March for Life participants demonstrate near Union Station in Washington Jan. 29, 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)

WASHINGTON (CNS) – The 49th annual national March for Life — with a rally on the National Mall and march to the Supreme Court Jan. 21 – will go on as scheduled this year amid a surge in the omicron variant in the nation’s capital.

Outdoor events are not affected by the District of Columbia’s vaccine mandate for indoor gatherings, but participants should expect to wear face masks. Indoor events associated with the annual march will have to comply with city COVID-19 restrictions.

The national Pro-Life Summit, sponsored by Students for Life, is also scheduled to take place Jan. 22 at Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel. The event will feature former Vice President Mike Pence as its keynote speaker. Pence has been a frequent March for Life speaker, and in 2020 he introduced President Donald Trump at the event’s rally.

The March for Life has canceled its three-day Pro-Life Expo and is combining two planned Capitol Hill 101 panel discussions Jan. 20 into a single event. The organization is still holding its annual Rose Dinner Gala.

Participants who are 12 and older attending the panel discussion or dinner will have to provide proof of receiving one COVID-19 vaccination by Jan. 15, or, if they are seeking a medical or religious exemption, they must have proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 24 hours of the event.

The Pro-Life summit is also requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination following the city’s regulations. The summit, which in previous years has drawn more than 2,000 high school and college students, notes on its website that it is accepting vaccine exemptions “for a strongly (or sincerely) held religious belief … in writing or orally” and it is also requiring masks at all events.

March for Life never projects attendance figures, but an informal survey by Catholic News Service of a few groups planning to attend this year’s march indicates that the turnout may approach pre-pandemic levels.

Last year’s march was turned into a virtual event due to the pandemic and the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Only an invited group of 80, joined midway by more than 100 others, marched from the nearby Museum of the Bible to just behind the Supreme Court. It was the first outdoor event in Washington since the Capitol violence, with both the Capitol and Supreme Court surrounded by high fences.

In previous years, total attendance for the rally and march up Constitution Avenue was estimated to be as high as 100,000.

“We have nearly 250 students and faculty headed to D.C.,” said Ed Konieczka, assistant director of university ministry at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. “That is five full buses – our largest contingent since leading the march in 2017.”

A similar number was estimated by organizers of the bus caravan for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana.

However, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, decided in December 2021 that the COVID-19 risk was too high to sponsor a bus caravan.

Bevin Kennedy, diocesan secretary for communications, cited “the difficulty of monitoring and mitigating the COVID risk with a group of over 100 participants.”

The march is held annually on a date nearest the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion.

The first march was held Jan. 22, 1974, organized by Nellie Gray, a government lawyer, and the Knights of Columbus. The idea was to form a “circle of life” around the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Jeanne Mancini assumed leadership of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund after Gray died in 2012.

This year’s theme is “Equality Begins in the Womb.” The rally is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. with a performance by singer Matthew West. The march starts at 1:15 p.m. after the political speeches are completed.

There is considerable anticipation that this year’s march could be the last one with the Roe decision hanging in the balance.

Later this year, the Supreme Court will announce its decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an appeal by Mississippi to remove a lower court’s injunction on its law banning most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.

If the court rules in favor of the state law, it will effectively overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion laws back to the states.

Msgr. Salvatore A. Criscuolo is seen in this undated photo. The retired priest was former pastor of St. Patrick Church in Washington and has been a chaplain to the Metropolitan Police Department for 36 years. (CNS photo/courtesy Metropolitan Police Department) 

A year since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Msgr. Salvatore A. Criscuolo continues to see the physical pain and mental stress among officers of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.

A volunteer chaplain serving the department for 36 years, Msgr. Criscuolo, 72, regularly hits the streets, where he hears from officers who continue to struggle having fought with fellow Americans bent on blocking the peaceful transition of the presidency.

“Many officers are still not able to get back to work,” he told Catholic News Service.

Every chance he gets, Msgr. Criscuolo takes to the streets to talk with officers. At times he’ll ride a police motorcycle. Most of the time he seeks out officers on the beat to see how they are doing, whether they were involved in the Capitol riot or not. They talk about family, their careers and their daily struggles.

