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Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

 

Here is the Pope’s Easter Urbi et Orbi message:

 

Pope Francis
EASTER URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
to the City and to the World
5 April 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Jesus Christ is risen!

Love has triumphed over hatred, life has conquered death, light has dispelled the darkness!

Out of love for us, Jesus Christ stripped himself of his divine glory, emptied himself, took on the form of a slave and humbled himself even to death, death on a cross. For this reason God exalted him and made him Lord of the universe. Jesus is Lord!

By his death and resurrection, Jesus shows everyone the way to life and happiness: this way is humility, which involves humiliation. This is the path which leads to glory. Only those who humble themselves can go towards the “things that are above”, towards God (cf. Col 3:1-4). The proud look “down from above”; the humble look “up from below”.

On Easter morning, alerted by the women, Peter and John ran to the tomb. They found it open and empty. Then they drew near and “bent down” in order to enter it. To enter into the mystery, we need to “bend down”, to abase ourselves. Only those who abase themselves understand the glorification of Jesus and are able to follow him on his way.

The world proposes that we put ourselves forward at all costs, that we compete, that we prevail… But Christians, by the grace of Christ, dead and risen, are the seeds of another humanity, in which we seek to live in service to one another, not to be arrogant, but rather respectful and ready to help.

This is not weakness, but true strength! Those who bear within them God’s power, his love and his justice, do not need to employ violence; they speak and act with the power of truth, beauty and love.

From the risen Lord we ask the grace not to succumb to the pride which fuels violence and war, but to have the humble courage of pardon and peace. We ask Jesus, the Victor over death, to lighten the sufferings of our many brothers and sisters who are persecuted for his name, and of all those who suffer injustice as a result of ongoing conflicts and violence.

We ask for peace, above all, for Syria and Iraq, that the roar of arms may cease and that peaceful relations may be restored among the various groups which make up those beloved countries. May the international community not stand by before the immense humanitarian tragedy unfolding in these countries and the drama of the numerous refugees.

We pray for peace for all the peoples of the Holy Land. May the culture of encounter grow between Israelis and Palestinians and the peace process be resumed, in order to end years of suffering and division.

We implore peace for Libya, that the present absurd bloodshed and all barbarous acts of violence may cease, and that all concerned for the future of the country may work to favour reconciliation and to build a fraternal society respectful of the dignity of the person. For Yemen too we express our hope for the growth of a common desire for peace, for the good of the entire people.

At the same time, in hope we entrust to the merciful Lord the framework recently agreed to in Lausanne, that it may be a definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world.

We ask the risen Lord for the gift of peace for Nigeria, South Sudan and for the various areas of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. May constant prayer rise up from all people of goodwill for those who lost their lives – I think in particular of the young people who were killed last Thursday at Garissa University College in Kenya –, for all who have been kidnapped, and for those forced to abandon their homes and their dear ones.

May the Lord’s resurrection bring light to beloved Ukraine, especially to those who have endured the violence of the conflict of recent months. May the country rediscover peace and hope thanks to the commitment of all interested parties.

We ask for peace and freedom for the many men and women subject to old and new forms of enslavement on the part of criminal individuals and groups. Peace and liberty for the victims of drug dealers, who are often allied with the powers who ought to defend peace and harmony in the human family. And we ask peace for this world subjected to arms dealers.

May the marginalized, the imprisoned, the poor and the migrants who are so often rejected, maltreated and discarded, the sick and the suffering, children, especially those who are victims of violence; all who today are in mourning, and all men and women of goodwill, hear the consoling voice of the Lord Jesus: “Peace to you!” (Lk 24:36). “Fear not, for I am risen and I shall always be with you” (cf. Roman Missal, Entrance Antiphon for Easter Day).

Comments:

1.  The Pope’s endorsement of the ludicrous Iran-Obama deal is not unsuspected.  The Vatican has been seeking to snuggle up to the odious Iranian regime for some time.  Why, I will leave to those experts in the quirky rococo  Vatican style of diplomacy.

2.  I wonder if the Pope noted internally that his prayers for peace all involved nations, with the exception of the Ukraine, in the grip of Islamic violence.

3.  The Pope still seeks to blame arms dealers for the violence in the world rather than those who purchase or capture the arms and use them for causes the Vatican often seems unwilling to forthrightly condemn.

4.  In regard to the Ukraine, the Pope refuses to condemn Putin.  Ostpolitik apparently still lives.

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Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 8:33am

All 4 points excellently made.

