A good Jesuit, Francis is applying the maxim "Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you," a Vatican official told La Croix's Loup Besmond de Senneville.

In the Vatican, prayer is also closely linked to the diplomatic efforts undertaken since the beginning of the conflict.

"You don't put diplomacy in one box and spiritual activity in another," said a Holy See diplomat.

"If we are conducting this diplomacy, it is because we are Catholic," he said.

"There are different levels of action," said a Roman Curia official close to the pope, pointing out that these include prayer, diplomacy and solidarity.

"It's as if these dimensions were somehow the floors of the same building.

"When it comes to prayer, the pope is trying to play a different card with a much more spiritual aspect.

"It is a card that only the Vatican can play," said the diplomat.

Friday's act of consecration is linked to the Marian apparitions that are said to have taken place at Fatima in 1917 and is intimately linked to petitions for peace.

"Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons," Francis prayed.

During the ceremony, Francis pointed out that the consecration is not a "magic formula".

Calling it a "spiritual act," Francis said the consecration is "an act of complete trust".

He said it comes from children who, "amid the tribulation of this cruel and senseless war that threatens our world, turn to their Mother, reposing all their fears and pain in her heart and abandoning themselves to her."

The prayer service is Francis' latest effort to rally prayers for an end to the war.

"We are on the verge of the third world war: for Francis, it is urgent to mobilise all spiritual forces," a close friend of Francis told.

"Francis' gesture may raise some eyebrows. But it is, in fact, profoundly realistic", writes Dominique Greiner, La Croix's senior editor.

Consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary reminds us that the roots of war are always in the human heart: we, therefore, need spiritual remedies to put an end to it.

Greiner goes further, calling the consecration "prophetic"; the defenceless voices of prayer denouncing the deployment of increasingly sophisticated weapons that sow death and desolation.

Francis praying like this Greiner calls a sign of hope, a sign that peace is possible.

On Sunday, the Holy Father followed up his Friday prayer for peace by telling thousands gathered in St Peter's Square that the threat of a global conflict spawned by Russia's invasion of Ukraine should convince everyone that the time has come for humanity to abolish war before it abolishes humanity.

"More than a month has passed since the invasion of Ukraine, since the start of this cruel and senseless war which, like every war, is a defeat for everyone, for all of us," he said to thousands of people in St Peter's Square for his Sunday blessing.

"We must repudiate war, a place of death where fathers and mothers bury their children, where men kill their brothers without even seeing them, where the powerful decide and the poor die," Francis said.

"I beg every politician involved to reflect on this, to make a commitment and, looking at martyred Ukraine, to understand that every day of war worsens the situation for everyone," he said.

"Abolish war now, before war erases humanity from history."

"Enough! Stop! Let the weapons fall silent. Negotiate seriously for peace," he said.

Sources

• La Croix International
• La Croix International
• Associated Press
• Reuters

And what should normal mean?

The feeling that we are ready for the return to normal is as much a product of exhaustion as of progress.

While there is much to be celebrated, especially the unprecedentedly rapid development of vaccines, the coronavirus remains both present and dangerous.

The costs and burdens of mitigation measures, especially as they affect young students and their parents, have also become clear.

A conversation about how to relax various pandemic protocols coexists with more than 900,000 total Covid deaths in the United States and with hospitals still filled to capacity in many areas.

People who are vaccinated are largely protected from severe disease and hospitalization; but for the unvaccinated and those with increased risk factors, Covid is still a deadly disease.

Combined with the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant, this means that many health care workers are still in the trenches of the pandemic even as vaccinated people can cautiously begin to treat Covid as a risk similar to the seasonal flu.

And the ongoing burden of the pandemic is borne disproportionately by those who are already economically disadvantaged, whose work often requires more direct contact with members of the public and who have fewer resources and options to weather disruptions to child care and other practical arrangements caused by quarantines after positive test results.

The ability and willingness to sustain mitigation practices are limited resources, which must be stewarded as carefully as stockpiles of masks and medications.

One important lesson to take from these two years of pandemic is that the ability and willingness to sustain mitigation practices are limited resources, which must be stewarded as carefully as stockpiles of masks and medications.