Msgr. Criscuolo said he was shaken by the violence as well.

He recalled being with officers on Pennsylvania Avenue when demonstrators, largely supporters of former President Donald Trump, passed by.

“Then everything broke loose,” he said.

The priest told the officers he wanted to join them at the Capitol. But they told him to return to his residence at nearby St. Patrick Church, where he retired as pastor in 2019, so he would be safe.

At the church, about a mile and a half from the Capitol, Msgr. Criscuolo turned on his police scanner. “You could hear the intensity and the fear of the officers that day,” he said.

The priest called the events of the day “frightening.”

“Unless you were there and unless you know them (the officers), you can’t imagine what they experienced. It was a six-hour battle. It was a war against other Americans, which is even more frightening.”

The next morning, Msgr. Criscuolo returned to the streets to be with the officers. He met with those who were on duty, working 12- to 16-hour shifts.

“I went out there to talk with them to see how they were doing, to listen to their stories. They were beaten up. More so emotionally, just beaten up. A couple of them actually went to confession the day after, which is not unusual after an event like this,” he said.

In the year since the violence that postponed, but did not derail, congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election as the country’s second Catholic president, Msgr. Criscuolo said he has seen a deeper resolve among police officers to put their lives on the line to preserve democracy.

“I’ll be out there tomorrow (Jan. 6),” he said. “I’ll go the various districts. I’ll go to talk.”

Meanwhile, the pastor of St. Joseph Church on Capitol Hill told CNS Jan. 5 that he did not foresee a return of violence on the one-year anniversary of the insurrection.

Father William Gurnee, a former congressional staff member, said the events of that day were disconcerting. The parish is just three blocks northeast of the Capitol.

“We’re a town used to protests, used to marches, so it doesn’t faze us. But the mood of the country was somewhat on edge and that was reflected on Capitol Hill,” he said.

The parish always has welcomed congressional staffers — holding different political philosophies — to Mass. Politics has never interfered in the ministries of the parish, Father Gurnee said.

“We have Democrats. We have Republicans. We have independents. Everybody is welcome at St. Joseph’s. We’re neighbors,” he said.

Despite holding such sentiments, Father Gurnee said he has noticed a gradual decline in the sense of community in the neighborhood. He is seeing fewer people relocating their families, leading to few encounters outside of the parish — such as at schools where kids would be enrolled or at a local grocery store.

“They’re not having the opportunity to know each other as people,” he said.

In response, Father Gurnee tries to connect newcomers in other ways. When someone comes to Mass and introduces himself or herself, he will point out others in a similar situation. “It’s one of my big jobs particularly,” he said.

More importantly, he said, is keeping the focus on Jesus and letting people know he and the parish at large are there to support them.

“As a former congressional staffer, I was taught that these members of Congress have so many people in their face asking for stuff,” Father Gurnee said. “I make it very clear that I’m here to serve them, not to ask for something.”

Elsewhere, Franciscan Action Network and Faithful Democracy were hosting an online interfaith prayer service the evening of Jan. 5 to mark the anniversary of events at the Capitol.

Patrick Carolan, Catholic outreach director for Vote Common Good, said the prayer service will allow participants the opportunity to consider their role in responding to the violence and how they may feel called to move forward. Participants also will be invited to fast on Jan. 6.

In a post on Franciscan Action Network’s “Acting Franciscan” blog, Carolan and Brian McLaren, a Protestant theologian, author and social justice activist, called on people of faith, and ministers in particular, to end their support of efforts to thwart democracy and discontinue espousing the falsehood that Trump actually won the presidency in 2020.

“Every bishop, priest, and minister who is not part of the problem needs to become part of the solution by speaking out with conviction against current attempts to sabotage our elections and destroy our democracy,” they wrote. “And the rest of us need to join our voices with theirs and come together to heal a divided nation as we hold accountable those who continue efforts to destroy it.”

They invited people to spend Jan. 6 registering voters and to join one of the many candlelight vigils nationwide that will serve to send “a unified demand to Congress” to enact stronger voting rights and democracy protections in federal law.

EMMITSBURG, Md. (CNS) — The National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg is launching a series of initiatives to expand awareness of first U.S.-born saint, it announced Jan. 4, on the saint’s feast day.

