Latin America prays for Francis, region's first pope
Catholics from Mexico to Argentina and the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts attended masses, lighted candles and said prayers individually for the pope's recovery.
'We ... pray for him with trust in God and pray for his health with joy," said Argentine priest Adrian Bennardins. He praised Francis for making the global Catholic Church "closer, simple, fraternal, without leaving anyone out."
About 54% of Latin Americans identified as Catholic in a 2024 survey by Latinobarometro that interviewed people in 18 countries, down from 80% in 1995.
Among the faithful, people said they felt kinship with Francis, who became Pope in 2013 and was admitted to hospital on February 14, because of cultural affinity.
'Since he's a Latino, he speaks our language and he shares the feelings of the Latino community because we come from a similar culture," said Grisel Jimenez who was attending mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Francis began his career as a Jesuit priest in Argentina and later served as archbishop of Buenos Aires and a cardinal.
In Buenos Aires, a picture of the pope with the phrase "the city prays for you" was being projected on the city's famed Obelisk at nighttime from Friday to Monday.
Argentina issued a nationwide call earlier in the week to all 'villas' and 'barrios' –- poor neighborhoods and towns —- to pray for the Pope.
Gabriel Indihar, 50, heeded the call, believing in the power of collective prayer.
"When the community prays together, it has greater reach to God so he can make these miraculous transformations," Indihar said. "That is the request we make for the pope."
In neighboring Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world, people also joined prayers.
"As a Catholic, it's not just about worshipping Christ, but also praying for the pope, praying for our church and praying for the world," said Helio Martins Da Silva, a churchgoer in Sao Paulo.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BreakingNews.ie
a day ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Pope urges crowd of one million young Catholics to ‘spread enthusiasm and faith'
Pope Leo has urged more than a million Catholic youths to 'spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith' when they return home to some 150 countries, during a Mass ending a week-long encounter with the next generation of faithful. 'Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are,' Leo urged them. 'Do not settle for less. You will then see the light of the Gospel growing every day, in you and around you.' Advertisement The young people camped in sprawling fields south-east of Rome overnight after attending a vigil service for the Jubilee of Youth on Saturday, also presided by Leo – who has been ferried to and from Vatican City by helicopter. Young people wake up after spending the night at the Tor Vergata field in Rome as part of the event (Andrew Medichini/AP) The Vatican said more than one million young people were present, along with 7,000 priests and 450 bishops. The special Jubilee celebration is part of the Holy Year that is expected to draw 32 million people to the Vatican for the centuries-old pilgrimage to the seat of Catholicism. The week has been a joyous gathering marked by bands of youths singing hymns as they move down cobblestoned streets, praying rosaries in piazzas and standing for hours at the Circus Maximus to confess their sins to priests offering the sacrament in a dozen languages. Advertisement Leo led Mass with an estimated one million people (Andrew Medichini/AP) Leo also shared tragic news on Saturday. Two young people who had made the pilgrimage to Rome had died, one reportedly of cardiac arrest, while a third was in hospital. Rain overnight awakened the faithful but did not dampen their spirits. Soemil Rios, 20, from Puerto Rico, said: 'At least we were a little covered, but we still got a bit wet. We lost our voices a little. It was cold, but we woke up to a beautiful sun and view. 'Despite the difficulties, it was very nice and very special to have been part of this historic moment.' Advertisement
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
Thought of what happened to my gran in a Magdalene Laundry haunts me
Look to the right of the picture, however, and you see that she's cut somebody out. There's a black void where she's taken scissors and excised whoever is standing beside her. All that remains of that person is their hand. It looks like a man's hand. It's holding my grandmother by the wrist. There's a sense of possession about that grip, as if whoever it is believes they own my grandmother. Is it a priest? One of the nuns who tormented her? She'll never be able to tell me now. My grandmother had three wishes: to live to 100; to see me become the first in our family to go to university - starved of formal education she loved books and learning - and finally that she'd one day hold my first child in her arms, her first grandchild. Only one wish came true. She lived to see me graduate, and frail - so frail - she even made it to the ceremony. But she missed