Category: 2025 News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has appointed Consolata Missionary Sister Simona Brambilla to be the first woman to lead a Vatican dicastery, naming her prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

The 59-year-old Italian sister had served as secretary of the dicastery since October 2023.

The announcement of her appointment Jan. 6 also said Pope Francis named as pro-prefect of the dicastery Spanish Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, 64, the former rector general of the Salesians.

The Vatican press office did not reply to requests to explain why the cardinal was given the title pro-prefect or how his role would be different from that of a dicastery secretary.

The dicastery, according to the apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, is called “to promote, encourage and regulate the practice of the evangelical counsels, how they are lived out in the approved forms of consecrated life and all matters concerning the life and activity of Societies of Apostolic Life throughout the Latin Church.”

According to Vatican statistics, there are close to 600,000 professed women religious in the Catholic Church. The number of religious-order priests is about 128,500 and the number of religious brothers is close to 50,000.

When a vowed member of a religious order asks to leave or is asked by the community to leave, the decision must be approved by the dicastery.

It approves the establishment of new religious orders, approves the drafting or updating of the orders’ constitutions, oversees the merger or suppression of religious orders and the formation of unions of superiors general.

Sister Brambilla succeeds 77-year-old Brazilian Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz, who has led the dicastery since 2011.

She is one of two women Pope Francis appointed in early December to be members of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, the committee that oversees the implementation of the most recent synod and prepares the next assembly.

Born in Monza, Italy, March 27, 1965, she earned a degree in nursing before entering the Consolata order in 1988. She studied psychology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, and in 1999, after taking her final vows, she went to Mozambique where she did youth ministry before returning to Rome in 2002, earning her doctorate in psychology from the Gregorian University in 2008.

She served two terms as superior of the Consolata Missionary Sisters, leading the congregation from 2011 to May 2023.

Cardinal Fernández Artime has been awaiting an assignment from the pope since August when his term as superior of the Salesians ended.

Born Aug. 21, 1960, in Gozón-Luanco, Spain, he entered the Salesians at the age of 18 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1987. He holds a degree in pastoral theology, a licentiate in philosophy and pedagogy, and, as a priest, he worked in Salesian schools both in teaching and administration.

After serving in Spain, he was appointed provincial superior of southern Argentina in 2009. Working in Buenos Aires, Cardinal-designate Fernández Artime got to know and work personally with then-Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, who would become Pope Francis four years later.

In 2014, he was elected rector major of the Salesians and the 10th successor of St. John Bosco; he was re-elected in 2020. Pope Francis made him a cardinal in September 2023 and allowed him to continue as the Salesian superior until a chapter meeting and election could be held.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Just as the star over Bethlehem called to and welcomed everyone to encounter the newborn Jesus, God today calls on the faithful to welcome everyone, creating safe, open spaces to find warmth and shelter, Pope Francis said.

The star is in the sky not to remain distant and inaccessible, he said, “but so that its light may be visible to all, that it may reach every home and overcome every barrier, bringing hope to the most remote and forgotten corners of the planet,” he said.

“It is in the sky so that it can tell everyone, by its generous light, that God does not refuse or forget anyone,” the pope said Jan. 6, celebrating Mass on the feast of the Epiphany in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“God does not reveal himself to exclusive groups or to a privileged few, but offers his companionship and guidance to those who seek him with a sincere heart,” he said in his homily. “God seeks everyone, always.”

“We do well to meditate on this today, in a world in which individuals and nations are equipped with ever more powerful means of communication, and yet seem to have become less willing to understand, accept and encounter others in their diversity!” he said.

This is why many Nativity scenes portray the Magi “with the features of all ages and races” to characterize the many different people on earth, Pope Francis said.

“God calls us to reject anything that discriminates, excludes or discards people, and instead to promote, in our communities and neighborhoods, a strong culture of welcome, in which the narrow places of fear and denunciation are replaced by open spaces of encounter, integration and sharing of life; safe spaces where everyone can find warmth and shelter,” he said.

God rejects and forgets no one because “he is a father whose greatest joy is to see his children returning home,” he said, “building bridges, clearing paths, searching for those who are lost and carrying on their shoulders those who struggle to walk so that no one is left behind and all may share in the joy of the father’s house.”

“The star speaks to us of God’s dream that men and women everywhere in all their rich variety will together form one family that can live harmoniously in prosperity and peace,” he said.

The star of Bethlehem is the light of God’s love, he said, and “it is the only light that will make us happy.”

“This light likewise calls us to give ourselves for one another, becoming, with his help, a mutual sign of hope, even in the darkest nights of our lives,” he said.

“Let us ask the Lord that we might be bright lights that can lead one another to an encounter with him,” he said.