The initiatives build on the momentum of a yearlong commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the saint’s death.

“Underlying all that we do at the shrine is the strong belief that Mother Seton does not belong to the past. She belongs to all of us today and all those in the future who seek greater meaning in their lives and a friend in heaven,” said Rob Judge, executive director of the shrine.

The first essay by Catholic poet Paul Mariani describes the sensations of a concerto and the profound feelings it elicits through the eyes of Thomas Merton and Mother Seton.

Other essays will highlight the poet and Catholic convert Denise Levertov and former actress Mother Dolores Hart.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley, the future Mother Seton and future saint, was 19 when she married William Magee Seton, 25, a scion of a wealthy New York family and a prosperous young businessman. The couple had five children. William died in 1803 in Italy, and two years later Elizabeth became a Catholic. In 1809, she founded the U.S. Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Md. (CNS photo/The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton)

It will also resume its Seeds of Hope retreats and will add a prepared home retreat based on St. Elizabeth Seton’s writings. The in-person retreat program is described as the only one in the U.S. geared primarily to those on the margins of society.

The at-home retreat, scheduled to begin during the Easter season, is particularly aimed to those struggling with anxiety as a means to build faith and resiliency in a time of uncertainty.

The shrine has developed an email prayer program called: “Lift Up My Soul: 15 Days of Prayer with Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton” using the writings of Mother Seton to help readers integrate themes of the saint’s faith into daily life. The program’s website page can be found here: https://setonshrine.org/lift-up-my-soul-15-days-of-prayer-mother-seton/.

The shrine also plans to break ground this summer on its work of a fully renovated and expanded museum and visitor center highlighting the life and legacy of Mother Seton and the sisters who took her message to the world. Funds for this effort are from the shrine’s capital campaign that is close to reaching its $7 million goal.

Information about the initiatives can be found at www.setonshrine.org.

Also on Jan. 4, the shrine also released its latest video in the “Seeker to Saint” series, which tells the unique American story of St. Elizabeth Seton. The newest video, “Finding Mary,” shows how the saint’s devotion to Mary developed and then helped her through many trials.

 

January 3, 2022

His Excellency, Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, announces the following appointments:

Clergy Assignments:

 Rev. Brian J.W. Clarke, to Administrator pro tem, Holy Rosary Parish, Hazleton, and Holy Name of Jesus, West Hazleton, effective immediately until February 1, 2022.  Father Clarke will continue to serve as Pastor of Most Holy Trinity Parish, Cresco.

 Rev. Kenneth M. Seegar, from Pastor, Saint Andre Bessette Parish, Wilkes-Barre, to Pastor, Holy Rosary Parish, Hazleton, and Holy Name of Jesus Parish, West Hazleton, effective February 1, 2022.

Rev. Seth D. Wasnock, to Administrator, pro tem, Saint Andre Bessette Parish, Wilkes Barre, effective February 1, 2022.  Father Wasnock will continue to serve as Pastor, Saint Maria Goretti Parish, Laflin,

Pope Francis arrives in procession to celebrate Mass marking the feast of Mary, Mother of God, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Jan. 1, 2022. In the foreground are young people dressed as the Magi. (CNS photo/Romano Siciliani, pool)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – As Catholics begin a new year contemplating the motherhood of Mary, they should be inspired not to let problems weaken their faith or prevent them from helping others grow, Pope Francis said.

“In her heart, in her prayer,” he said, Mary “binds together the beautiful things and the unpleasant things,” and learns to discern God’s plan in them.

Pope Francis celebrated Mass Jan. 1, the feast of Mary, Mother of God, and World Peace Day, in St. Peter’s Basilica and then led the recitation of the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square with thousands of people, including dozens who held signs with the names of countries at war.

In his homily at the Mass, Pope Francis pleaded for an end to violence against women.

“Enough,” he said. “To hurt a woman is to insult God, who from a woman took on our humanity.”

And, in his Angelus address, Pope Francis insisted peace is a gift from God that requires human action.

