Pope Francis celebrated his 86th birthday with the Missionaries of Charity, honoring three people who care for “the poorest of the poor” with the Mother Teresa Award on Dec. 17, 2022. / Vatican Media Rome Newsroom, Dec 17, 2022 / 08:00 am (CNA). “There is only one thing that really makes us age, grow old interiorly: not age, but sin,” Pope Francis said in 2017 during a speech about the Virgin Mary.As Francis turns 86 on Dec. 17, his 10th birthday as pope, here are four things to know about him.1. Pope Francis has dealt with more health problems in 2022.Pope Francis has spent most of the 10 years of his pontificate in relatively good health until surgery on his colon in 2021. At meetings in January of this year, he shared that he was also having problems with his knee.During the months that followed, he had to cancel some public events and a papal trip to Africa due to the ligament pain in his right knee. He also stopped taking the stairs and in May, after receiving medical treatment, he started using a wheelchair or walking short distances with a cane.Francis has not let his mobility problems slow him down too much, though — he continues to keep a full daily and weekly schedule of appointments and is planning to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan after the trip was rescheduled for early 2023.The head doctor of a Madrid soccer team, who is among a team of specialists treating Pope Francis’ knee, said last month that the pope is a “very stubborn patient” who has refused surgical procedures in favor of “more conservative treatments.”2. The year of retirement rumorsIn an interview with CNN Portugal in September, Francis said that a pope plans to attend the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon in August 2023, but joked that it may be “Pope John XXIV.”“I plan to go. The pope is going to go — either Francis or John XXIV — but the pope is going,” he joked.The quip was made after months of speculation in the media that Francis could be close to retirement. The pope told journalists on his return from Canada in July that he is “open” to the possibility of retiring if he discerns that it is God’s will.The interview also aired just over a week after the pope visited L’Aquila, a town in northern Italy, to open the Holy Door of a 13th-century basilica.The day trip had fueled rumors that the pope might retire because Benedict XVI had visited the same basilica four years before he announced his own resignation.During his visit in 2009, Benedict had left his pallium — the white wool vestment given to metropolitan archbishops — on the tomb of Pope Celestine VI, an action commentators interpreted in hindsight to be indicating his intention to resign in the future.In the end, Pope Francis did not make any surprise announcements in L’Aquila, though he has not excluded the possibility of

Wiktoria Ulma with six of her children. / The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II. Vatican City, Dec 17, 2022 / 07:10 am (CNA). Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of a married couple with seven children who were killed by the Nazis for hiding a Jewish family in their home in Poland.The pope signed on Dec. 17 a decree on the martyrdom of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, who were executed along with all their children in 1944. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center has honored the couple as Righteous Among the Nations for the sacrifice of their lives. With the recognition of their martyrdom by the pope, the Polish couple can now be beatified with the couple’s seven children (including one unborn).Early on March 24, 1944, a Nazi patrol surrounded the home of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma on the outskirts of the village of Markowa in southeast Poland. They discovered eight Jewish people who had found refuge on the Ulma farm and executed them.The Nazi police then killed Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant, and Józef. As children began to scream at the sight of their murdered parents, the Nazis shot them too: Stanisława, age 8, Barbara, 7, Władysław, 6, Franciszek, 4, Antoni, 3, and Maria, 2.Pope Francis signed the decree on their martyrdom on his 86th birthday, advancing 15 other causes for canonization, including recognizing the heroic virtue of Matteo Ricci, a well-known 17th-century Jesuit missionary in China. The pope also approved the “offering of life” of Franz de Castro Holzwarth, a Brazilian lawyer who was killed at the age of 38 in 1981 when he offered to replace a hostage during a prison riot.He also recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Jacinto Vera, the first bishop of Montevideo, Uruguay.In the decree, Pope Francis confirmed the heroic virtue of 13 Servants of God. The following four Catholic priests and one brother were recognized as Venerable:Father Aleksander Woźny, a diocesan priest of Poznan, Poland who survived imprisonment in concentration camps in Buchenwald and Dachau (1910-1983)Father Ignacy Posadzy, a priest who co-founded the Society of Christ to serve Polish migrants during World War II and under Communist rule (1898-1984)Father Martin Benedict, a Conventual Franciscan friar from Romania (1931-1986)Father Ugo de Blasi, a diocesan priest who served in Lecce, Italy (1918-1982)Brother José Marcos Figueroa, a Jesuit brother in Argentina (1865-1942)And the following six religious sisters and one consecrated woman were also declared Venerable:Mother Miradio of the Providence of St. Cajetan, foundress of the Congregation of the Poor Daughters of St. Anthony in Italy (1863-1926)Mother Maria Ignazia Isacchi, Italian foundress of the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Asola (1857-1934)Mother Margherita Crispi, foundress of the Congregation of the Oblate Sisters to Divine Love in Italy (1879-1974)Sister Margherita Maria Guaini, Italian foundress of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Jesus the Eternal Priest (1902-1994)Sister Magdalena Aulina Saurina, Spanish foundress of the Secular Institute of the Señoritas Operarias Parroquiales (1897-1956)Sister Teresa Veronesi,

