Despite perceptions in some quarters that they represent competing visions of the world, U.S. President Donald Trump on March 13 reached out to Pope Francis, offering him congratulations on behalf of the American people on the fifth anniversary of his election to the papacy.
By truly listening to the penitent during confession, “we listen to Jesus himself, poor and humble; by listening to the Holy Spirit, we put ourselves in attentive obedience, becoming listeners of the Word” in order to know what God wants to be done, he said.
Pope Francis shakes hands with Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., during a private audience at the Vatican.
When Pope Francis was elected five years ago today, he came into office with a reform mandate and a vow to make the Church less self-referential, focused on the peripheries rather than the center. Many of the challenges ahead seemed obvious: shaking up the Roman curia, cleaning up the Vatican’s finances, and continuing the work of clerical sex abuse reform efforts.
In his formal documents, many speeches and unscripted morning homilies the past five years, Pope Francis has given the church plenty of “food for thought” on many issues of great importance.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ election, retired Pope Benedict XVI defended the continuity of the Church’s teaching under his successor and dismissed those who criticize the pope’s theological foundations.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope just a few days after telling the College of Cardinals that the Catholic Church faced a clear choice between being a church that “goes out” or a church focused on its internal affairs.
Pope Francis has “catapulted” the concerns of working people and placed them at the center of the conversation for the Church, said an all-star panel assessing the Holy Father’s influence on the labor movement.
Pope Francis’ exhortation on the family should prompt discussion and even debate, but accusing him and others of heresy is completely out of place, said German Cardinal Walter Kasper.
Pope Francis will visit Geneva in June, the Vatican confirmed.