It is so disappointing that the Holy Father, with so much persuasive power and influence, offers the message here as though this is the best he can do. Countless Christians in Syria and Northern Iraq are daily being annihilated, innocents such as children as well, all as a direct result of Obama policies, and he falls in with support of the same morally bankrupt administration to cover their flank in the disastrous Iran deal. The Holy Father should be screaming from the roof tops for the world to come to the defense of those being literally cut to pieces—and it appears his main concern is for matters like the Lausanne declaration, another new-world-order self-glorifying pronouncement while lives are snuffed out and the world burns in the Near East, Africa and Asia. A pontiff who is like a tiger with obedient Catholics is a pussycat with progressive world-politico types and with militant Islam.
Is this the best you can do, Pope Francis? Well, in the fictional words of Salieri at the end of screenplay “Amadeus” (Peter L. Shaffer), paraphrased to soften slightly, “This is a mediocrity.” You could have done so much, Holy Father.
” And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.” Rev 6:9 The slain ask God Our Lord, “For how much longer?”

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Monday, April 6, AD 2015 9:17am

[…] The Resurrection Appearances ‘Chronologically’ Arranged – Monsignor Charles Pope Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi – Donald R. McClarey JD, The American Catholic The Latest Pope Francis Appointments – […]

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 9:19am

It simply is more mush. I don’t listen to or read his stuff. It insults my intelligence.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 2:13pm

This link to the papal’s preacher’s logic tops all Ghandi impersonations from Vatican City thus far. He calls the world powers Pilates for being indifferent to Christian persecution but he then denounces military violence as a solution and says the martial violence in the Old Testament was merely tolerated by God the way God tolerated divorce both being evil …even though if he would read the OT, God actively orders violence repeatedly in the first Person imperative for those of us who actually read the entire Bible…errr ….and then what does the papal preacher envision the nations doing in order to stop Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISIS? We do both just violence and aid in case he doesn’t read. The USA just pledged 507 million $ this past week for refugees….Rome gave somewhat over one million. but found an extra billion recently in the financial overhaul. We may be reaching absolute absurdity and the far end of the Vatican pacifist pendulum swing because they are running out of nutty things to say about war making. If the papal preacher is trying to out Ghandi Pope Francis, this linked speech may be his Mona Lisa.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1501461.htm

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 2:46pm

ps
Here below is God commending Ahab for the slaughter of the idolatrous House of Ahab in 2 Kings. We are not to do such things now after Christ except in physical self defense. Jehu did it in both physical and non grace spiritual self defense.
Prior to sanctifying grace, violence often ordered by God was necessary in pre grace man so that inter alia the Jews would not be corrupted by surrounding cultures…and they were anyway for centuries. But for Popes and papal preachers to see such passages not as necessary God ordered violence but as psychological projections of a guilty Jewish mind is pure absurdity fomented by modern negative elements of higher biblical criticism that earlier Popes warned of. There is good in modern biblical scholarship and there is also facile misuse in modern biblical scholarship. It’s misuse at the papal level is around violence issues. Here after Jehu kills Jezebel who persecuted the people of God and kills decades of the house of Ahab, God commends Jehu…
2 Kings 10:30
The LORD said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in executing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
Our bombing justly is likewise killing ISIS from physical self defense…not because their ideas are tempting as was justified also for war in the OT.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 3:23pm

Pacifism has been “de rigeur” since the Second Vatican Council and it is not going to change. Dialog and talk can solve all conflict.

Do not expect this to change regardless of who is Pope. The wisdom of the past has been thrown away with the high altars and communion rails.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 3:46pm

Penquins Fan,
The Russia/ Poland situation saw a very different young John Paul II. The early John Paul II was a believer in military and actually reigned in the US Bishops on their anti nuclear weapons comments….but….the post 1990 John Paul II slowly mutated and generally ( not absolutely always) brought us the confused death penalty comments of Evangelium Vitae, the dire warnings about removing Hussein from Kuwait ( if you can believe that one) and late in the pontificate the Easter sermon with its “violence solves nothing” canard which insulted countless military families and was later repeated by Benedict who in section 42 of Verbum Domini made the absurd insinuation that God didn’t order the invasion and herem of Canaan. If he didn’t, the entire chapter 12 of Wisdom should be removed from the canon…lol. What the hell happened in 1990 to change these men is beyond me. Perhaps decades of all sweet homilists finally took its toll. After half Catholic Reagan passed on, John Paul II also no longer had an intimate connection to the US presidency with the return of full Protestant presidents.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, April 6, AD 2015 4:45pm

Don,
That was the worst sentence for me too. Jesus found the greatest faith in all
Israel in the Roman centurion…something that escapes the present regime.
At places like Vox Nova, I always ask them what they would do if someone strong and large invaded their home and attacked their wife while said invader was on meth. What would the good Samaritan do if he arrived at the mugging while it was in progress.
But back to the home invader. He only has three weak spots that are very accessible….eyes, carotid and windpipe. Usually silence on that question is typical….because you need to cut his windpipe or 2nd choice (harder to find) carotid artery with a perfect serrated sharp fighting knife if you swore off guns which they generally do.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 2:29am