Failure to recognize this in the early days of the pandemic, unfortunately, opened up divisions that were ripe for exploitation.

The politicization of public health guidance and cynical efforts to use the pandemic to further divide us into ideological tribes spent down resources of trust that are difficult, if not impossible, to renew quickly.

As formal Covid mitigation protocols are relaxed, it will be important to avoid worsening this tribalisation.

The temptation will be to either hold onto maximum precautions even in the face of smaller risks, or to abandon all precautions, even the least onerous.

But even while Americans may disagree about the balance of caution and risk, we need to be united in refusing to impute motives of malice or ignorance to those who think differently.

Everyone, including those who tend toward great caution and those who favour a speedy return to normal, must be willing to prioritize among various goals.

For example, encouraging vaccination is far more important than maintaining social distancing guidelines in all spaces; so, too, keeping in-person schooling for young children is far more important than ending mask mandates in all public spaces.

The church will also face any number of practical questions on the way back to normal, especially at the parish level.

Pastors and lay ministers will have to balance the relaxation of various mitigation practices with continuing care for those who are still at heightened risk, even as the coronavirus becomes endemic.

They should also take the lead in encouraging parishioners to be patient and generous with one another even when they are not on the same page about how comfortable they are in returning to Mass or, eventually, ceasing to wear masks.

The sickening normality the pandemic laid bare is that of inequality and lack of solidarity. Continue reading

He said this is a time when people need to be ready to help one another, especially if people are isolated.

"There are a few people who are self-isolating who have come back from overseas, and we're saying, see what you can do, see if you can drop off food, ring them."

For the vulnerable and those who don't have a home to go to, Dew said "they are trying to prepare people" because the vulnerable are the very ones that will need a lot of help and might even need other accommodation if it's possible.

A time of prayer and reflection
Asked about what people can do at a spiritual level while they are confined to their own homes, the Cardinal pointed out that this is a time to capitalize on Lent, "and it's traditionally a time to step aside, pay a little closer attention to the scriptures".

He also said that a message that the Church can get out there is that, "if you are at home, use some of the wonderful websites that help people to pray; help people to reflect because a lot of people struggle when they're on their own."

"They don't know how to fill in time, so it's an opportunity for us to promote some of those websites and things that do help people to pray and reflect and to learn how to actually be alone and use it as a kind of retreat."

Listen to interview

Source

• vaticannews.va
• Image: rnz.co.nz

Bishop Angaelos who is the head of the Coptic church in the UK, says for example many Coptic Christians in the North Sinai have been forced out of their homes.

They were told by ISIS to "leave or die".

Angaelos says despite the violence shown to Christians we need to act as Christ would.

This means we need to avoid aggressiveness and anti-Islamic rhetoric, which ends up adversely affecting people in the region.

During the past three months alone over 40 Coptic Christians in Egypt have been martyred.

Their killers: militants aligned with the Islamic State terror group that has been waging war against Egypt's forces in the Sinai Peninsula for the past five years.

Angaelos says Christians in the region have reacted very peacefully and nonviolently, even to the extent of forgiving.

What Western Christian need to do first is to pray for them, he says.

"Secondly, [it's important for Western Christians] to keep this message of support and solidarity alive.

"The fact that incidents come off our news feed doesn't mean they cease to exist.

"... Christians [need] to feel that they are most certainly members of the wider body of Christ and that they are not isolated in a certain region of the world, Angaelos says.

Source

• National Catholic Register
• Assyrian International News Agency
• Image: Catholic Herald

Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press office, said the invitation for the pope to visit the island came from Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and Greek president Prokopis Pavlopoulos.

A Vatican statement released on April 7 said Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Jerome II of Athens and Greece will join the pontiff during the visit.

Lombardi said that through the visit Pope Francis will call "all communities of believers to solidarity and responsibility" in the face of a "situation of intense suffering."

Hundreds of thousands of refugees, many fleeing conflict in North Africa and the Middle East, are staying on the Greek island since their arrival in Europe in the past year.

The Vatican has earlier criticized a plan to deport illegal migrants from Greece and return them to Turkey.

Lombardi said the pope's visit to Lesbos is "an initiative of all the Christian churches together."

There is still no schedule for the trip, but the Vatican spokesman it will be a "brief" visit.