“We can truly build peace only if we have peace in our hearts, only if we receive it from the prince of peace,” he said. “But peace is also our commitment: it asks us to take the first step, it demands concrete actions. It is built by being attentive to the least, by promoting justice, with the courage to forgive, thus extinguishing the fire of hatred.”

Peace also requires “a positive outlook as well, one that always sees, in the church as well as in society, not the evil that divides us, but the good that unites us,” the pope said. “Getting depressed or complaining is useless. We need to roll up our sleeves to build peace.”

Pope Francis said he could not look at Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms without thinking of “young mothers and their children fleeing wars and famine or waiting in refugee camps. And there are many of them.”

“Contemplating Mary who lays Jesus in the manger, making him available to everyone, let’s remember that the world can change, and everyone’s life can improve only if we make ourselves available to others, without expecting them to begin,” he said. “If we become artisans of fraternity, we will be able to mend the threads of a world torn apart by war and violence.”

In his homily earlier at the Mass, Pope Francis asked people to consider what it must have been like for Mary, who had been told by the angel that her son would be great, to give birth in an animals’ stall and to lay her baby in a manger instead of a cradle.

“His poverty is good news for everyone, especially the marginalized, the rejected and those who do not count in the eyes of the world,” the pope said. “For that is how God comes: not on a fast track and lacking even a cradle! That is what is beautiful about seeing him there, laid in a manger.”

But for Mary, a mother, it must have been painful to see her son in such poverty, the pope said.

Pope Francis contrasted the amazement and enthusiasm of the shepherds with the quiet, pensive reaction of Mary.

“The shepherds tell everyone about what they had seen,” he said. “The story told by the shepherds, and their own amazement, remind us of the beginnings of faith, when everything seems easy and straightforward.”

“Mary’s pensiveness, on the other hand, is the expression of a mature, adult faith,” he said. Hers is “not a newborn faith, but a faith that now gives birth. For spiritual fruitfulness is born of trials and testing.”

Mary “gives God to the world” in a dark stable in Bethlehem, he said. “Others, before the scandal of the manger, might feel deeply troubled. She does not: she keeps those things, pondering them in her heart.”

And through faith, he said, “in her mother’s heart, Mary comes to realize that the glory of the Most High appears in humility; she welcomes the plan of salvation whereby God must lie in a manger. She sees the divine child frail and shivering, and she accepts the wondrous divine interplay between grandeur and littleness.”

Mary, like most mothers, knew how “to hold together the various threads of life,” the glorious and the worrisome, the pope said. “We need such people, capable of weaving the threads of communion in place of the barbed wire of conflict and division.”

Departing from his prepared text, Pope Francis said the church itself is “mother and woman,” and while women could and should have greater positions in the church, they are “secondary” to the role all Catholic women have of giving life, including figuratively, and in combining “dreams and aspirations with concrete reality, without drifting into abstraction and sterile pragmatism.”

“At the beginning of the New Year,” he said, “let us place ourselves under the protection of this woman, the mother of God, who is also our mother. May she help us to keep and ponder all things, unafraid of trials and with the joyful certainty that the Lord is faithful and can transform every cross into a resurrection.”

Written by: Sister Josephine Garrett is a Sister of the Holy Family of Nazareth and a licensed counselor

 

New Year’s celebrations can be a mixed experience.

On one hand, the holidays have brought us opportunities to be renewed in our relationships with family and friends. On the other hand, secular media can present this sort of “new year, new you” approach that may not really jive with our actual experiences.

We can feel this pressure for Jan. 1 to be a miraculous reset; all the struggles and sufferings of the previous year automatically at midnight lose their impact in our lives.

As we head into 2022, I wonder if this pressure is even more profound. We are carrying large individual and communal burdens into the new year.

How do we remain open to God’s desire to make all things new and the inherent invitation in a new year to begin anew, and also be realistic about the fact that at the stroke of midnight our struggles will not automatically diminish?

I believe the answer is by looking to the struggles, sufferings and heavy burdens that we are carrying with us over the finish line of 2021 and finding in them God’s invitation.

Some of us are entering 2022 as COVID-19 long-haulers. Some of us are entering 2022 with more pronounced mental health struggles than before. Some of us need to be renewed in our physical health as our bodies manifest the stresses of the past two years.