her 100th birthday, though just by a few years; and she missed the birth of her first grandchild, by just a few damned months. That child carries her name. I hope if my daughter has a baby girl of her own she'll one day hand that name on, so something of Suzanne never dies. I loved my grandmother fiercely. She was my rock to cling to amid the storms and stupidity of my parent's failing marriage. While they tore themselves to pieces, my grandmother built a world of safety for me. She loved me unconditionally. What a life she lived. She held me rapt for hours in tales of her adventures. Her life was tough but she lived it on her own terms. The woman was titanium-built. She was born into hard times: the rural poverty of Ireland, as the Victorian era gave way to the new 20th century. Both her parents died before she was five. Orphaned, she was taken in by her grandmother, a sadist who beat and humiliated the child with ruthless regularity. Suzie, as those who loved her called her, was a natural rebel. She would, I believe, sooner have died than yield. Whilst my granny told me everything about her life, there is, however, one part which she always skirted: her years in the Magdalene Laundries, run by the Catholic Church. Every time these hellish places return to the news, I wonder what happened to my granny inside their walls. What was done to her? Currently, in Tuam, near Galway, a mass unmarked grave for hundreds of children is being excavated where a Magdalene Laundry once stood. These were places where 'bad girls' and 'fallen women' were sent. Over the years - until these cursed institutions were finally abolished - an estimated 170,000 women and children went through their doors. My gran was one. She was 'sent to the convent', as she called it, aged around 14. All Suzie would say was that she'd refused to submit to her grandmother's bullying, and was banished to the Magdalene Laundries. They were called laundries as the young women had to work washing clothes. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse were the norm. I don't know precisely why my gran was sent away. Many of the girls shut up in these evil places were pregnant, but others were just rebellious - perhaps they had boyfriends (my gran always had an eye for a handsome fella), perhaps they'd got drunk or stayed out late. Girls didn't have to commit a grave sin in Ireland back then to suffer the wrath of family and church. She was incarcerated for about two years. When she emerged, she was changed. She'd lose her faith in the Catholic Church. Her rebellious streak had grown a mile wide. She wasn't the kind of woman who could - literally or metaphorically - be whipped into shape by anyone. Within a year or so of leaving the Magdalene laundries, my grandmother had joined what some called 'the old IRA', and was fighting in the War of Independence, the conflict which raged between 1919 and 1921 and would lead to the creation of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. She talked little of this period either, understandably. I was raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and anyone who boasted about fighting to free Ireland in their youth - even a pensioner - would have placed a target on their own back. Read more by Neil Mackay This I do know, though, she was some kind of scout and messenger, carrying intelligence around the country. Perhaps that makes her an 'intelligence officer', as some in my family have called her, but I think that may be too grand. After the War of Independence, she went on the run, hiding out in India until she returned home in the late 1920s. Jobless, she moved to England to work as a servant. The irony wasn't lost on her: slaving for the very people she'd fought. Suzie married a Cockney in the Royal Navy, and she mellowed. She even came to love England, and became one of the first women firefighters saving London during the Blitz. But like all Irish folk, she eventually returned home. After the death of her beloved husband Pat - my grandfather was actually called Henry but pals nicknamed him Pat due to his Irish wife - she moved back. I was born around the same time. Today, I'm writing a novel inspired by my grandmother's life. It will be my fourth book, and I know it's the work I'll most care about this side of the grave. Suzie told me so much about her life, but those years in the Magdalene Laundry remain mostly blank. Whenever I hear about these places, I pull out that old picture of her, taken around 1918, and I give her a wink and tell her I love her. (Image: Contributed) My imagination haunts me when I start thinking about what might have happened to this woman I loved so much in one of those terrible places. I've researched much of her life as part of my preparation for this novel, but I've never been brave enough to dare find out more about her time in the Magdalene Laundries. I've now started that work. It's only at the age of 55 that I really have the courage and character to face up to what might have been done to her. Whatever I find, I'll memorialise it for Suzie. I'll let her have her say all these years after her death. What I want most of all is to discover the original of that photograph, and to find out who was standing beside her. If they hurt my granny, I'll make sure the world knows their name. ===== Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
