CNA Staff, Dec 29, 2023 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis urged young people attending the 46th European Meeting organized by the ecumenical monastic community Taizé to “dare to build a different world, a world of listening, dialogue, and openness.”

The European Meeting is an annual ecumenical Christian event that hosts several thousand young adults from across the world to gather and pray in a host city. This year the event is taking place in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, from Dec. 28 to Jan. 1. 

Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community founded in a small town in the Burgundy territory of France in 1940. Its focus is promoting faith and Christian unity among young people, many of whom participate in the community through retreats and other events.

The group is also known for its distinctive chants, many of which have come to be used and recognized well beyond the community.

The theme this year is “Journeying Together” and will feature personal reflection, singing, silence, and prayer.

Young adults from England, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and several other nations participating in the event will stay with host families. 

In a letter to the attendees on behalf of Pope Francis, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Holy Father “expresses his closeness” to all. 

“The recent World Youth Days have enabled you to live, as Church and as community, the beautiful experience of friendship with God and with others,” he said.

“You are the today of God, the today of the Church! The Church needs you in order to be fully herself. As Church, you are the body of the risen Lord present in the world,” he said.

The message said that “we live in a world full of noise” that has “stifled” the value of “silence and listening.” Parolin invited the young people to “rediscover the deeper dimension of listening.”

“Listening is an act of love. It is at the heart of trust. Without listening, little can grow or develop,” the message said.

Parolin said that often the impression is given that “those who shout the loudest are worthy of being heard.” 

He said we live in a “difficult time” with conflicts and war “because no one listens anymore,” which has contributed to the increase in violence that we see today.

“I urge you to dare to build a different world, a world of listening, dialogue, and openness, to ‘point to ideals other than those of this world, testifying to the beauty of generosity, service, purity, perseverance, forgiveness, fidelity to our personal vocation, prayer, the pursuit of justice and the common good, love for the poor, and social friendship,’” Parolin said, citing Pope Francis’ 2019 apostolic exhortation Christus Vivit.

Parolin said: “One of the challenges you must face is that of walking together in order to work for the qualitative transformation of life in our societies.” He said that to walk together means “barring the way to marginalization, isolation, exclusion, and the rejection of a category of people.”

He exhorted the young people to commit themselves to live like Jesus, who didn’t exclude anyone.

Parolin noted that sometimes people can feel “homeless.”

“When we face these challenges together, there can be experiences of beauty, of transcendence, which help us to discover the spark that makes us start again with new vitality,” he said.

“Dear young people, the Holy Father is counting on you and he trusts you, the Church trusts you. Through your words and actions, send a powerful message to our world, which rejects the vulnerable,” he said.

He called on the young people to live in the present and to not “sacrifice your precious youth on the altar of superficial pleasures.”

“Don’t let yourselves be robbed of your dreams, and help to ‘build a society worthy of the name,’” he said, citing Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical.

“Entrusting each of you and your families to the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Pope Francis grants you his apostolic blessing with all his heart. He asks you to pray for him,” he concluded.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 29, 2023 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy three days after Christmas to discuss peace efforts to end the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, according to a video message Zelenskyy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

“We discussed our joint work on the Peace Formula,” Zelenskyy said. “More than 80 states are already involved at the level of their representatives. There will be more. I am grateful to the Vatican for supporting our work.”

Zelenskyy said the pontiff expressed “his wishes of peace — just peace for all of us” during the Dec. 28 phone call. 

The Ukrainian president also said he expressed gratitude to the pope “for his Christmas greetings to Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

On Christmas, Pope Francis delivered a Christmas blessing in which he said: “Saying ‘yes’ to the Prince of Peace means saying ‘no’ to war, and this with courage: saying no to every war, to the very mindset of war, an aimless voyage, a defeat without victors, madness without excuses.”

When speaking about Ukraine, the pope called for people to “renew our spiritual and human closeness to its embattled people, so that through the support of each of us, they may feel the concrete reality of God’s love.”

Pope Francis has met with Zelenskyy twice: once in 2020, before the Russian invasion, and again on May 13, more than a year after the February 2022 invasion. The pontiff has also spoken with the Ukrainian president several times over the phone. Francis has repeatedly urged a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict.

In May of last year, the pontiff said he also hoped to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, but there has not yet been a meeting. Francis had met with the Russian president prior to the invasion. In February 2022, the pope visited the Russian embassy to express his concerns about the invasion but did not speak with Putin.