Pope Francis celebrated his 86th birthday with the Missionaries of Charity, honoring three people who care for “the poorest of the poor” with the Mother Teresa Award on Dec. 17, 2022. / Vatican Media Vatican City, Dec 17, 2022 / 04:40 am (CNA). Pope Francis celebrated his 86th birthday on Saturday with the Missionaries of Charity, honoring three people who care for “the poorest of the poor” with the Mother Teresa Award.On Dec. 17, the pope presented Gian Piero, Father Hanna Jallouf, and Silvano Pedrollo with the award and a message of gratitude.“Thank you for this visit so full of affection and full of messages: the message of poverty, the message of closeness, the message of fraternity, the message of prayer, which is the legacy Mother Teresa always gave us,” Pope Francis said.According to the Vatican Dicastery for the Service of Charity, who sponsored the award, Pedrollo is a businessman from Verona who contributes a “significant portion of his company’s profits to assist and help the poorest in several nations in Africa, India and Latin America, building schools, wells and health facilities.”Pope Francis presented Gian Piero, a homeless who is known to give part of the alms that he receives to others, with the Mother Teresa Award on Dec. 17, 2022. Vatican MediaFather Jallouf is a Franciscan who served the poor in Syria amid the violence of the civil war and Gian Piero is a homeless man who is known to give part of the alms that he receives each day to others who are worse off than him. On his birthday, Pope Francis prayed for the intercession of St. Teresa of Calcutta, whom he canonized as a saint in 2016. “May Mother Teresa help us from heaven to live poverty with simplicity and prayer, so that we can help others,” he said.

Pope Francis speaks during his general audience on Oct. 26, 2022. / Vatican Media Vatican City, Dec 16, 2022 / 07:00 am (CNA). In a message sent to heads of state across the world, Pope Francis has asked leaders to reflect on what lessons can be learned three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.The Vatican released on Dec. 16 the pope’s 2023 World Peace Day message in which he posed a series of questions: “What did we learn from the pandemic? What new paths should we follow to cast off the shackles of our old habits, to be better prepared, to dare new things? What signs of life and hope can we see, to help us move forward and try to make our world a better place?”Pope Francis wrote in the message that “certainly after directly experiencing the fragility of our own lives … the greatest lesson we learned from COVID-19 was the realization that we all need one another.”He added: “We also learned that the trust we put in progress, technology, and the effects of globalization was not only excessive but turned into an individualistic and idolatrous intoxication, compromising the very promise of justice, harmony, and peace that we so ardently sought.”The pope underscored that “in our fast-paced world, the widespread problems of inequality, injustice, poverty, and marginalization continue to fuel unrest and conflict, and generate violence and even wars.”“We cannot continue to focus simply on preserving ourselves; rather, the time has come for all of us to endeavor to heal our society and our planet, to lay the foundations for a more just and peaceful world, and to commit ourselves seriously to pursuing a good that is truly common,” he said.The World Day of Peace — instituted by St. Paul VI in 1968 — is celebrated each year on Jan. 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The message is sent by the Vatican Secretariat of State to governments around the world. The pope’s message for the 2023 World Day of Peace, the 56th celebration, is titled “No one can be saved alone: Combatting COVID-19 together, embarking together on paths of peace.”In the text, Pope Francis included one paragraph about the ongoing war in Ukraine, which he described as “a setback for the whole of humanity.”“At the very moment when we dared to hope that the darkest hours of the COVID-19 pandemic were over, a terrible new disaster befell humanity. We witnessed the onslaught of another scourge: another war, to some extent like that of COVID-19, but driven by culpable human decisions … Clearly, this is not the post-COVID era we had hoped for or expected,” Pope Francis said.The pope also noted: “While a vaccine has been found for COVID-19, suitable solutions have not yet been found for the war.”At a Dec. 16 Vatican press conference presenting the pope’s text, Cardinal Michael Czerny repeated the pope’s question: “What have we learned from COVID?”The Canadian cardinal, who serves as the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for

