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Herald Malaysia
09-07-2025
- Herald Malaysia
How to spend your holidays according to the Popes
As Pope Leo XIV's takes some time off at the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo from July 6 to 20, Vatican News looks at what past Popes have said about holidays. Jul 09, 2025 The Apostolic Palace in the town of Castel Gandolfo (AFP or licensors) By Amedeo LomonacoA break from work to restore physical strength, a chance to travel and contemplate the beauty of nature, a time for reading and new friendships or to meditate and pray. These are some of the aspects that past popes have emphasized when reflecting on the importance of vacation periods. This summer, the first after his election, Pope Leo XIV will also be taking some time off to rest. From July 6 to 20, and then for a couple more days in August, he will be at the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo, a town about 25 kilometers (approximately 16 miles) from Rome. A favorable time How one can make the best use of his or her time off is a question that features prominently in many papal reflections, as holidays have an important role in human life. The popes stress that this period should not be viewed simply as a time of idleness. For example, vacations can instead be an opportunity to pause and reflect on the beauty of nature, or 'God's book', as described by Pope Paul VI. He pointed out that during the holidays, we can rediscover the 'always open, always new, always beautiful' creation. Nature with its' 'space, atmosphere, animals, things; the sea, mountains, plains, the sky with its dawns, its noons, its sunsets, and especially its starry nights' is 'always deep and enchanting.' For the popes, holidays are a time of rest and relaxation, but also for meditation and turning towards God. Paul VI: Holidays are for reading, discovering and friendships Vacations are also a fruitful time, as the interruption of the ordinary work routine can foster inner silence and recollection. During the Angelus on August 5, 1973, Pope Paul VI explained what he thought this period of rest should look like: 'Let us ensure that this free time, which we call vacation, is not entirely spent in dissipation or selfishness. Relaxation, refreshment, recreation (in the etymological sense), yes, but intelligent and vigilant.' The Pope, for example, suggested catching up on 'serious readings' that may have been put aside during the year, or partaking in 'excursions' to discover 'the beautiful treasures' of history and art.. He also highlighted that 'holidays are a privileged time for good friendships, for getting to know places, customs, the needs of the people we do not usually approach, and for meeting new people worthy of our conversation' John Paul II: Meetings and encounters essential to vacations Holidays are an opportunity to live serene moments. Pope John Paul II, who loved spending rest periods in the mountains, often emphasized that in order to regenerate themselves, people need harmony and the joy of meeting with others. 'For a vacation to be truly such and bring genuine well-being, in it a person must recover a good balance with himself, with others and with the environment', St. John Paul II said, during the Angelus on July 6, 1997. He added that it 'is this interior and exterior harmony which revitalizes the mind and reinvigorates body and spirit.' For John Paul II, 'one of the values of a holiday' is meeting others and spending time 'in an unselfish way, for the pleasure of friendship and for sharing quiet moments together.' Warning about 'the human mind and the influences of a consumer society,' he suggested taking 'healthy vacations', especially for young people. Holidays 'that provide a healthy escape, avoiding harmful abuses of your health and that of others' in order to avoid 'wasting' time and resources. 'Escape can be beneficial, as long as one does not escape from sound moral criteria and simply from the necessary respect for one's own health,' he insisted. Benedict XVI: In nature, man rediscovers himself For Pope Benedict XVI, it is vital to immerse oneself in nature, especially for 'those who dwell in cities where the often frenzied pace of life leaves little room for silence and reflection.' During the Angelus on July 17, 2005, in Les Combes, in the Aosta Valley mountains in northern Italy, he highlighted 'the need to be physically and mentally replenished' through a 'relaxing contact with nature.' 'Moreover, holidays are days on which we can give even more time to prayer, reading and meditation on the profound meaning of life in the peaceful context of our own family and loved ones,' he added. Looking at 'the stirring views of nature, a marvellous 'book' within the reach of everyone, adults or children,' people can 'rediscover their proper dimension.' 'They recognize that they are creatures but at the same time unique, 'capable of God', since they are inwardly open to the Infinite,' Pope Benedict XVI explained. Francis: Deepening one's spiritual journey through vacations At the Angelus on August 6, 2017, Pope Francis emphasized that holidays can also be a good time to deepen one's spiritual journey, even while traveling between tourist destinations. 'Summer season is a providential time to cultivate our task of seeking and encountering the Lord,' he underlined. In this 'period of rest and disengagement from daily activities, we can reinforce our strengths of body and soul.' He also encouraged the faithful to entrust their holidays to the Virgin Mary, so she can help them 'be in harmony with the Word of God, so that Christ may become light and lodestar throughout our life.' He especially urged all to entrust to her 'the summer of those who cannot go on holiday due to impediments of age, to reasons of health or of work, to economic restrictions or other problems, so that it may be a time of eased tension, gladdened by the presence of friends and of happy moments.' --Vatican News
National Post
17-05-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Conrad Black: High time for an American pope