Some of us are carrying the painful burdens connected to being Black or brown, American and Catholic, pains that have only increased over the past two years. Some of us, after the pandemic, have reprioritized family life.

Some of us have become disillusioned with the world of “Catholic fame” and this grace-filled disillusionment has allowed us to set our sights back on the primacy of the present moment and context in which we find ourselves as the stuff of our sanctification and having the authority to bring about God’s justice, love and peace.

Some of us have reached new horizons in our prayer and relationship with God, yet some of us have strayed from prayer and into a life of subtle pride and self-sufficiency, which is the fruit of a life lacking prayer.

Is there a thematic invitation to not only begin anew but strive for the newness that is the promise of the kingdom contained in all that we will carry with us into the new year?

I believe there is. We sometimes struggle with the two-world stance that is required of a Catholic. Catholics must stand with a foot in the temporal world and with a foot in eternity.

We cannot place both our feet in whatever matter has garnered our attention over the past two years; be it the pandemic, cries for justice, political strife, family dynamics or whatever it has been for you. We will do ourselves a grave injustice.

If we are to begin anew this year, we must take a proper stance in all that we are facing as individuals and as a community of God’s children.

One foot in the world, which is full of brokenness, and one in eternity, which is the source of constant conversion and renewal, even as we struggle. This renewal is always about bringing about the family of God.

For example, what did the pandemic prove to us? That we are painfully interconnected. As Pope Benedict XVI once said, “No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.”

Likewise, cries for social justice over the past two years have been filled with the same message.

Black or brown skin, and the ethnicities and heritages that are paired with that skin, does not lessen the right of the individual to be a full heir of the kingdom of God and to proclaim to the church, as “servant of God” Sister Thea Bowman once said, “I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become.”

In humility, I would add; because this is my family; this church is as much my family as the next person’s. We could take many other matters we will carry across the line from 2021 to 2022, and upon reflection, find at their root a matter of the family of God.

Whatever it is you are called to be renewed in with this coming year — physically, mentally or spiritually — let it be for and about encounter. To aid you in increasing your capacity to show up in the family of God, bringing your whole self as a gift to the family of God, come what may; in the midst of struggles and also joys.

We know that it is only through a sincere gift of ourselves that we will know ourselves, and it is only in this dimension of gift, as Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron once called it, that the family of God, which we long for, will be built up and realized.

The way we begin anew is to, in all things, in all our resolutions, keep our eyes fixed on the glory of the coming of the Lord and the building up of God’s family in Christ.

Pope Francis greets a family during a meeting with the poor at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels in Assisi, Italy, Nov. 12, 2021. During his Dec. 26 Angelus, the pope said as a “Christmas gift” he had written a letter to families. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on families, but with extra patience and faith, bonds can grow stronger, Pope Francis wrote in a letter released on the feast of the Holy Family.

“Marriage, as a vocation, calls you to steer a tiny boat — wave-tossed yet sturdy, thanks to the reality of the sacrament — across a sometimes stormy sea,” he told couples in the letter published Dec. 26.

Like the disciples who were foundering on the Sea of Galilee, couples must keep their eyes fixed on Jesus, he said. “Only in this way, will you find peace, overcome conflicts and discover solutions to many of your problems. Those problems, of course, will not disappear, but you will be able to see them from a different perspective.”

Reciting the midday Angelus prayer with visitors in St. Peter’s Square Dec. 26, Pope Francis said he had written the letter as a “Christmas gift” to married couples during the celebration of the “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year, a year dedicated to re-reading his 2016 exhortation on marriage and family life.

In his Angelus talk, the pope commented on the day’s Gospel reading about a 12-year-old Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem and making Mary and Joseph frantic.

“In the Gospel, we see that even in the Holy Family things did not all go well: There were unexpected problems, anxiety, suffering. The Holy Family of holy cards does not exist,” he said.

When Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple and ask him why he worried them so, he tells them, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Mary and Joseph do not understand, the pope said. “They need time to learn to know their son. That’s the way it is with us as well: Each day, a family needs to learn how to listen to each other to understand each other, to walk together, to face conflicts and difficulties.”