Speaking about the current Holy Year and the Jubilee practice of making a pilgrimage, the pope said, “The light of the star invites us to undertake an interior journey that, as St. John Paul II wrote (for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000), frees our hearts from all that is not charity, in order to ‘encounter Christ fully, professing our faith in him and receiving the abundance of his mercy.'”

While Pope Francis and thousands of people were at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, thousands more lined the main boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square for the traditional, folkloric Epiphany celebration. Marching bands and people in Renaissance costumes paraded up the street behind the Three Kings on horseback.

Before reciting the Angelus at midday in the square, the pope said, “Let us ask the Virgin Mary to help us so that, imitating the shepherds and the Magi, we are able to recognize Jesus close to us, in the Eucharist, in the poor, in the abandoned, in our brothers and sisters,” he said.

ROME (CNS) – During the Holy Year 2025, Catholics are called not only to grow in the virtue of hope, but also to share it with others, said U.S. Cardinal James M. Harvey, archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

Pope Francis’ call to the whole church during the Jubilee Year is “both pressing and challenging. It is a call not to be satisfied just with having hope, but to radiate hope, to be sowers of hope,” the cardinal said at Mass Jan. 5 after opening the basilica’s Holy Door.

The golden bronze door, installed for the Holy Year 2000, was the last of the Holy Doors at the papal basilicas of Rome to be opened for pilgrims.

With the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” Pope Francis inaugurated the Holy Year Dec. 24 by opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, and he opened a Holy Door Dec. 26 at Rome’s Rebibbia prison. The archpriest of the Basilica of St. John Lateran opened the Holy Door there Dec. 29, and the coadjutor archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major opened the Holy Door at the Marian basilica Jan. 1.

In his homily at St. Paul Outside the Walls, Cardinal Harvey said hope “is certainly the most beautiful gift the church can give humanity, especially at this moment in history.”

The opening of the Holy Door, particularly during the Christmas season, he said, “marks the salvific passage opened by Christ with his incarnation, death and resurrection, calling all members of the church to reconcile with God and with their neighbor.”

Cardinal Harvey told the congregation of close to 3,000 people that the words, “Spes Unica,” meaning “our only hope,” are written at the base of the cross on top of the basilica.

During the Jubilee Year, he said, Christians in Rome and around the world are called to hold tight to the cross and set off as pilgrims, journeying together, supporting one another and sharing with all people the hope for eternal salvation accomplished in Christ.

Quoting the Letter to the Romans of the Apostle Paul, whose tomb is under the basilica’s main altar, Cardinal Harvey said his Holy Year prayer is: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

ROME (CNS) – Opening the Holy Door of the oldest Marian shrine in the Western world, Cardinal Rolando Makrickas prayed that the world would entrust itself to Mary, “the door to heaven.”

“Let us offer our prayer to the Father so that, like Mary, we may be pilgrims of hope who bring Christ into the world,” said the cardinal, coadjutor archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, before pushing open its bronze door Jan. 1.

As the bells rang out from the summit of Rome’s Esquiline hill, Cardinal Makrickas became the first pilgrim to cross the door’s threshold during the Holy Year 2025.

Among the pealing bells was one originally placed in the basilica’s bell tower — the highest point in the center of Rome — which was used to announce the Catholic Church’s first Jubilee in 1300 and had been housed in the Vatican Museums since 1884; it was returned to St. Mary Major last year ahead of the Jubilee.

Celebrating Mass on the feast of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, Cardinal Makrickas reflected on the mystery of Jesus’ incarnation in Mary’s womb, calling it the “fullness of time” as it united earthly time with eternity.

Today, the cardinal said, humanity often seeks to “perfect time” by saving or enriching it through technology, but “every effort results in its loss.”

“One cannot, however, ever feel lost, wasted or tired from time spent with God,” he said. “It will not be ideas or technology that give us comfort or hope, but the face of the Mother of God.”

Cardinal Makrickas also spoke about the significance of the relics of Jesus’ crib housed in the basilica, “the first, humble, poor home of Jesus,” from which humanity began to mark time itself.

Each pilgrim entering the basilica during the Jubilee and praying before the icon of the Marian icon “Salus Populi Romani” (“health of the Roman people”) — which Pope Francis visits before and after each of his international trips — and the Holy Crib “will not be able to leave here without a deep and particular feeling, a feeling and certainty that the heavenly Mother is with him,” the cardinal said.

“Each person will go from here with the assurance of being accompanied by the grace, the protection, the care and motherly tenderness of Mary,” he said.

St. Mary Major is especially significant to Pope Francis. He has said that he often visited the basilica when traveling to Rome as a cardinal and, breaking with recent tradition, has said he will be buried there rather than in the Vatican after his death. Six popes are buried in the basilica, and the last pope interred there was Pope Clement IX in 1669.