Month: April 2025

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis’ condition remains stable, and an X-ray showed there has been a slight improvement regarding his lingering lung infection, the Vatican press office said.

The pope continues to show improvements in his mobility and ability to speak, the press office told reporters April 1. The pope continues to receive supplemental oxygen through a nasal cannula during the day and high-flow oxygen at night when necessary. He can remove the nasal tube for “brief periods” during the day.

A significant portion of his day is spent doing physical therapy to restore the level of movement he had before he was hospitalized Feb. 14 for breathing difficulties. The pope later was diagnosed with double pneumonia, as well as viral and fungal lung infections.

While the pneumonia cleared before his release from the hospital March 23, the 88-year-old pope still has a lingering lung infection, which showed “slight improvement” in a recent X-ray, the press office said.

The pope continues to follow his prescribed drug and respiratory therapies, and, like last week, his voice is showing some improvement after being significantly weakened during his long convalescence. His blood tests this week were also in the normal range.

The pope does not receive any outside visitors, the press office said. He is assisted by his personal secretaries, there are always medical personnel on call, and his doctors visit him regularly.

The pope concelebrates Mass every morning in the small chapel near his rooms on the second floor of his residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae, and he works during the day at his desk.

The pope is in “a good mood” and welcomes the many signs of affection from the faithful, the press office added.

The Vatican planned to publish the text prepared for the pope’s weekly general audience April 2, the press office said, and the homily he has prepared for a Mass April 6 as part of the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers will be read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who already was scheduled to preside at that Mass.

The press office said it was too soon to know if the pope would appear in some way for the Sunday Angelus April 6 or have a message for the 20th anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II April 2, which was to be marked by a memorial Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica with Cardinal Pietro Parolin presiding.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has cleared the way for the canonizations of three blesseds: an Armenian Catholic archbishop martyred during the Armenian genocide, a lay catechist from Papua New Guinea killed during World War II and a Venezuelan religious sister who dedicated her life to education and the poor.

The Vatican announced March 31 that the pope authorized the decrees March 28. Among them were the approval of a miracle attributed to Blessed Carmen Rendíles Martínez and authorization for the canonizations of Blessed Ignatius Maloyan and Blessed Peter To Rot, following a vote by cardinals and bishops.

While the Vatican did not specify whether the decrees were signed during an audience, such decisions are typically formalized during a meeting between the pope and Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Pope Francis, recovering from a respiratory infection, has not been holding meetings since being discharged from the hospital March 23.

Blessed Carmen Rendíles Martínez, born in Caracas in 1903, is poised to become Venezuela’s first female saint. Orphaned by her father’s death at a young age, she grew up helping her mother support the family and became active in her parish apostolate.

She entered religious life in 1927 and eventually founded the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus of Venezuela, serving with humility in parishes and schools, especially among the poor. After a car accident in 1974, she spent her final years in a wheelchair and died in 1977. She was beatified in 2018.

Blessed Ignatius Maloyan was born April 19, 1869, in Mardin, in present-day Turkey. He entered the convent of Bzommar in Lebanon at age 14 and was ordained in 1896. Known for his pastoral care and scholarship, he was appointed archbishop of Mardin in 1911.

During the Armenian genocide, he was arrested with dozens of Christians and brought before a tribunal in 1915. When told his life could be spared in exchange for conversion to Islam, he declared, “We have never been unfaithful to the state… but if you ask us to be unfaithful to our religion, this — never, never, never!” He was tortured and executed shortly afterward. He was beatified by St. John Paul II in 2001.

Blessed Peter To Rot, born in 1912 in Rakunai, Papua New Guinea, was a lay catechist, husband and father known for his deep faith and dedication to the sacraments.

During the Japanese occupation in World War II, he continued his ministry despite growing restrictions and openly opposed polygamy, which had been tolerated by the occupiers. He was arrested in 1945, and later that year was killed by lethal injection while in prison. He was beatified by St. John Paul II during a 1995 visit to Papua New Guinea.

In March 2024, Pope Francis approved a request from the bishops of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to dispense with the requirement of a miracle for Blessed Peter’s canonization, citing cultural and documentation challenges. His canonization will make him the first saint of Papua New Guinea.

