“Time is never meant to be useless,” said Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington in his homily at the opening Mass this year’s Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, and he advised the gathering’s 800-plus registrants to “work for greater justice in our world.”
Resuming his public ministry following a period of quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 Dec. 31, Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory in an interview said he was doing well and happy to be back at work.
Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory criticized a light show projected onto the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception by Catholics for Choice and other supporters of abortion as thousands of faithful gathered for Mass during the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life, Jan. 20.
Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory announced in a Dec. 31, 2021, statement that he tested positive for COVID-19. He was asymptomatic at the time and remained so Jan. 3, according to the media relations director for the archdiocese.
Soon after 11 a.m. on Monday, Julia Lum was one of the first to arrive at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception’s Great Upper Church to participate in a worldwide recitation of the rosary, offering prayers for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, at noon, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington will lead up to 1,000 in-person faithful in a worldwide recitation of the rosary in response to Pope Francis’ call for a “marathon” of prayer in May “to ask for the end of the pandemic.”
The meeting between Pope Francis and Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husaymi al-Sistani can make a difference in America, says Cardinal Wilton Gregory, because it demonstrated “that people from different religious traditions can work together in a spirit of dialogue and mutual respect.”
Not long after the sun set in Washington D.C. Tuesday night, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington joined President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to honor the lives lost to COVID-19.
To Father Robert Boxie III, the Catholic chaplain at Howard University in Washington, the naming of Washington’s archbishop “as a cardinal is huge, it’s historic.”
When Cardinal Wilton Gregory got his red hat from Pope Francis on Saturday to become the first Black American cardinal, a group of supporters from a small parish in Glenview, Illinois, tuned in.
