News - September 2015 RSS Feed

Telephone service has been restored to the Diocesan Pastoral Center

As the American Airlines plane taking him to Rome from Philadelphia took off, Pope Francis said he pictured the faces of all the people he met, and he prayed for them.

Pope Francis urged the hundreds of thousands of people gathered for the closing Mass of the World Meeting of Families to serve and care for each other as freely as God loves the human family.

Pope Francis speaks often about memory and motion, the importance of remembering where you came from and setting off without fear to share the Gospel. That's what he did in the United States.

Pope Francis threw away a prepared text and, to the delight of tens of thousands of people on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, spoke from the heart about the challenges and love that come with being part of a family.

Not far from where the Liberty Bell is on display, Pope Francis urged the people of the United States to continue to "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," as the bell's inscription says.

While pilgrims in Philadelphia put up with a long weekend of lines and security checks at the papal venues, the pope reached out to a group of people whose lives are lines and security checks for years at a time.

Pope Francis met with a group of survivors of sexual abuse Sept. 27 and later told bishops that he was overwhelmed by a sense of embarrassment and was committed to holding accountable those who harmed children.

The theme of religious freedom ran through Pope Francis' remarks at several stops during his historic trip to the United States, not just at Independence Mall in Philadelphia, said Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori.

San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller believes Pope Francis' call for the church to serve immigrants and people on the move around the world will inspire the church to respond with love and care for people seeking a new home.

Seeing New York for the first time in his 78 years of life, Pope Francis said he knew Madison Square Garden was an important gathering place for sporting events and concerts. For him, it was transformed into a chapel in the heart of the Big Apple.

As crowds waded through long security lines and watched pre-Mass entertainment at Madison Square Garden ahead of the pope's Friday night Mass, worshippers told Catholic News Service it was hard to express their excitement.

Pope Francis encouraged an audience of Catholic school students and immigrants to live with joy and dare to dream. He also highlighted the immigrant experience—in a way children could understand, comparing it to seeking acceptance and making friends in school, not always an easy place for them to fit in or find their way.

The time to educate young people about leading lives of sexual integrity doesn't start when they hit puberty, Erika Bachiochi told a crowd of hundreds during a Sept. 24 address at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Pope Francis' nearly hourlong speech to Congress was peppered with the moral issues of today: abortion, the family, immigration, the death penalty and even lawmaking body's role in serving the common good.

All people carry wounds of the heart that only Jesus can heal and his body of Christ, the church, can be agents of that healing. That's the message given by Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila during his keynote address at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia Sept. 24.

Dealing with war, development, the economy or environmental concerns, bureaucrats and diplomats always must remember that the lives of real children, women and men are at stake, Pope Francis told the United Nations.

Honoring both the pain and the strength of the families of those who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and drawing on the pools of water that are part of the site's memorial, Pope Francis spoke about tears and quenching the world's longing for peace.

As Pope Francis spoke to a joint meeting of Congress Sept. 24, the members of the House and Senate vacillated between their usual response to similar addresses and intensely focusing on the pontiff's heavily accented, carefully pronounced delivery of a text in English.

During an evening prayer service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Pope Francis thanked the nation's priests, brothers and women religious for their service and gave particular thanks to women religious saying, "Where would the Church be without you?"