A date for the canonizations of the three blesseds had not yet been announced.

Pope Francis also approved decrees recognizing:

— A miracle attributed to Venerable Carmelo De Palma, a diocesan priest from Bari, Italy, born in 1876 and known for his deep prayer life, devotion to the Eucharist and tireless ministry as a confessor and spiritual director. He died in 1961, and the approved miracle clears the way for his beatification.

— The heroic virtues of Father José Antônio Maria Ibiapina, a 19th-century Brazilian priest known for his transition from a career as a lawyer, judge and congressman to a life of priestly service among the poor. Born in 1806, he was ordained in 1853 and became known as a “pilgrim of charity” for founding churches, hospitals, orphanages and schools across northeastern Brazil. He died in 1883.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – God’s forgiveness is the source of hope for the faithful, Pope Francis wrote.

“Indeed, with his mercy, God transforms us inwardly, he changes our heart,” he said in a message to priests celebrating the Jubilee of the Missionaries of Mercy in Rome.

“We can always count on him in any situation. God made himself man to reveal to the world that he never abandons us,” the pope’s message said.

The Vatican released the pope’s message to the priests, which was read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section for new evangelization and the chief organizer of the Holy Year 2025, during a March 29 meeting and training session.

The Jubilee celebration, March 28-30, had been scheduled to include a meeting with Pope Francis March 29 and Mass the next day. However, the pope was not present at those events since doctors recommended he rest for two months after returning to the Vatican from Gemelli hospital March 23 for double pneumonia.

Pope Francis instituted the “missionaries of mercy” apostolate in 2015 for the special mission of preaching about God’s mercy and, especially, to encourage Catholics to rediscover the grace of the sacrament of reconciliation. More than 1,100 priests were chosen by the Vatican and commissioned during the Holy Year of Mercy, and today there are more than 1,200 missionaries of mercy on all five continents.

In his message, dated March 19, the pope thanked the priests because they “bear witness to the paternal face of God, infinitely great in love, who calls everyone to conversion and renews us always with his forgiveness.”

“Conversion and forgiveness are the two gentle touches with which the Lord dries every tear from our eyes; they are the hands with which the church embraces us sinners; they are the feet on which we walk in our earthly pilgrimage,” the pope wrote.

Pope Francis encouraged the priests in their ministry as confessors to be “attentive in listening, ready to welcome and constant in accompanying those who wish to renew their own lives and return to the Lord.”

About 500 missionaries of mercy registered for the pilgrimage to Rome, which included a penitential liturgy at the Rome Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle March 28 and a Mass celebrated there by Archbishop Fisichella on Sunday.

Msgr. Graham Bell, undersecretary of the dicastery’s section for new evangelization, led the liturgy March 28, which was part of the worldwide Lenten prayer and penance initiative, “24 Hours for the Lord.” Begun by the pope in 2014, it invites at least one Catholic church in every diocese to be open all night — or at least for extended hours — for Eucharistic adoration and confession.

In addition to the few wooden confessionals in the 17th-century basilica, more than a dozen areas in different corners and pews were available for confession in several languages. Priests took turns hearing each other’s confessions before dedicating themselves to hearing confessions from other penitents or to silent prayer.

Among the hundreds attending were some missionaries of mercy from the United States who spoke with Catholic News Service March 28.

Father Eloy Rojas, originally from Venezuela, is a hospital chaplain in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, where, he said, he brings “hope and love to the sick and dying,” especially those nearing the end of their life on earth.

As a missionary of mercy, he is also bringing hope to those seeking “new life” through confession by communicating and connecting with penitents “with empathy, love and compassion,” he said.

Father Bernard Olszewski said their role is to be mediators between the penitent and the merciful face of God.

Instead of a “duel,” he said, that encounter must be “like a duet, a dance that is learned.” They help others “learn the steps, to dance with God, and to rediscover that relationship with God which may have been lost.”

Their mission is to reassure the repentant that they can leave the confessional “a new person,” transformed with the capacity to do good, to be better and to be the person God calls them to be,” he said. “There is nothing more powerful than that.”