Pope Francis had a video conference call with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in March of last year. Although the two had met in person in 2016, they have not met in person since the start of the war, despite talk that there would be a second summit. 

In Zelenskyy’s video message, the Ukrainian president also thanked the United States for the new military aid package to Ukraine. 

“This package includes missiles for air defense systems and HIMARS, artillery of 155 and 105 caliber, and additional armored vehicles,” Zelenskyy said. “Everything we need. Everything that helps tangibly.” 

CNA Staff, Dec 29, 2023 / 09:20 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Friday had an audience with Cardinal Raymond Burke, the Vatican said, several weeks after a flurry of reported controversy involving the pontiff and the 75-year-old U.S.-born prelate.

A release from the Holy See Press Office briefly mentioned that the pope had met with Burke in an audience on Friday morning. No reason was given for the meeting, nor were details of the audience shared by the press office. 

The cardinal on Friday declined to comment on the meeting.

The meeting comes weeks after reports that Pope Francis had stripped Burke of his Vatican housing and salary privileges, with the Holy Father allegedly claiming that Burke was a source of “disunity” in the Church and that he was using the privileges afforded to retired cardinals against the Church.

Francis at the end of November reportedly confirmed that he was planning to take away the prelate’s apartment and salary. The Holy Father at that time allegedly denied that he referred to Burke as his “enemy.”

Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh had written in late November that Pope Francis had told him the news concerning Burke wasn’t meant to be a public announcement but that it had been leaked to the press. 

Burke has been known for his periodic disputes with some of Francis’ decisions and directives. In 2021 the cardinal released a 19-point statement regarding Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes in which Burke called the Holy See’s restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass “severe and revolutionary” and questioned the pope’s authority to revoke use of the rite.

Burke was also among the five cardinals who sent a list of dubia to the pope expressing concerns and seeking clarification on points of doctrine and discipline ahead of the October Synod on Synodality at the Vatican. 

The prelates had submitted a previous version of the dubia to Francis in July, but the pope responded in full answers rather than in the customary form of “yes” and “no” replies, which prompted the cardinals to submit a revised request for clarification. The responses “have not resolved the doubts we had raised, but have, if anything, deepened them,” they said at the time. 

Burke later stressed the dubia were not meant as an attack on Francis himself, stating that the queries were concerned “exclusively with the perennial doctrine and discipline of the Church, not a pope’s agenda.”

Rome Newsroom, Dec 29, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Attention Catholic artists: The Vatican has announced an art competition in which your paintings can be displayed inside of St. Peter’s Basilica along with the works of Renaissance masters Michelangelo and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The contest winner will get to showcase an original set of paintings of the Stations of the Cross for a temporary exhibition in the basilica during Lent 2026 and a cash prize of 120,000 euros (about $131,000).

The competition is free and open to artists from anywhere in the world. Artists are free to choose the style and technique but are required to paint the traditional 14 Stations of the Cross.

To enter, the Vatican asks that candidates fill out an online application form between Jan. 8 and Jan. 31, 2024.

The form will require the submission of a PDF containing a selection of no more than 10 previous original works of art accompanied by brief captions and relevant technical information. 

Artists will also need to send in a brief curriculum vitae in English or Italian. The application form will be available on the official website of St. Peter’s Basilica starting on Jan. 8.

Selected candidates will be notified if they have been accepted into the Vatican art competition by March 15, 2024.

Artists will then be asked to submit a framed original sketch of the 12th Station, “Jesus Dies on the Cross” measuring 50x50cm, as well as a second sketch in a clip frame of another Station of the Cross freely chosen by the artist. 

The two sketches must be delivered to the Vatican either in person or by courier by July 15, 2024, to the following address:

Fabric of St. Peter in the Vatican 

Largo della Sagrestia, s.n.c. 

00120 Vatican City

The submitted sketches will be presented in a private exhibition at the Vatican and judged by a board appointed by the “Fabric of St. Peter,” the office responsible for the conservation and maintenance of St. Peter’s Basilica. More details and the contest rules can be found here.

The winner will be announced on Sept. 30, 2024, on the St. Peter’s Basilica website.

After being awarded the commission, the winning artist will have more than a year to complete the 14 paintings (each on a 4-foot by 4-foot canvas) of the Stations of the Cross by Dec. 31, 2025.

The winner’s paintings will be temporarily displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica for the liturgical season of Lent starting on Feb. 18, 2026.