In his letter to families, like in “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis paid tribute to the strength and tenacity of couples as they face real difficulties together on the journey of life.

Like Abraham, called by God to set out to an unknown land, he wrote, with the pandemic “we, too, have experienced uncertainty, loneliness, the loss of loved ones; we, too, have been forced to leave behind our certainties, our ‘comfort zones,’ our familiar ways of doing things and our ambitions, and to work for the welfare of our families and that of society as a whole, which also depends on us and our actions.”

The pandemic lockdowns, quarantines and periods of isolation “meant that there was more time to be together, and this proved a unique opportunity for strengthening communication within families,” the pope said. But that also demanded patience.

“It is not easy to be together all day long, when everyone has to work, study, recreate and rest in the same house,” he said.

When nerves are frazzled, the pope said, try to put the needs of others first and re-read the hymn to love from 1 Corinthians 13 “so that it can inspire your decisions and your actions” and “the time you spend together, far from being a penance, will be become a refuge amid the storms.”

Pope Francis also told married couples, “Don’t be ashamed to kneel together before Jesus in the Eucharist, in order to find a few moments of peace and to look at each other with tenderness and goodness.”

And, for couples whose problems were exacerbated by the pandemic and led to a breakup, Pope Francis said, “I would like them, too, to sense my closeness and my affection.”

But he urged them to be civil to one another, especially in front of their children so that the pain of seeing their parents separate is not made worse by seeing them constantly fighting.

“Children are always a gift,” the pope wrote. “They are thirsty for love, gratitude, esteem and trust.”

Parents must pass on to their children “the joy of realizing that they are God’s children, children of a Father who has always loved them tenderly and who takes them by the hand each new day,” he said. “As they come to know this, your children will grow in faith and trust in God.”

Addressing engaged couples, Pope Francis said he knows the pandemic has been especially hard for those trying to plan a future together.

“In your journey toward marriage,” he told them, “always trust in God’s providence, however limited your means, since at times, difficulties can bring out resources we did not even think we had. Do not hesitate to rely on your families and friends, on the ecclesial community, on your parish, to help you prepare for marriage and family life by learning from those who have already advanced along the path on which you are now setting out.”

The 85-year-old pope also expressed his affection to grandparents, especially those who are feeling isolated or alone. He urged families to make greater efforts to be with them or at least be in touch with them.

MILFORD – Students in the Children’s Faith Formation Program at Saint Patrick Parish in Milford participated in a colorful pageant retelling the Nativity Story, from Jesus’ birth to the Visitation of the Magi.

The event took place on Christmas Eve at the Pike County parish.

Directed by Laurie Barcia, who is also a fifth grade catechist in the Children’s Faith Formation Program, the pageant featured Rachel Swinton and Angelica Barcia as narrators.

Shown in the above photo are, left to right: Joseph Barcia, Paul Barcia, Cassidy Lentoni, Joellen Nielsen, and Dominic Lake.

Pope Francis carries a figurine of the baby Jesus at the conclusion of Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 24, 2021. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

The celebration of Christmas serves as a reminder that God did not reveal his greatness in a grand spectacle, but rather in the “littleness” of a poor, vulnerable child born in a stable in Bethlehem, Pope Francis said.

“Let us be amazed by this scandalous truth,” the pope said in his homily Dec. 24 as he celebrated the nighttime liturgy.

“The one who embraces the universe needs to be held in another’s arms. The one who created the sun needs to be warmed. Tenderness incarnate needs to be coddled. Infinite love has a tiny heart that beats softly,” he said.

The nighttime Mass, which is often referred to as “midnight Mass,” has not been celebrated at midnight at the Vatican since 2009. However, while Italy no longer has a 10 p.m. curfew in force as part of its measures to stem the spread of COVID-19, Pope Francis celebrated the “Christmas Mass at Night” at 7:30 p.m., as he did in 2020.

The pope made his way toward the main altar, processing with hundreds of concelebrants as the sounds of the Christmas hymn, “Noel,” echoed in the basilica.

After the procession, the Mass began with the Christmas proclamation, or “kalenda,”  of Jesus’ birth. The pope then lifted a cloth, revealing a life-sized statue of baby Jesus, which he reverently kissed and blessed with incense.