While the pope granted the missionaries the faculties to forgive certain sins in cases otherwise reserved to the Holy See, the priest said, “we’re not super confessors.”

They were commissioned “to exemplify that loving attitude, that warm embrace that God offers to us each and every day, but some of us don’t have the opportunity to recognize or to accept it,” he said.

Pope Francis “wants no obstacle between the penitent and the forgiveness,” Father Olszewski said, because very often it is those grave sins that maintain “that wall, which do not allow the penitents to access immediately and definitively the forgiveness of God.”

Msgr. Ted Bertagni said God’s mercy is the path to hope. “You only have hope if you can experience that mercy.”

When someone “comes to reconciliation, they want to be renewed, they want to be restored, they want to get back into the grace with God” to “build up their faith again,” he said. This is why confession is “a very uplifting thing for the priest as well as for the penitents.”

“I think people don’t go to reconciliation that often simply because … they’re afraid that they’ll be judged,” Msgr. Bertagni said.

When the faithful come for reconciliation, he said, the priest is “there to be open arms,” to unconditionally love them “as the father unconditionally loves and forgives you.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – A coalition of pro-life groups went to the U.S. Capitol March 27 to urge Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, shortly before the Supreme Court is set to consider a case concerning that funding.

The high court is scheduled to hear oral argument in Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic on April 2, regarding South Carolina’s attempt to prevent Planned Parenthood from participating in its Medicaid health program. The case could be a major test of the nation’s largest abortion provider’s ability to use public funds in states that have restricted abortion.

Supporters of allowing Planned Parenthood to receive Medicaid funds point to that group’s involvement in cancer screening and prevention services — such as pap tests and HPV vaccinations — but critics argue the funds are fungible and could be used to facilitate abortion.

Efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of public funds are sometimes referred to as “defunding.”

At the March 27 event near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, pro-life groups urged lawmakers to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s federal funding through the budget reconciliation process.

“There’s been a lot of conversation since Dobbs — since we together did a historic act in building a movement that would overturn Roe v. Wade — a lot of discussion about whether we were unified as a movement or not,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which works to elect pro-life candidates to public office.

“And I can tell you one thing, this movement is completely unified in its first priority, and that is to defund big abortion in this reconciliation bill,” she said.

Reconciliation is a legislative procedure that would allow the Republican majority to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass a budget resolution with a simple majority — instead of needing 60 votes first to end debate — as long as both chambers agree to, or reconcile, their versions of such legislation.

“We have a strong pro-life majority in the Senate; we have a slim, but strong pro-life majority in the House, and we’re ready to do it,” Dannenfelser said.

But a path to doing so was not yet clear. Republicans still face several hurdles on other issues as they aim to pass Trump’s multi-trillion dollar agenda, including still-conflicting versions of the budget framework passed by each chamber.

Multiple members of Congress who spoke at the event argued Trump has frozen federal funding for Planned Parenthood, appearing to reference a report by The Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration plans to freeze $27.5 million in federal family-planning grants to groups including Planned Parenthood as part of its probe into diversity, equity and inclusion programs, sometimes referred to as DEI, within federal agencies.

But those Title X funds would represent just a fraction of the taxpayer funds Planned Parenthood receives annually. The group’s most recent annual report shows it received almost $700 million in taxpayer funds — in the form of government health services reimbursements and grants — for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, told OSV News that the frozen Title X grants are “a good sign.”

“I think, for me, it shows us that our messaging is resonating to the administration,” she said.

“So I think it’s a good sign,” Hawkins added. “But it’s a first step – very much still a very first step – and there’s a lot we need to do.”

At the event, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a Catholic lawmaker and co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, said that reconciliation legislation “offers an important opportunity to stop funding abortion purveyors like Planned Parenthood.”

“This is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss,” he said.

Jennie Bradley Lichter, president of the March for Life, pointed to recent New York Times reporting about botched abortions of unborn children, and inadequately trained staff at some Planned Parenthood clinics. She argued those problems showed the group should not be receiving taxpayer funds.

“It sure seems to me like the gig is finally up,” she said.