VATICAN CITY — Signaling his belief that the Catholic Church
is facing a serious crisis, Pope Francis asked every Catholic to pray
for the protection of the Church from attacks by the devil, but also
that the Church would be more aware of its sins and stronger in its
efforts to combat abuse.
Pope Francis asked Catholics to pray the
Rosary each day in October, seeking Mary’s intercession in protecting
the Church, and “at the same time making her (the Church) more aware of
her sins, errors and the abuses committed in the present and the past,
and committed to fighting without hesitation so that evil would not
prevail,” the Vatican wrote in a statement released Sept. 29, the feast
of the Archangels.
United “in communion and penitence as the
people of God,” the statement said, Catholics should plead for
protection against “the devil, who always seeks to divide us from God
and from one another.”
Pope Francis met earlier in September with
Jesuit Father Federic Fornos, international director of the Pope’s
Worldwide Prayer Network, formerly known as the Apostleship of Prayer,
to ask that the recitation of the Rosary in October conclude with “the
ancient invocation ‘Sub Tuum Praesidium’ (‘Under your protection’) and
with the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, who protects us in the
battle against evil.”
The first prayer, to Mary, has a variety of translations. One reads: “We
turn to you for protection, Holy Mother of God. Listen to our prayers
and help us in our needs. Save us from every danger, glorious and
blessed Virgin.”
The prayer to St. Michael reads: “St.
Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the
wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust
into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking
the ruin of souls.”
2019 Communications Day: Focus on networks, not division
VATICAN
CITY — Christians must do more to make sure the media, especially
social networks, are places of dialogue and respect for others, rather
than instruments for highlighting differences and increasing divisions,
said the prefect of the Vatican communications office.
“The risk
in our time is that of forming tribes instead of communities — tribes
based on the exclusion of the other,” said Paolo Ruffini, the new
prefect of the Dicastery for Communication.
Ruffini spoke to
Vatican News Sept. 29, the same day the Vatican released the theme Pope
Francis chose for World Communication Day 2019: “We are members one of
another: From network community to human communities.”
The theme
is a call for “reflection on the current state and nature of
relationships on the internet, starting from the idea of community as a
network between people in their wholeness,” the Vatican said. “The
metaphor of the web as a community of solidarity implies the
construction of an ‘us’ based on listening to the other, on dialogue and
consequently on the responsible use of language.”
The Vatican and
many dioceses mark World Communication Day on the Sunday before
Pentecost; in 2019 that will be June 2. Pope Francis usually issues a
message on the theme, which the Vatican publishes Jan. 24, the feast of
St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists.
Social media
can nourish “true, beautiful, solid relationships,” Ruffini told Vatican
News, but it also can “feed hatred and a friend or enemy mechanism.
When this happens, there is no real relationship.”
Pope Francis,
he said, wants people to use social media as a network, not a web, “not
something that traps you, but something that frees you and that you make
an instrument of freedom.”
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service