Pope Francis greets His Beatitude Ieronymos II in Athens, Greece on Dec. 5, 2021. / Vatican Media Vatican City, Dec 16, 2022 / 05:15 am (CNA). Pope Francis has decided to give the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Athens three fragments of Parthenon sculptures that have been kept in the Vatican Museums for centuries.The Vatican announced on Dec. 16 that the pope wants to gift the artifacts to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox archbishop of Athens and All Greece, “as a concrete sign of a sincere desire to continue on the ecumenical journey of witness to the truth.”The Parthenon is a temple built atop the Acropolis in Athens to honor the Greek goddess Athena in the mid-fifth century B.C. According to the Vatican Museums website, three marble fragments from the Parthenon’s decorative sculptures arrived in the Vatican’s collection in the 19th century. The fragments include part of the head of a horse from a sculpture of Athena’s chariot, as well as the heads of sculptures of two men.As the archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Ieronymos II is the primate of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece. He most recently met with Pope Francis during the pope’s apostolic trip to Greece in December 2021.In the meeting with the Greek Orthodox leader in Athens last year, Pope Francis apologized for past actions and decisions by the Catholic Church “that had little or nothing to do with Jesus and the Gospel, but were instead marked by a thirst for advantage and power [and] gravely weakened our communion.”“History makes its weight felt, and here, today, I feel the need to ask anew for the forgiveness of God and of our brothers and sisters for the mistakes committed by many Catholics,” the pope said in Athens, where he also made a brief stop to see the Parthenon at night.Pope Francis made a brief stop to see the Parthenon lit up at night during his visit to Athens in December 2021. Vatican MediaThis isn’t the first time that Pope Francis has made an ecumenical gesture with a centuries-old gift. In 2019, the pope gave Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I a relic of St. Peter as “a confirmation of the journey that our Churches have made in drawing closer to one another.”

A person takes a photo of Pope Francis on a cell phone during a papal audience on Dec. 10, 2022. / Vatican Media Vatican City, Dec 15, 2022 / 08:30 am (CNA). Pope Francis has urged young people to look away from their cell phone screens and make eye contact with the people around them. In a meeting on Dec. 15 with youth groups affiliated with Catholic Action, the pope warned that “a great risk for a boy and a girl today is to spend our days keeping a cell phone screen in front of our eyes.”“Our eyes are meant to look into the eyes of others. They were not made to look down at a virtual world that we hold in our hands, but to look up to heaven, to God, and to look into the eyes of those who live next to us.”Pope Francis met with young members of Catholic Action on Dec. 15, 2022. Vatican MediaPope Francis told the children and teenagers gathered at the Vatican to remember that Jesus teaches that “every person is important.”He said that the Lord is particularly concerned not with “the rich and powerful” or “those who are on the covers of glossy magazines or on television, but the smallest, the poor, the forgotten, the rejected, those no one cares about.”“In a world that tends to isolate us, divide us, and that pits us against each other … the secret is precisely to take care of others,” the pope said.Pope Francis emphasized that the “Lord does not want us to spend our days closed up in ourselves,” but to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28: 19).“Our eyes are made to convey the joy experienced from having met Jesus, that friendship that transforms existence, that makes us embrace life and enables us to discover its beauty,” he said.“Because, boys and girls, it is beautiful to follow Jesus: it is beautiful to discover the great love he has for each one of us; it is beautiful to venture into the plan of happiness he has thought up for me, for you, for everyone; it is beautiful to discover the gifts he gives us with great generosity, the surprises that fill our lives with wonder and hope, that make us grow up free and happy.”’“The feast of Christmas, now close at hand, reminds us precisely this: that God enters the world and gives us the strength to go, to walk with him,” Pope Francis said.

Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ. Photo courtesy of the Jesuit's 36th General Congregation. Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 14:46 pm (CNA). The Jesuit Superior General, Father Arturo Sosa, has confirmed that Jesuit artist Father Marko Rupnik incurred an automatic excommunication in 2019 for absolving a woman he had sex with, a fact his religious order was aware of but did not disclose until now.According to a report by the Associated Press, Sosa disclosed this new information Wednesday in a briefing with journalists in Rome.Abusing the sacrament of confession in this manner is one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church.The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “said it happened, there was absolution of an accomplice,” Sosa said. “So he was excommunicated. How do you lift an excommunication? The person has to recognize it and has to repent, which he did.”Sosa also contradicted the Jesuits’ earlier statement and said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry, which remain in effect, dated from this earlier conviction, and not the 2021 allegations that the Vatican’s sex crimes office decided to shelve because they were deemed too old to prosecute, the AP reported.Rupnik, 68, is alleged to have sexually abused members of a women’s institute of religious life in Ljubljana, Slovenia, while serving as the chaplain there in the early 1990s, according to the Italian news outlet Left.it. One of the women allegedly attempted suicide because of the abuse, Left.it reported. A source told ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news outlet partner, that at least nine women were allegedly abused.Those sex abuse allegations were forwarded to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith) in 2021. The dicastery closed the case in October after concluding that a 30-year statute of limitations on allegations of abuse between adults had run out. That decision, which came to light through Italian media reports earlier this month, has generated a host of questions about why the Vatican office chose not to waive the statute of limitations as it has done in other cases. The office is headed by a Jesuit, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor, and had as its No. 2 at the time someone who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community in Rome, the AP reported.

Father Marko Rupnik / Courtesy of the Diocese of Rome Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 13:45 pm (CNA). A high-ranking Jesuit in Rome has weighed in on one of the many questions swirling around the case of Father Marko Rupnik: Why were sexual abuse allegations against the well-known Jesuit priest and artist handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, instead of the Vatican office that oversees religious congregations?“Because it involved some possible irregularities in how the sacraments were administered, and this is within the competence of the CDF,” Father Johan Verschueren told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency.Rupnik, 68, is alleged to have sexually abused members of a women’s institute of religious life in Ljubljana, Slovenia, while serving as the chaplain there in the early 1990s, according to the Italian news outlet Left.it. One of the women allegedly attempted suicide because of the abuse, Left.it reported. A source in the Diocese of Rome told ACI Prensa that at least nine women were allegedly abused.Verschueren, general councilor and delegate for the Houses and Interprovincial Works of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Rome, would not elaborate on which sacraments were at issue.Nor did he comment on media reports that allege that Rupnik administered the sacrament of confession to one of the women he is accused of sexually abusing.Still, his statements shed light on a key jurisdictional question related to the Vatican’s handling of the case.While the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life oversees religious congregations such as the Jesuits, the norms for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) establish that it “judges crimes against the faith and the most serious crimes committed against morality or in the celebration of the sacraments.”In the end, the DDF closed the case this past October without conducting a penal trial, having concluded that the 30-year statute of limitations on cases of alleged abuse between adults had run out.Even so, “precautionary measures” the Society of Jesus placed on Rupnik during the investigation were never rescinded, the religious order said in a Dec. 2 statement.Those measures included the “prohibition of the exercise of the sacrament of confession, giving spiritual direction, and conducting the Spiritual Exercises.”“In addition, Father Rupnik was forbidden to engage in public activities without the permission of his local superior,” the statement continued.“These measures remain in force today, as administrative measures, even after the response of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,” the statement said.Verschueren told ACI Prensa said that in the case of Rupnik, “there was no penal trial and therefore no finding of guilt or innocence” according to penal law.“However, administrative law, which secures the quality of religious life, is of the competence of the major superior. And, as the Society of Jesus wants to take measures to ensure the highest standards in our ministry, the measures are still in place,” he added.“We don’t need the results of the penal process for the taking