I've moved 28 times in my lifetime. This is the story of a new America
My special talent: I can survey any room in a house and accurately estimate how many cardboard boxes and spools of bubble wrap are needed to efficiently contain its contents. I wish it wasn't a personal point of distinction, but I can't escape it: I've lived in 28 homes in 46 years. In my middle-class midwestern family, two rules reigned: you never questioned going to Catholic Mass on Sundays, and you never asked why we kept moving – the only answer was always the same: 'It's for your dad's job.' And so we followed him, the car-top carrier on our wood-trimmed station wagon bursting with clothing, mix tapes and soccer cleats as our eyes fixed on passing cornfields. Being jostled between addresses became the defining characteristic of my coming-of-age 1990s girlhood. I'm now 46, and I can't seem to stay in one home longer than a handful of years. That same geographical stability I craved as a child has become an emotional confinement. I'm terrified to make an offer on another house; it would signal permanence in a body pulsating with restlessness. I used to think our constant moves were just a quirk of my family – but we were part of something bigger. In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans were on the move. A shifting economy, two-income pressures, and corporate relocations made motion feel like progress. We weren't just packing boxes – we were absorbing a national ethos that told us movement was advancement, even if it left us unmoored. My story started in seventh grade. I was a target for bullies with a pimpled face and thick, frizzy hair. Puberty shot me into a frame like my grandma's – 5ft9in, solid bones, size 10 shoes – so when my parents sat us down on the couch for a 'family meeting' the summer before eighth grade and said we were moving from rural Missouri to suburban Chicago, I was excited to escape the ridicule of the popular boys. Mom was a homemaker and Dad the breadwinner; she didn't put up a fuss about the move. My parents married days after they graduated from Ohio State because Dad had a job offer in Baltimore and Mom couldn't go unless they wed. They never had time for wanderlust, and I now sometimes wonder if she wanted an adventure or loathed it. As I started in my new school, my parents blessed me with prescription-strength face cream and let me throw a party in our basement. I invited all 59 kids in the eighth grade class – branding myself the 'fun new girl'. It worked and soon I found myself singing Soul Asylum lyrics into a hairbrush along with my new besties at a sleepover. Meanwhile, my mom became obsessed with our new neighborhood in Naperville, an idyllic suburb of Chicago. She raved about the riverwalk and every other upper-middle class touch we hadn't experienced previously. I loved it too. I started high school the following year with a large contingent of friends, playing basketball and soccer. Then, the summer before sophomore year: another family meeting. We were moving back to Missouri. I sobbed for weeks, devastated to leave the first life that felt like mine. I still remember looking out the back window of our minivan as my mom blasted Carole King's Tapestry as we headed south on I-55. The cumulative stress of relocating during critical developmental stages can impact kids later in life, according to a 2024 study published by JAMA Psychiatry. People who moved more than once between the ages of 10 and 15 were 61% more likely to experience depression in adulthood. This data wasn't just inked in journals; it lived in me. And like a suitcase full of unresolved attachment issues, at 14 I carried these experiences with cramped hands. It informed my understanding of permanence: that true safety was an illusion, that stability was always conditional, that the only reliable way to cope with discomfort was to disappear from it. The day before senior year started, I walked into the house to my mom frantically packing boxes. After two years of trying desperately to get us back to Naperville, my dad had a new job there and we needed to leave later that day – in time for my brother to start his freshman year of high school in the morning. I can still feel myself hyperventilating between the kitchen table and the bay window, wedging myself metaphorically into that house during an epic meltdown. But, the family motto, though never stated, was clear: keep moving. Between ages 13 and 18, I went to five schools in five years and lived in even more houses. My reality was a microcosm of a broader psychological truth: that instability during formative years can shape how we see ourselves long after the packing tape is ripped off the last box. Other longterm studies have found similar links to lower life satisfaction. Beyond being more prone to depression, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who moved frequently as children tended