There are two principal takeaways from the election last week of Pope Leo XIV, one reflecting on the condition of the Roman Catholic Church, the other that the new Pope is an American, albeit one who has spent much of his career in Latin America. Despite centuries of effort by millions of people to portray the Roman Catholic Church as a superstitious anachronism, it endures. This is the first pope whose native language is English since Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear), who died in 1159. English is the most widely spoken language in the world and although that singular self-nominated 'defender of the faith' Henry VIII of England caused the English-speaking peoples to be more heavily influenced by the Reformation, and not necessarily its best aspects, than the other great western cultures, it is high time that there was an English-speaking pope. Article content Article content Article content People of my venerable age group will recall that St. Pope John XXIII attempted a substantial modernization of the Roman Catholic Church and made it more accessible by increased use of contemporary languages in place of Latin and other liberalizations, and that this is a process that generally has continued gradually. His successor, Paul VI, initiated the practice of popes travelling widely and the subsequent elections of Polish, German, Argentinian and now an American Pope, are steadily wrenching that organization free from the secretive and easily caricatured Roman cohort of its curial governors, and have brought it closer to and made it more reflective of its far-flung constituencies. With any organization, ecclesiastical or secular, the challenge of reform is to make the basic tenets more available and popular without modifying them in a way that undermines the raison d'etre of the institution. The Catholic Church, in walking this line, has tested the faith of many and forfeited the respect of some. Article content Article content Of the approximately 1.4-billion nominal Roman Catholics, about one billion attach a significant amount of credence to being members of that faith. It is an organization united by concepts of the sanctity of life and the existence of a divine intelligence that can be propitiated, and that does assert itself in human lives. Anyone who entertains any religious views is thoroughly aware of the widespread practice, particularly prevalent in our atheistic media and academic and other cultural communities that religion is merely a fetishistic heirloom of the Dark Age when people generally had an insufficient respect and ambition for what human ingenuity and diligence could achieve; a consolation for the fact of death. Perversely, our anti-theistic elites profess a respect for Islam, which is in some measure a violent replication of theoretically pacifistic Christianity (including the annunciation of both by the Archangel Gabriel). This indicates that non-western support of Islam is really, in many cases, just antagonism to Christianity. It requires more faith and is intellectually more difficult to deny the existence of any spiritual or supernatural forces in the world than to uphold them. There has always been a zone in the human psyche that ponders the unknowable regions of the cosmos and attempts to replace authentic faith with a vacuum, which has sometimes led to the most horrible pagan aberrations in history, including Nazism and communism. Article content The immense crowd that packed St. Peter's Square and the approaching Via de la Conciliazione last week, conspicuously largely composed of younger people waving the flags of most of the countries of the world, indicated that the papal election is not just a Roman municipal tourist celebration. Interest in ecclesiastical matters has fluctuated very widely throughout history, from the dawn of Christianity when Christ and most of his early disciples were brutally murdered, through centuries when Rome was more powerful than any secular government, and times of terrible lassitude, degradation and corruption, when the public's respect was thoroughly alienated but the faith that had been dishonoured survived. Article content Article content There are now evidences of growth of Catholic religious practice, partly in reaction to the oppressions of Christianity, partly in recognition of the spectacular failure of secularization and the unsustainably incompetent performance of most secular governments, and partly because of a resurgent sense that spiritual forces do exist and persist despite the antics of charlatans and publicity-seeking iconoclasts. While the rigorous non-believers regard the Roman Catholic Church as an institutional bumble bee, flying laboriously in defiance of all laws of nature and logic, the election of the new Pope has demonstrated its imperishability again. Secularism and parts of the Enlightenment have not delivered a human plenitude of knowledge, any more than unspontaneous piety did. When Christianity fields its intellectual first team from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to modern thinkers such as St. John H. Cardinal Newman and Jacques Maritain, it always defeats the atheists.
The Hindu
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Pope offers to mediate between world leaders to end wars
Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday (May 14, 2025) offered to mediate between leaders of countries at war, saying that he himself "will make every effort so that this peace may prevail". The new U.S. pontiff, who became head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics last week, also called on Christians living in the Middle East not to abandon their homes, in a speech to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. "Who, better than you, can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?" he told the packed Paul VI hall at the Vatican, noting that "from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see!". He urged them to pray for peace, adding: "For my part, I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail. 'The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace.' "The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!". He took over as pontiff from Pope Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88. He was speaking at a pre-arranged event for the 2025 Jubilee holy year dedicated to the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, located across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and parts of Africa. In his appeal to end conflicts — a dominant theme in his addresses so far — The Pope thanked those "sowing seeds of peace". "I thank God for those Christians — Eastern and Latin alike — who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them," he said. "Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!"
