Vatican City, Sep 2, 2020 / 05:50 am (CNA).- Tourists in Rome had an unexpected chance to see Pope Francis at his first public audience for almost six months.
People from all over the world expressed their happiness and surprise Wednesday at having the opportunity to be present at Francis’ first in-person audience since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We were surprised because we thought there were no audiences,” Belen and her friend, both from Argentina, told CNA. Belen is visiting Rome from Spain where she lives.
“We love the pope. He’s from Argentina too and we feel very close to him,” she said.
Pope Francis has been livestreaming his Wednesday general audience from his library since March, when the coronavirus pandemic led Italy and other countries to impose lockdown to slow down the virus' spread.
The Sept. 2 audience was held in the San Damaso Courtyard on the interior of the Vatican’s apostolic palace, with a capacity of around 500 people.
The announcement that Francis would resume public audiences — albeit in a different location than usual and with limited numbers — was made Aug. 26. Many of the people who attended Wednesday said they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
One family from Poland told CNA they found out about the audience just 20 minutes beforehand. Seven-year-old Franek, whose name is the Polish version of Francis, was excited he got to tell the pope about their common name.
Beaming, Franek said he was “very happy.”
Sandra, a Catholic visiting Rome from India with her parents, sister, and family friend, said “it feels great. We never thought we could see him, now we are going to.”
They found out about the audience two days before, she said, and decided to go. “We just wanted to see him and have his blessings.”
Pope Francis, not wearing a face mask, took the time to greet pilgrims as he entered and exited the courtyard, taking a moment to exchange a few words or to do a traditional zucchetto exchange.
He also stopped to kiss a Lebanese flag brought to the audience by Fr. Georges Breidi, a Lebanese priest studying at the Gregorian University in Rome.
At the end of his catechesis, the pope brought the priest up to the podium with him while he gave an appeal for Lebanon, announcing a day of prayer and fasting for the country on Friday, Sept. 4, after Beirut experienced a devastating blast Aug. 4.
Breidi spoke with CNA immediately after the experience. He said: “I really can’t find the right words to say, however, I thank God for the grace he gave me today.”
Belen also had the chance to exchange a quick greeting with the pope. She said she is part of the Fraternidad de Agrupaciones Santo Tomás de Aquino (FASTA), a lay association which follows the spirituality of the Dominicans.
She said that she introduced herself, and Pope Francis asked her how the founder of FASTA is doing. The pope knew Fr. AnÃbal Ernesto Fosbery, O.P., when he was a priest in Argentina.
“We didn’t know what to say in that moment but it was amazing,” Belen said.
An older Italian couple from Turin traveled to Rome specifically to see the pope when they heard about the public audience. “We came and it was a magnificent experience,” they said.
A family visiting from the U.K. was also excited to be at the audience. Parents Chris and Helen Gray, together with their boys, Alphie, 9, and Charles and Leonardo, 6, are three weeks into a 12-month family journey.
Rome was the second stop, Chris said, noting that the chance for their boys to see the pope was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Helen is Catholic and they are raising their boys in the Catholic Church, Chris said.
“Fantastic opportunity, how do I describe it?” he added. “Just an opportunity to refocus, especially in times like today with everything so uncertain, it’s great to hear words about certainty and community. It gives you a bit more hope and faith for the future.”
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Vatican City, Sep 2, 2020 / 04:50 am (CNA).- In his first Wednesday audience with pilgrims since Italy’s lockdown, Pope Francis called for solidarity to reawaken unity and bring God’s love to a suffering world.
“In the midst of crises and storms, the Lord challenges us and invites us to reawaken and activate this solidarity capable of giving solidity, support and meaning to these hours in which everything seems to be wrecked,” Pope Francis said Sept. 2 in the San Damaso Courtyard within the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
“A solidarity guided by faith enables us to translate the love of God in our globalised culture, not by building towers or walls — and how many walls are being built today — that divide and then crumble, but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid,” the pope told the pilgrims.
Pope Francis recalled the unity experienced by Christ’s disciples at Pentecost. He said that God made himself present at that moment and inspired “the faith of the community united in diversity and in solidarity.”
“The Holy Spirit creates unity in diversity; He creates harmony … Others are not simply instruments, a mere ‘work force,’ but rather participate fully in building up the community,” he said.
“Solidarity today is the road to take towards a post-pandemic world, toward the healing of our interpersonal and social diseases. There is no other. Either we go on along the road of solidarity or things will be worse,” he said.
“From a crisis one comes out either better or worse. We have to choose. And solidarity is really a way to get out of the crisis better, not with superficial changes.”
He added: “Diversity in solidarity … possesses antibodies that heal social structures and processes that have degenerated into systems of injustice, into systems of oppression.”
Safety precautions were put in place to ensure that the pilgrims entering Vatican City for the papal audience maintained social distancing.
After a temperature screening and walk through a metal detector, pilgrims entered the apostolic palace through the great bronze door and proceeded up a flight of stairs to arrive at the courtyard.
By 8:30 a.m., the courtyard’s 500 spaced-out seats were full and a few seats were added to accommodate pilgrims arriving later.
When Pope Francis entered, he took his time greeting those standing next to the aisles. After the audience, he continued to greet and speak with masked pilgrims for around 30 minutes.
Pilgrims present at the audience commented on how the change of venue to the San Damaso Courtyard felt like a more intimate setting than St. Peter’s Square.
“The mood was just one of great excitement, and you could tell that the Holy Father was also happy to be back with all of the pilgrims. He took his time going through the lines and greeted almost every single person that he saw. He also would stop and talk to people for what seemed like a long time,” Fr. Joseph Hudson, an American priest present at the audience told CNA.
