Saint Joseph Catholic Church

The list includes heads of state, reigning sovereigns, heads of government, ambassadors, and other officials.

The Pope asked rhetorically, “How many marriages today fail after three, five, seven years? Wouldn’t it be better, then, to avoid pain, to only touch each other as in a passing dance, to enjoy each other, to play together, and then leave each other?”

He responded, “Don’t believe it! Believe in love, believe in God, and believe that you can face the adventure of a lifelong love.”

The novena “has been prepared to help pray for the Pope during the time of mourning,” the introduction notes.

Pope Francis “placed the Gospel at the center of all his reflections and placed the face—and the mystery—of each person before any other theological or moral evaluation,” Father Pasolini wrote. “By respectfully approaching the conscience of all, Pope Francis has not tried to impose new certainties. He contented himself with reopening the fundamental question: if God were truly the Father of all, what would be left for us to do?”

Abbot Donato Ogliari, OSB—one of two prelates selected to preach meditations to the College of Cardinals before the election of the new Pope—preached his meditation during the cardinals’ sixth general congregation on April 29.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who served as one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization until the Pontiff’s death, celebrated Mass for participants in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

“I think it was a gift to be at this Mass,” said a father of children with Down syndrome. “People with disabilities don’t always experience that. Sometimes they experience the Church as their home. But as often as not, they experience marginalization in the Church or isolation in the Church, not necessarily by malice, but just a failure to appreciate the kinds of accommodations that they need.”

On April 29, members of the College of Cardinals met in their sixth general congregation since Pope Francis’s death. 183 of the 252 members of the College of Cardinals—including 124 of the cardinal electors—were in attendance, the Vatican newspaper reported.

Archbishop Francisco Moreno Barrón said that the plan was conceived in cooperation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaun, who visited Tijuana last November. Parishoners are being encouraged to surrender their firearms, with payment offered according to the market value of the weapons.

“In the Church we are never passive bystanders,” Bishop Varden insisted.

Although the papal interregnum is “an uncomfortable state of affairs,” the Norwegian bishop argued that “there is no need, really, to fret. I’d say this is a good time to do the exact opposite: to practice silence and peace.”

Bishop Varden also cautioned against thinking that one prelate would “win” the election. “Do we think of the weight that will be placed on the future pope’s shoulders from the moment of his acceptance? Do we consider the account he will one day have to render to the Judge of all?”

“In these days, Rome is a people that mourns its Bishop, a people together with other peoples who have waited in line, finding a place within the city in order to weep and pray, like sheep without a shepherd,” he preached in St. Peter’s Basilica on the evening of April 28.

The 54-year-old cardinal—whose rise in the hierarchy in recent years has been meteoric—added:

And this cannot be the time for maneuvers, tactics, caution—not a time to follow the instinct to turn back, or worse, to retaliate or seek alliances of power. What is needed is a radical willingness to enter into God’s dream, entrusted to our poor hands ...

Faced with the proclamation of this newness, we cannot give in to that mental and spiritual indolence that binds us to the forms of experience of God and ecclesial practices known in the past, and which we would wish to be repeated ad infinitum, subjugated by the fear of the losses attached to necessary changes ...

To seek a shepherd today means above all to seek a guide who knows how to manage the fear of losses faced with the needs of the Gospel ... To seek a shepherd who confirms that we must walk together, forming ministries and charisms; we are a People of God constituted to proclaim the Gospel.