alone, Scalabrini wrote that the mass emigration and separation of families would “help strew white the lands of America with their bones.”

He died in 1905 in Piacenza, where he was bishop, and was beatified in 1997 by St. John Paul II. Pope Francis dispensed with the canonization requirement of Scalabrini having a miracle attributed to him after his beatification.

Currently, the religious order he founded operates 176 missions around the world, including 27 migrant shelters and 20 schools and centers for children.

Francis, himself the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, has recalled being inspired by Saint Scalabrini while he was Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina, saying the number of men entering the Catholic order increased after he prayed for the late bishop's intercession.

Saint Artimede Zatti (b. 1880 - d. 1951)

Pope Francis said about Saint Artemide Zatti that he dedicated his whole life to the sick.

Artemide Zatti was one of eight children born to a farming couple in northern Italy that emigrated to Argentina in 1897 when he was a teenager.

After entering the Salesian order at age 20, Zatti fell ill with tuberculosis and was sent to a Salesian-run hospital in northern Patagonia to be treated. He made a vow to serve the sick and poor for the rest of his life, if he recovered. Zatti went on to work in the same hospital for 40 years, working as a nurse, in the pharmacy, and later as an administrator.

His fame for treating the ill attracted the sick from all over Patagonia. Zatti was known to travel the city of Viedma with his bicycle with a medical case to help the sick. 

During the canonization liturgical celebration in Saint Peter's Square on Sunday, the Pope also recalled an occasion when Zatti was seen removing a dead patient on his own shoulders from the hospital, to prevent the sick from seeing the body.

Zatti died in 1951, and was beatified in 2002. Paving the way for canonization, Francis signed the decree recognizing Zatti’s intercession in the healing of a man in the Philippines, who had suffered a brain bleed.

Pope Francis should be the focus of world news- not the 24/7 Trump drama

International drama circulates around the highly publicized Donald Trump, the Republican occupation of all things political. All the while, His Holiness, Pope Francis is planning a history visit to Mexico. Given the political issues around Mexican immigration and the horrible problems with illegal drug trafficking into the US, it seems to me the Pope's Mexico visit in February, should receive more news media coverage. Unfortunately, it's not receiving much coverage except from the Catholic press.

National Catholic Reporter is covering the Pope Francis to visit marginalized communities in Mexico, in February by Carol Glatz.

VATICAN CITY- Pope Francis will also visit Cereso state prison while in Mexico

Pope Francis will visit some of the most marginalized communities in Mexico and seek to bring hope to a country suffering from crime, corruption and inequality when he visits Feb. 12-17.

Francis will stop in six cities, including two in the state of Chiapas and -- across from El Paso, Texas -- Ciudad Juárez, which just five years ago was considered the "murder capital of the world" as drug cartels disputed a trafficking corridor.

The Pope said in November, that he wanted to visit cities where St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI never went. (Given how Pope Francis is a native of Argentina, he is liekly very comfortable going into barios).

But he said he will stop at the capital of Mexico City to pray at the Our Lady of Guadalupe.

"But if it wasn't for Our Lady," he wouldn't go there, he told reporters.

The Pope will fly out of and return to Mexico City each day after celebrating Mass at the basilica on the second day of his trip.

Over the following four days, he will visit a pediatric hospital in the capital as well as families and indigenous communities in the southernmost state of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, which gained worldwide attention for the 1990s Zapatista rebellion.

NCR's Vatican correspondent, Joshua J. McElwee, will be traveling with the pope. NCR will have additional reporters in Chiapas and Ciudad Juárez during the trip. 

Watch for coverage onhttp://ncronline.org/feature-series/francis-mexico and a full report in the next print issue.

Francis will visit young people and religious in Morelia, celebrate Mass on the Mexican-U.S. border in Ciudad Juárez and visit its infamous Cereso state prison, where at least 20 people were killed during riots in 2009 triggered by rival gangs among the prisoners.

"We are certain that the presence of the Holy Father will confirm us in the faith, hope and charity and will help the church move ahead in its permanent mission," the Mexican bishops' conference said in a Dec. 12 statement. "It will encourage believers and nonbelievers and commit us to the construction of a just Mexico, with solidarity, reconciliation and peace."

Fr. Oscar Enríquez, parish priest and director of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center in Ciudad Juárez, told Catholic News Service that Juárez is often seen as an example of overcoming extreme violence. "The pope always looks for the peripheries. Juárez is the periphery of Mexico and it's a place migrants pass through."

Fr. Patricio Madrigal, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in the Michoacán city of Nueva Italia, said that by visiting Morelia, the pope "wants to be closer to an area beaten down by violence. He wants to bring comfort and also closeness."

The pope's meeting with young people and religious in Morelia is important, Madrigal said, as the church there works to keep kids out of the cartels, provide priests with support, and "strengthen us in the faith and our work in attending to victims of violence."