“The change of venue also to the piazza di San Damaso was I thought also significant. It felt like we were a little bit closer to the Holy Father, a little bit more connected, and that he was trying to be more present to us.”
Pope Francis greets children at the end of his first Wednesday audience with pilgrims in over six months. pic.twitter.com/faSzh2giIW
— Courtney Mares (@catholicourtney) September 2, 2020
Pope Francis prayed at the end of the audience for Lebanon — inviting people to take part in a day of prayer and fasting for the country Sept. 4 — and for the Holy Spirit to bring unity and solidarity to the world in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“May the creativity of the Holy Spirit encourage us to generate new forms of familiar hospitality, fruitful fraternity and universal solidarity,” Pope Francis said.
Hannah Brockhaus contributed to this report.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 2, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- A pro-life Tennessee state representative is running as an independent after was ousted from the Democratic Party for his views on life and marriage. He told CNA that he is not giving up what he sees as a ministry.
In April, Rep. John DeBerry—a Tennessee state legislator since 1994 who represents the Memphis-based 90th district—was removed from the Democratic ballot for the 2020 election by the state party’s executive committee. But, he told CNA on Monday, he does not regret his defense of life.
“My work in Nashville as a legislator is nothing more than an extension of my work as a child of God, as a Christian,” DeBerry told CNA.
“And I take to heart Ephesians chapter 6, ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood’—people are not the enemy,” he said, but “there are those who make laws that are blasphemous of God’s law.”
“I have always made my focus staying in accordance to the laws of God, even when my votes are made,” said DeBerry, who is also a minister in the Church of Christ.
DeBerry said that after his removal from the ticket by the Democratic Party, he gathered the necessary signatures to be placed on the ballot by the deadline, but that party officials waited until after the deadline to remove him, “until I had no recourse.”
“They said I do not represent the values of the Democratic Party,” he told CNA.
DeBerry supported the state’s fetal heartbeat bill, which would ban abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, usually when an unborn baby is around six to eight weeks old. He says he opposes the redefinition of marriage, and supports the “right” and responsibility of parents to educate their children and make choices for them.
He told CNA his views on abortion and marriage are no secret, as he campaigned on them decades ago.
“So for them to say that folks don’t know where I stand, they actually said that the people in my district don’t have sense enough to elect their representative,” he said of his removal.
In addition to his pro-life stance, DeBerry also broke with his party in support of school vouchers and voted for a Republican for House Speaker, according to the Tennessean, and has been accused of taking money from political action committees that are seen to align with Republicans.
In addition to DeBerry's pro-life position, he is also a life-long civil rights activist.
As a child, he attended civil rights marches with his father. In a passionate speech on the Tennessee House Floor in August, during the second extraordinary session of the state’s general assembly, DeBerry contrasted the peaceful nature of the protests he witnessed and participated in as a youth with riots in U.S. cities in the last few months.
“I am one of those individuals who walked in back doors because the law said I had to,” he said in his speech Aug. 12, while recalling the bravery and dignity of the civil rights movement.
“I saw men and women stand with courage and integrity and class, and they changed the world,” he said. “They marched peacefully, and Dr. King stood for that which was peaceful.”
“They didn’t beg for anything. They didn’t beg for citizenship–they demanded it,” he said. “They did it by standing like men and women of integrity.”
In the wake of civil unrest in many U.S. cities, DeBerry condemned what he called defenses of rioting, looting, and violence in the name of anti-racism during his August speech.
“You’re telling me that somebody has the right to throw feces and urine in the faces of those that we as taxpayers pay to protect us? And that’s okay?” he asked. “What has happened to us?!”
DeBerry says he is running as an independent in the November election. Although the deadline to do so had already passed by when he was removed from the Democratic ticket, fellow legislators passed a measure to allow him to be listed on ballots as a political independent and not have to resort to a write-in campaign.
He was one of more than 100 Democrats at the federal, state, and local levels who recently asked the platform committee of the Democratic National Convention to moderate the abortion language in the party’s platform.
The 2020 draft platform of the party calls for taxpayer-funded abortion and restoring federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
Although Trump promised to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, Congress failed to pass legislation doing so. Planned Parenthood did voluntarily withdraw from the federal Title X family planning program after the Trump administration tightened regulations that barred recipients from referring for abortions or being co-located with abortion clinics.
In their August 14 letter, DeBerry and other Democratic officials said the party’s support for late-term abortion will “push many voters into the arms of the Republican Party.”
All 2020 Democratic presidential candidates supported taxpayer-funded abortion. Several candidates said that women should be able to choose abortion up until the point of birth, and that there was not room in the party for pro-lifers.
DeBerry said that the leadership in the Democratic Party is excluding pro-lifers to the party’s detriment.
“It’s a shame that they have handed all the moral, spiritual, social, and conservative issues on a silver platter over to the Republicans and said we don’t want to have nothing to do with them,” he told CNA.
“How are you enlarging the tent when you’re throwing people out when they don’t walk the chalk line? When they don’t do exactly as they’re told?” DeBerry told CNA. “And that’s where the Democrats are right now.”
“I think that the candidate at the top of the ticket who said if you don’t vote Democrat, then you’re not Black—I think that goes to the heart of the issue,” he said.
In May, Joe Biden told the radio show The Breakfast Club that “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump then you ain’t black.” Biden later said of his remarks that he “shouldn’t have been such a wise guy.”
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