to have lower life satisfaction and poorer psychological well-being as adults. The research, which followed over 7,000 American adults for 10 years, found a direct link between the number of childhood moves and lower reported well-being, even when accounting for other factors like age and education. In young adulthood, my instincts gravitated toward fierce friendships – the chosen family that defined my college years and early 20s. Earning an entry-level wage I expected impermanence in the big city, although while scraping together rent with my friends, my singular dream was a husband, kids, and the white picket fence I never claimed in youth. I was determined to affix myself to a permanent address. I married the first man who asked at age 29. I bought us a condo in 2007, six months before we got divorced and a minute before the infamous 'big short' caused the housing market to burst. Everyone had said real estate was a sure-fire investment for the long term, but living in my one-bedroom marital condo alone felt like PTSD. I eventually saved enough to sell in 2014, bringing money to the closing table just to get out of the 'investment' meant to be a stepping stone to suburbia. By the early 2000s, job transfers and economic instability had made geographic permanence feel almost quaint. Raised on the promise of 'Home Sweet Home,' my generation entered adulthood expecting sanctuary and instead dodged stereotypical landmines of economic precarity and unbalanced cognitive labor. According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, homebuying rates for Gen X and older millennials have lagged behind previous generations, squeezed today by high interest rates and low desirable inventory. The dual-income household, framed as a pragmatic necessity, has metastasized into a common storyline on a TV series – one where home functions less as a haven and more as a finely-tuned productivity engine, but with an abundance of decorative throw pillows for aesthetics. It's not that the dream of the stable home disappeared – it just started charging an untenable monthly rent. In my mid-30s I faced the unstable market by renting a no-frills, fourth-floor walk-up whose memory still charms. My second husband wooed me away four years later, and this time to the state of nirvana I'd always wanted: the 'forever' home in the suburban cul-de-sac perfectly perched up on that hill. So, we overpaid, and I affixed his kids' artwork to the fridge with magnets that boasted 'Home Sweet Home' and 'family forever'. The marriage wouldn't last. Within three years the 'for sale' sign erected in the front yard would again be a marker that I failed to do the one thing in life I wanted more than anything: to stay. I didn't know how to pack the feeling of loss, so I took it with me after draining my savings account once more for an unfavorable sale to a new family. I inked a deal in 2018 on a condo in downtown Chicago, on the same street of my former favorite apartment. But the pandemic, losing my cat, getting laid off, and miscarrying the one successful pregnancy I ever had all within six months led me to sell the condo I had mortgaged at a sub-3% interest rate so I could lower my expenses. Today I live in a dark, garden-level apartment, contemplating what Sigmund Freud called 'repetition compulsion' – the tendency to unconsciously repeat traumatic events or patterns of behavior from the past even if they are unfulfilling. I seem to be pining for a life I can't materialize. It is my pre-move childhood: the stale smell of the rarely-washed couch blanket we all used, the sound of my friends bouncing a basketball on the driveway, the waft of cigarette smoke from the kitchen when my parents had their friends over for cards. If the walls had veins they'd pulse to the energy of pizza night, intermittent shouts of 'Uno!' and that indescribable chaos when the only thing that outnumbers the dishwasher cycles are the friends and neighbors stepping through the foyer. But every attempt to find this pulls me further away from settling into the present. I can't imagine how to create a happy life for myself without that feeling of family I've been trying to replicate. I've lost tens of thousands of dollars on real estate and even more in self-assurance. My body carries every goodbye out a minivan window more acutely than my conscious mind. If I do emotionally commit again to an address, it might be ripped away. I want to know that true belonging isn't a myth. I often wonder what affixing my restless energy to another permanent address will do to the animal living inside of me – all she knows how to do is advance! advance! advance! What if, like motherhood, I simply missed out on the American dream? Is home ownership another childhood entitlement I need to blow into an imaginary balloon and watch gently float above my open hand? As I face a housing market with low inventory at high prices and outrageous interest rates, I consider the paradox of my packing talent. It's easy for me to stow things away, but I need courage for an internal move – to fully unpack where I am right now and finally just build a life already.