As the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica rang loudly announcing the birth of Christ, several children made their way to the statue of baby Jesus, placing white flowers around the crib.

In his homily, the pope began by reflecting on the angel’s announcement of Christ’s birth to shepherds and that the sign they were given was to look for “a child, a baby lying in the dire poverty of a manger.”

Notably, he said, the Gospel reading begins by presenting “the first emperor in all his grandeur,” Caesar Augustus, who ordered a census of the whole world. It then immediately recounts the birth of Jesus who was “wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds standing by.”

“That is where God is, in littleness. This is the message: God does not rise up in grandeur, but lowers himself into littleness. Littleness is the path that he chose to draw near to us, to touch our hearts, to save us and to bring us back to what really matters,” the pope said.

On Christmas, he added, “all is turned upside down: God comes into the world in littleness. His grandeur appears in littleness.”

Pope Francis urged Christians to reflect on how God came into the world and ask themselves if they can “accept God’s way of doing things.” While some “continue to seek grandeur, even in his name,” God “does not seek power and might; he asks for tender love and interior littleness.”

“This is what we should ask Jesus for at Christmas: the grace of littleness,” the pope said. “Jesus asks us to rediscover and value the little things in life. If he is present there, what else do we need? Let us stop pining for a grandeur that is not ours to have. Let us put aside our complaints and our gloomy faces and the greed that never satisfies!”

Continuing his homily, the pope also encouraged those who feel overwhelmed “by the darkness of night” and surrounded “by cold indifference” that can make them feel worthless and unloved.

“Tonight, God answers back,” he said. “Tonight, he tells you: ‘I love you just as you are. Your littleness does not frighten me, your failings do not trouble me. I became little for your sake. To be your God, I became your brother.'”

He also said that accepting the grace of littleness also means embracing Jesus in the poor and less fortunate because they are the “most like Jesus, who was born in poverty.”

The poor, he continued, are not only the ones chosen by God to be present at the birth of his son, but who also lived near Christ’s birthplace.

“That is where Jesus is born,” the pope said. He “is close to them, close to the forgotten ones of the peripheries. He comes where human dignity is put to the test. He comes to ennoble the excluded, and he first reveals himself to them: not to educated and important people, but to poor working people.”

However, he noted, not only the poor were present but also the rich, personified in the presence of the Magi.

“In Bethlehem, rich and poor come together, those who worship, like the Magi, and those who work, like the shepherds. Everything is unified when Jesus is at the center: not our ideas about Jesus, but Jesus himself, the living one,” he said.

Pope Francis called on Christians to return to the origins of faith where “the shepherds and Magi are joined in a fraternity beyond all labels and classifications.”

“Let us look at the Magi who make their pilgrim way, and as a synodal church, a journeying church, let us go to Bethlehem, where God is in man and man in God,” the pope said.

“May God enable us to be a worshipping, poor and fraternal church. That is what is essential. Let us go back to Bethlehem,” he said.

Debris surrounds a destroyed home in Mayfield, Ky., Dec. 11, 2021, after a devastating tornado ripped through the town. More than 30 tornadoes were reported across six states late Dec. 10, and early Dec. 11, killing dozens of people and leaving a trail of devastation. (CNS photo/Cheney Orr, Reuters)

Right up through December, extreme weather events and natural disasters of 2021 continued to upend local communities and set agendas for domestic and overseas emergency response efforts at major Catholic aid organizations.

“We had about 85 disasters,” in the United States this past year, said Kim Burgo, vice president for disaster operations for Catholic Charities USA.

“Charities agencies don’t just respond to a disaster because it was declared so by the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” she said, noting that its agencies also respond to local events, like floods, which impact local communities.

Burgo is part of a staff of four monitoring disasters and helping collaborate with local affiliates wherever possible. She said the West Coast wildfires and major storms such as Hurricane Ida were some of the top disaster priorities of the past year, along with floods, tornados and winter storms in the Midwest and the South.

“We do not have unlimited resources, so we have to be careful with the funds we have, but we don’t turn away any disaster that a (local) agency has, and even the smallest ones are important to the local community,” Burgo told Catholic News Service.

