Saint Joseph Catholic Church

During the third session of the two-day extraordinary consistory (program), which concludes today, members of the College of Cardinals discussed the topic, “Building the Good: The Worksites of Our Time.”

According to the Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations, “the antidote to individualism and to fractures, many groups agreed, is the Gospel: a Church that offers a sense of belonging, that is able to soothe the wounds of our time, and that is renewed while avoiding forms of integralism and polarization; a Church that makes visible its Samaritan face, with Christians who are not spectators of social ruin, but wise architects who rebuild the city of all.”

According to the summary, the cardinals also discussed the following topics, among others:

• “the deep fractures of our time: among peoples and nations, within societies, and within families themselves; and on how these generate wounds, especially among the poorest, the weakest, young people who lack a sense of newness, and adults lacking the wisdom of years”
• “the danger posed by a lack of meaning, meaningful relationships, and identity, which pushes people toward a tribal attitude”
• “the call to give names to living beings, and not to reduce them to numbers and statistics; to experience and accept the human sense of limits, which AI tends to deny; and to defend the dignity of work”
• the common good, with its “its origin in faith: faith in God and in the transcendent dimension present in every person, which leads human beings to go beyond every frontier, beginning with the one that takes them beyond themselves; to live solidarity with the poor as a response to individualism; to live catholicity fully; to build gratuitous relationships, not institutions, at every level; and to seek a language capable of engaging with settings distant from the Christian faith”

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The third session of the extraordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals (program) opened today with Mass celebrated by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re and an address by Cardinal Stephen Brislin of Johannesburg, South Africa.

During the Mass, celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, preached about the Blessed Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross.

Reflecting on Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo’s encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, Cardinal Brislin said that for believers, contributing to the common good “takes on the form of synodality.”

“Cardinal Brislin described synodality as the concrete trace of the communion from which the Church is born and grows, enabling Christians to enter the building site of history without fear,” Vatican News reported in its summary of the prelate’s remarks.

Today is the Optional Memorial of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria (376-444). Cyril was one of the metropolitan sees of the Christian Church in the east, was one of the great defenders of the faith against the heresy of Nestorius who denied the oneness of person in Jesus Christ. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, over which he presided in the pope's name, and at his instigation, it was defined that Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time God and man, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother, is truly Theotokos, the Mother of God. St. Cyril died in 444. The Church venerates him as one of her great doctors. His commentary on the Gospel of St. John is one of the richest doctrinally of those left us by the Fathers of the Church.

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During the second session of the two-day extraordinary consistory (program), members of the College of Cardinals discussed the topic, “The Culture of Power and the Civilization of Love.”

According to the Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations, “all the groups [of cardinals] reaffirmed the centrality of faith in Christ and of the Gospel, which has the power to transform the world when it is lived rather than treated as mere theory.”

“Many participants stressed the need to move beyond the logic of just war, since the Gospel cannot be imposed by force, and instead to speak of the right to proportionate self-defense,” according to the summary.

Vatican News reported that the cardinals also discussed the following topics, among others:

• “the challenges of the present time, highlighting the dehumanizing force of the culture of power, its universal reach, the temptation to conform to the logic of the powerful, and the normalization of war and polarization”
• “the responsibility to build peace and a civilization of love”
• “the importance of offering a credible witness—beginning within the Church itself—through a language centered on people: one of listening, forgiveness, reconciliation, restorative justice, and concrete gestures”
• “unity within the Church is essential to its credibility, as is dialogue with other faiths and religions, particularly Islam”
• “the role of political authority, calling for it to be freed from what was described as its toxic link with economic power”

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178 of the 241 members of the College of Cardinals took part in the first session of the two-day extraordinary consistory (program), during which they pondered the question, “In what kind of world are we called to proclaim the Gospel?”

According to the Vatican News’s summary of the confidential deliberations, the cardinals, gathered in groups, spoke about the following topics, among others:

• “increasing polarization within societies and communities, generating political tensions and violence and fueled by social divisions, misinformation and forms of communication that fail to foster encounter”
• “the suffering caused in many parts of the world by the lack of respect for religious and ethnic minorities, undermining religious freedom and giving rise to hostility, and at times violence, particularly against the Church”
• “excessive individualism, the crisis of the family, and the growing loneliness experienced by both elderly people and young people, identifying these as contributing factors to even more serious problems, including rising suicide rates and drug use”
• “the awareness of a widespread sense of distrust, fatalism and powerlessness towards institutions, democracy and the future, linked also to declining birth rates, the growth of criminal organizations, youth delinquency and drug trafficking”
• “the need to address migration in a humane and Christian way, recognizing how it is reshaping peoples, societies and communities while making effective integration policies increasingly urgent amid new forms of exclusion”

Addressing a UN Security Council discussion of children and armed conflict, a Vatican diplomat said that the Holy See “remains particularly concerned by the continued recruitment, abuse and abduction of children.”

“These grave violations rob children of their childhood, separate them from their families and communities, and expose them to violence and exploitation, resulting in lasting consequences,” Msgr. Marco Formica, interim chargé d’affaires of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, said on June 25. “Such suffering is a grave affront to the God-given dignity of every child, who deserves protection and care, and can never be considered as mere collateral damage in the prosecution of war.”

Msgr. Formica also said that the Holy See “encourages States that have not yet done so” to endorse the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas.

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