Pope Francis arriving at the general audience at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 03:42 am (CNA). Pope Francis is inviting everyone to have “a more humble Christmas” this year.At the end of his weekly general audience Dec. 14, the pope asked people to consider spending less on gifts and parties and in order to help the people of Ukraine.“It is good to celebrate Christmas, to have parties — but let’s lower the level of Christmas spending,” he encouraged. “Let’s send what we save to the Ukrainian people, who are in need, suffering so much; they go hungry, they feel the cold, and so many die because there are no doctors, nurses at hand."“Let’s have a more humble Christmas, with more humble gifts,” he said.The nativity scene in the audience hall at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022. Vatican MediaThe pope drew attention once again to the suffering of the Ukrainian people at the end of his weekly public audience on spiritual vigilance.He said the ongoing war in Ukraine does not mean we should forget about celebrating Christmas altogether, but we should do so “with Ukrainians in our hearts.”Pope Francis encouraged everyone to increase their spiritual preparation as Christmas quickly approaches.Be at peace with the Lord, he said, and “let us make that concrete gesture” for the people of Ukraine.

Pope Francis speaking at the general audience at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022 / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2022 / 03:29 am (CNA). Pope Francis encouraged Christians Wednesday to be vigilant against spiritual pride and the temptations of “well-mannered demons.”“Many times we are given many graces and in the end we are not capable of persevering in this grace and we lose everything for a lack of vigilance. We don’t guard the doors [of our hearts],” he said Dec. 14 during his weekly public audience.The pope addressed the public in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall as he continued his weekly talks on the theme of discernment.Without vigilance, he said, there is a risk that one’s progress in the spiritual life and discernment will be lost.“It is a danger not of a psychological, but of a spiritual order, a real snare of the evil spirit,” Francis said. “Indeed, he awaits precisely the moment in which we are too sure of ourselves, this is the danger: ‘I am sure of myself, I have won, now I am well’ is that moment that the evil spirit waits for, when everything is going well, when things are going ‘swimmingly’ and we ‘have the wind in our sails.’”General audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Dec. 14, 2022. Daniel Ibáñez / CNAThe pope explained that when we let our spiritual guard down, the devil, who knows how to dress himself up to look nice, can enter our hearts.To illustrate this point, Francis recalled one of Jesus’ parables, as told in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus said: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”“This,” the pope said, “is the frame of mind of the Christians who await the final coming of the Lord; but it can also be understood as the normal attitude to have in the conduct of life, so that our good choices, taken at times after challenging discernment, may proceed in a persevering and consistent manner, and bear fruit.”Building on the metaphor of the house, Pope Francis described a clean and tidy abode with everything prepared, but the master is missing, because he is either not home, is distracted, or has fallen asleep, and evil is able to enter.“He is not vigilant, he is not alert, because he is too sure of himself and has lost the humility to safeguard his own heart,” the pope said. “We must always safeguard our home and our heart.”Francis explained that perhaps the master of the house had received many compliments on his beautiful and elegant home.Perhaps too enamored with his property, “that is, with himself,” he added, “he stopped waiting for the Lord, waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom; perhaps for fear of ruining that order