Catholic Charities USA supports the local disaster response through financial assistance, technical support and, in the case of a late August landfall of Hurricane Ida in Louisiana, virtual deployment of case managers as a coronavirus surge was complicating logistics.

For Hurricane Ida, Catholic Charities estimates that local agencies assisted 10,000 families through gift cards and meals and over a million pounds of goods.

“We have a ton of relationships with the other disaster organizations which provide different services as well,” Burgo said, noting that the hurricane drew an immediate and sustained response.

Often the response at the local level can last five to seven years, and there are many places in the country that have preexisting economic challenges, “so you end up with a bad hurricane or tornado in a place where they never really recover before the next one comes, and you end up with a constant state of recovery,” she said.

One unusual addition for the 2021 history books was the deadly Surfside condominium collapse near Miami in late June. The 12-story Champlain Towers residential collapse resulted in 98 deaths. It also left many survivors displaced in the subsequent months.

“That was an absolute tragedy, and Catholic Charities was there responding with mental health needs, helping people rebuild their lives and joining a consortium of assistance to help people get their medications and funeral expenses for loved ones met through case management, ” Burgo said.

In states of Washington, Oregon, and California, Catholic Charities is still managing wildfire recovery efforts stemming from 2018 incidents, while new wildfires threatened those same states.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 also prompted disaster response planners to think outside the box, realizing that they couldn’t rely on the model of placing survivors in massive shelters. Instead, they moved to putting fewer people in more shelters or even hotel rooms.

Also, people seeking assistance were not able to walk into Charities outreach offices due to social distancing, so there was a continued move toward distribution sites, drive by distributions and virtual case management programming.

And the second year of the pandemic continued to take an economic toll on communities, as people lost jobs and housing became more scarce and expensive.

“The cost of housing, housing availability, eviction issues. The poor and vulnerable are most at risk, and all of this goes way beyond handing out water: These are the complicated issues you are trying to resolve every day,” Burgo said.

Beyond the American borders, there was an August earthquake in Haiti complicated by a deteriorating political and security situation in that Caribbean nation. A December typhoon hit the Philippines, and summer flooding wreaked havoc in Germany and Belgium, while China, India, Nepal and Indonesia experienced various floods, volcanoes and cyclones.

Kim Pozniak, senior director of global communications at Catholic Relief Services, said that in the past year CRS spent about $380 million on emergency response programming, which accounted for 42% of yearly total expenditures. The funds went toward comprehensive relief and recovery efforts in response to natural and man-made emergencies across 60 countries — benefiting 15.8 million people.

In Central Asia, CRS is anticipating that the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the worst drought there in recent memory — compounded by the pandemic’s effects — will likely result in a hunger crisis putting 23 million people in danger of starvation.

“This coincides with the start of the winter lean season when food supplies from harvests are exhausted, and families face shortages even in the best years. But this year the winter threatens extraordinary hardship and widespread loss of life, particularly among young children,” Pozniak told CNS.

In Madagascar, more than 1 million people are struggling with food insecurity following several years of drought that is being attributed to climate change. Carla Fajardo, CRS country representative in Madagascar, said the area is suffering several concurrent crises, including extreme drought, sandstorms, locust invasions and pests. The region not only suffers from a lack of rain, but when it comes, the rain is unpredictable, he noted.

And in the Sahel region of Africa – between the Sahara and the savannas in Sudan – a cycle of unrelenting violence has caused the dislocation of some 2 million people in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger.

“The bloodshed and violent displacement will only improve if we rebuild trust between and within communities while also partnering with local leaders to deliver lifesaving care to the 14.4 million people in need,” said Pat Williams, CRS program manager of the Sahel Peace Initiative.

Pozniak said despite the ongoing pandemic, giving to CRS has been strong and that while the lockdowns and restrictions might have changed how people connect, the underlying fundamentals have not changed.

“Generally, our donors are driven by their faith, and they give generously during emergencies — especially when the media coverage of an emergency spikes. We also benefit from generous public and institutional donor funds,” she said.

But even with this support, she fears that “not enough attention or funding is being directed toward the urgent crises that are far from the spotlight and that critical resources have fallen short to meet humanitarian needs in many areas.”