Priests in the rugged Tierra Caliente region there had lent moral and spiritual support to vigilantes arming themselves to run off a drug cartel in 2013.

Francis "wants to give young people a message of hope and that they stay away from the temptation of violence," Madrigal said.

Here is the pope's itinerary as released by the Vatican. Times listed are local. The places the pope will visit are on Central Standard Time, except Ciudad Juárez, which is on Mountain time.

Friday, Feb. 12
12:30 p.m. Departure from Rome's Fiumicino Airport.
7:30 p.m. Arrive at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

Saturday, Feb. 13
9:30 a.m. Welcoming ceremony at the National Palace, Mexico City, with the president of the republic.
11:30 a.m. Meeting with Mexico's bishops in the city's cathedral.
5 p.m. Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Homily by pope.

Sunday, Feb. 14
10:30 a.m. Fly by helicopter to the "study center" of Ecatepec for Mass.
4:30 p.m. Return to Mexico City for visit to the Federico Gómez Children's Hospital.
6 p.m. Meeting in the National Auditorium with representatives of culture.

Monday, Feb. 15
7:30 a.m. Fly to San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
10:15 a.m. Mass at the city's sports center with the indigenous community.
1 p.m. Lunch with representatives of the indigenous community.
4:15 p.m. Meeting with families at the Victor Manuel Reyna Stadium at Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Speech by pope.
6:10 p.m. Return to Mexico City.

Tuesday, Feb. 16
7:50 a.m. Fly to Morelia.
10 a.m. Mass with priests, seminarians, religious men and women.
4:30 p.m. Meeting with young people at the José Maria Morelos y Pavón Stadium.
6:55 p.m. Return to Mexico City.

Wednesday, Feb. 17
8:35 a.m. Fly to Ciudad Juárez.
10:30 a.m. Visit to Cereso prison.
12 p.m. Meeting with workers and employers at the Colegio de Bachilleres of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
4 p.m. Mass at the fairgrounds of Ciudad Juárez.
7:15 p.m. Return to Rome.

A Progressive Pope Francis - Creates a New Normal and There's No Turning Back

Pope Francis is shuffling Vatican bureaucrats.  

Pope warns Vatican bureaucrats to remember their vocation.

He stresses the priority of being compassionate to the needy.

The pontiff removes some administrators and urges those remaining to shun mediocrity, gossip and squabbles.

By Nicole Winfield
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis warned Vatican administrators Saturday that their work can take a downward spiral into mediocrity, gossip and bureaucratic squabbling if they forget that theirs is a professional vocation of service to the church.

click image to enlarge

Pope Francis speaks with a child during his visit to the Bambino Gesu’ pediatric hospital in Rome on Saturday. He continues revamping the Vatican administration.

The Associated Press

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Francis made the comments in his Christmas address to the Vatican Curia, the bureaucracy that forms the central government of the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. The speech was eagerly anticipated given that Francis was elected in March on a mandate to overhaul the antiquated and oftentimes dysfunctional Vatican administration. Already, heads have started to roll: Just last week, Francis reshuffled the advisory body of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, the office that vets all the world’s bishop nominations. He removed the archconservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a key figure in the U.S. culture wars over abortion and gay marriage, and also nixed the head of Italy’s bishops’ conference and another hard-line Italian, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, earlier axed as head of the Vatican office responsible for priests.
Other changes are on the horizon: In the coming weeks Francis will name his first batch of cardinals and in February he'll preside over the third summit of his “Group of Eight” cardinal advisers, who are expected to put forward a first round of proposals for revamping the Holy See bureaucracy.

Francis said he wants a Vatican Curia that's more responsive to the needs of local bishops, who have long complained about Rome’s slow or unhelpful interventions in their work caring for souls. Francis said he wants the church as a whole to be less consumed with moralizing than showing mercy to the needy.

Blogger response - Perhaps Pope Francis will progress the Vatican to consider allowing women to become Deacons, especially for the thousands of religious nuns who work with poor people throughout the world. Although it's highly doubtful the Roman Catholic Church will ever  allow for the ordination of women as clergy, there is nothing to prevent women from becoming Deacons. The  role of a Deacon is already assumed by many women religious but they are not ordained. Therefore, these dedicated women religious aren't permitted to con-celebrate at the Consecration of the Eucharist or to read the Gospel at the celebration of the Mass.  

Allowing women to fulfill their role as inspired religious Deacons

can promote the evangelizing of the faith by providing more people with access to Catholic religious worship traditions. 

Pope Francis has absolutely moved the Roman Catholic Church forward. Certainly, his pace of change is long overdue, although likely causing many in Vatican City to keep Prozac handy in their top desk drawers. 

Regardless of how the Vatican establishment responds to the changes Pope Francis brings to the world of Roman Catholics, the fact is, the populace tone he sets for the Papacy will never move backward. Pope Francis quickly created a new normal for what it means to be a Pope. He's bound to hit some bumps on his progressive road.  Nevertheless, God Bless Him.