“The Vatican has been seeking to snuggle up to the odious Iranian regime for some time. “

Many people see Sunni Islam as the greatest threat to stability; it has, after all, produced groups like Al-Quaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram. Iran has shown itself willing to oppose them, shoring up the Assad regime in Syria and supporting the Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

China is nervous about the spread of militant (Sunni) Islam into former Soviet Central Asia and is also concerned about its Middle Eastern oil supplies, on which it is heavily dependent. It can no longer rely on American willingness to guarantee the security of that supply. Its solution is a balance of power in the region, selling arms both to Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Russia wants better relations with Iran. It does not want a hostile Iran on its south-western flank, given the volatility of the Caucuses. Hence the offer of the Antey-2500 air defence system to Iran

In other words, Iran is increasingly seen as a source of stability in the region and both Russia and China are willing to give it diplomatic support.

Now, all this is totally misconceived. Iran’s demographic collapse will see her proportion of dependent elderly rise to 30% by mid-century (and a corresponding decline in young men of military age). With its own resources dwindling, its survival depends on the annexation of the Shia-dominated, oil-reach north-eastern area of Saudi Arabia, whilst it still has the manpower to do it. That is the real threat to stability, with a new Persian empire stretching from Damascus, to Baghdad, to Tehran, to Sanaa.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 4:46am

Correction of second post above for those who didn’t read it’s eventual self correction….God commended Jehu not Ahab.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 5:49am

Michael PS,
At the below link, scroll down to the Ahmadinejad years 2005-2013 and it reads like a James Bond film with a covert war between 2010 and 2012 going on between the Mossad and Iran with Mossad inside Iran killing nuclear scientists at times by motorcycle riders clamping bombs on their cars and fading back and detonating them remotely….and doing such with the risk of arrest et al in Iran.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_relations

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 7:30am

bill bannon: “ps
Here below is God commending Ahab for the slaughter of the idolatrous House of Ahab in 2 Kings. We are not to do such things now after Christ except in physical self defense. Jehu did it in both physical and non grace spiritual self defense.”
.
Spiritual self-defense is a metaphysical reality, a very real reality. Thank you, Bill Bannon, for such information. Please consider the refusal to participate in a celebration of same sex weddings, a spiritual self-defense; a celibate priesthood, a spiritual self-defense, a spiritual father cannot wed his spiritual child after a man has taken a vow to become her spiritual father. Godparents cannot marry their Godchildren. This comment goes far and wide and still the cultural concept that once a person is dead, he is no more, he is finis, must debunked. Violence produces dead people, therefore violence is bad is nonsense, “rubbish on stilts” as Donald McClarey might say. Self-defense of the spiritual realm, the Truth, and Justice; heaven on earth is essential to peace.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 7:32am

This comment goes far and wide and still the cultural concept that once a person is dead, he is no more, he is finis, must be debunked.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, April 7, AD 2015 8:23am

Mary De Voe,
Note my correction though…God commended Jehu not Ahab.

We no longer stone adulterers but God ( all three Persons) ordered the Jews to do it because pre Christ man needed great threats just to avoid adultery….and other sins. Pre Christ man needed great threats because three things had not happened yet
….Christ had not brought sanctifying grace: John 1:17 ” the law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
…..Christ had not yet reduced the devil’s power so that possession cases abounded in His culture but not after Him: Luke 10:18 ” I saw satan fall like lightning…” Once Christ reduced satan, even non Christians have an easier time trying to be good.
…… Christ had not yet been lifted up from whence He draws all men to Himself ( though many resist the drawing): John 12:32. ” And I if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself”.

Separately God ordered the Jews to kill the Canaanites partly because as pre Christ weak mankind, the Jews would be seduced into Canaanite idolatry and child sacrifice but secondly because God had first given the Canaanites 400 years to repent and they did not ( Wisdom 12) and their sins had reached the fullness level in God’s eyes …see Gen.15:16.

But once Christ came, He forebade the apostles to bring down lightning in Luke 9 upon the heretical Samaritan town which refused them hospitality. The apostles were thinking like ISIS since they simply wanted to kill out of moral anger….while the Old Testament herem massacres had as cause…God’s motivations not man’s anger…..God’s reasons: weak Jews might be seduced by Canaanite culture/ Canaanite time was up because they didn’t repent for four hundred years. Thus Old Testament killing had zero to do with modern jihadhist killing. The motivation is radically different.

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