Sources

Catholic News Agency
The Wall Street JournalThe Guardian
Image: The Wall Street Journal

"[Pope Francis grieved] to learn of the casualties caused by the bombing in Istanbul … and he expresses his prayerful solidarity with all touched by this tragedy," read a telegram to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State.

"His Holiness asks you to convey his spiritual closeness to them, as well as to the personnel assisting the injured."

"Commending the souls of those who have died to the mercy of the Almighty, Pope Francis invokes divine strength and peace upon those who mourn, and upon the entire nation," read the telegram.

Efken Ala, Turkey's interior minister, said the attack that killed four people in the Turkish capital's main shopping street was carried out by the so-called Islamic State.

The attack in Istiklal Street, Istanbul's most popular shopping district, is the fourth bombing in Turkey this year and the second one by Islamist militants.

In January a suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul's historic heart, killing 12 German tourists, according to a report by Reuters.

Israel has confirmed that three of its citizens died in the blast. Two of them held dual citizenship with the United States. An Iranian was also killed, Turkish officials have said.

Sources

The Guardian
Catholic World News
Aleteia
Catholic Herald
Reuters
Image: AP/Catholic Herald

Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools (GSCS) is eliminating plastic bottled water from vending machines, cafeterias, school-related events and meetings.

The reasons given are environmental consciousness and solidarity with people in the world who lack clean drinking water.

There will be water-filling stations at the schools so students will be able to fill their own bottles.

Students will also be able to bring their own bottled water to school.

In 2009, the University of Winnepeg in Canada also banned bottled water sales on campus.

Continue reading

The humanitarian emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR), a landmass bigger than France where the average male life expectancy is 48, remains a blind spot for most of the international community.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, noted recently that the situation in the CAR has been referred to as "the worst crisis most people have never heard of".

One man describes how his four-year-old son's throat was slit, and how he saw a snake swallowing a baby.

A woman explains that she is caring for a young girl because her mother went searching for medicine and was bludgeoned to death with Kalashnikov rifles.

A young man tells how he was bound and thrown to the crocodiles, but managed to swim to safety.

This is the world of horrors that the Central African Republic (CAR) has become. Thousands of people are dying at the hands of soldiers and militia gangs or from untreated diseases such as malaria.

Boys and girls as young as eight are pressganged into fighting between Christians and Muslims. There are reports of beheadings and public execution-style killings. Villages are razed to the ground.

Never much more than a phantom state, the CAR has sucked in thousands of mercenaries from neighbouring countries and, France warned on Thursday, now stands "on the verge of genocide".

Yet many would struggle to find the country on a map, despite the clue in its afterthought name. Continue reading.

Source: The Guardian

Image: Fleeing families arrive at a camp near the cathedral in Bossangoa this month Matthieu Alexandre/AFP/Getty Images

He called for greater efforts to build a worldwide "culture of encounter and solidarity".

The Pope's words came in his annual message for World Food Day, addressed to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation in Rome.

He called it "paradoxical" that globalisation is increasing the world's awareness of situations of need, yet there appears to be "a growing tendency towards individualism and inwardness, which leads to a certain attitude of indifference — at a personal, institutional and state level — towards those who die of hunger and suffer as a result of malnutrition".

"Something must change in us, in ourselves, in our mentality, in our societies," he said.

Pope Francis called the waste of food — which, according to the FAO, accounts for approximately a third of worldwide food production — "one of the fruits of the 'throwaway culture' that often sacrifices men and women to the idols of profit and consumption; a sad sign of the 'globalisation of indifference', which is slowly 'habituating' us to the suffering of others, as if it were something normal."

He said the tragic condition in which millions of hungry and malnourished people, including many children, live today is "one of the most serious challenges for humanity".

"It is a scandal," he said, "that there is still hunger and malnutrition in the world! Not only must we respond to immediate emergencies, but face together, at all levels, a problem that challenges our personal and social awareness, to bring about a just and lasting solution."

Pope Francis said education in solidarity and a lifestyle that rejects the "throwaway culture", placing each person and his or her dignity in the centre, must begin in the family.

Sources:

Vatican Insider

Catholic News Service

Vatican Information Service

Image: Wanted in Rome