New Indian Express
14-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Pope offers to mediate between world leaders to end wars
Vatican City, Holy See: Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday offered to mediate between leaders of countries at war, saying that he himself "will make every effort so that this peace may prevail". The new US pontiff, who became head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics last week, also called on Christians living in the Middle East not to abandon their homes, in a speech to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. "Who, better than you, can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?" he told the packed Paul VI hall at the Vatican, noting that "from the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see!". He urged them to pray for peace, adding: "For my part, I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail. "The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace. "The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate!". Leo took over as pontiff from Pope Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88. He was speaking at a pre-arranged event for the 2025 Jubilee holy year dedicated to the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, located across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and parts of Africa.
Time Magazine
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
As the Conclave Continues, Catholicism Is at a Crossroads
As the cardinals gather in Rome to choose the new leader for 1.4 billion Catholics, the Catholic Church once again stands at a crossroads. The animating question facing the conclave is whether the cardinals want the Church to continue in the direction of a broader, more capacious understanding of the faith as articulated by Francis, or will they revert to the conservative, more traditionalist ways of his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Church has stood at similar crossroads several times in the modern era. From 1545 to 1560, the Council of Trent met to determine the Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar prior to his excommunication in 1520, had pointed out the corruptions of medieval Catholicism and emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith (not works) and what he called the priesthood of believers. The question before the prelates at the Council of Trent was whether to acknowledge the excesses and reform the Church in the direction of the more stripped-down Protestantism that Luther and other Reformers advocated. Trent, however, moved in the opposite direction, becoming 'more Catholic' in its affirmation of the importance of the sacraments and good works. This hyper-Catholicism can be traced most graphicly in the Baroque and Rococo architecture that followed, which John Updike described as 'the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l'oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism.' Another crossroads for modern Catholicism occurred following the death of Pope Pius XII in October 1958. The cardinals opted for what they thought was a 'caretaker' pope, 76-year-old Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII. He turned out to be anything but a caretaker. Declaring that it was 'time to throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the spirit blow through,' he convened the Second Vatican Council, which reformed Church theology and liturgy (including mass in the vernacular) and, its supporters say, brought the Church into the modern world. John XXIII's successor, Pope Paul VI faced another crossroads shortly after the conclusion of Vatican II. John XXIII had formed a study group, the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, to review the Church's teaching on the matter. The commission, which Paul VI expanded, included laywomen, married couples, theologians and bishops. The overwhelming recommendation was that the Church should revise its teaching to allow artificial means of birth control. Paul VI, however, rejected that recommendation and issued the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968. The only acceptable means of birth control, the Church decreed, was the rhythm method, which critics promptly dubbed 'Vatican Roulette.' Humanae Vitae persuaded many Catholics, especially in the United States, that the Pope was hopelessly out of touch. Second-wave feminism, the drive for upward mobility, career opportunities and the desire for smaller families prompted many Catholic households to ignore the papal directive on birth control. As many studies have shown, Catholic attendance declined after 1968; many Catholics felt for the first time that it was all right to disobey the pope and still consider themselves good Catholics. Now, following the death of Pope Francis, the Church once again stands at a crossroads. Conservatives, those Mark Massa, a historian and a Jesuit, calls 'Catholic Fundamentalists,' are pressing for a pope who will reverse course. They criticize Francis for making overtures to the LGBTQ community and for permitting priests to bless same-sex unions. They claim he has 'feminized' the Church by calling out what others describe as 'toxic masculinity.' They dislike the fact that he restricted use of the traditional Latin mass and entertained the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. The other faction of the Church points out that Francis graciously sought to welcome marginal people—gays, lesbians, divorced people—into the Church and evinced concern for immigrants and for the poor, positions that have demonstrable appeal to a younger generation of Catholics. They also appreciate his attention to the ravages of climate change. The term liberal in the context of the Roman Catholic Church may be an oxymoron, but this second camp seeks to perpetuate the work and the legacy of Francis. The conclave stands at a crossroads, and the person the cardinals choose will likely determine the direction of the Church for years to come. As an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic, I have only a rooting interest in the conclave, and I'm loath to make predictions. But I recall the lyrics of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' by the Charlie Daniels Band, a fiddler's faceoff between Satan and a young man named Johnny. The devil bets a fiddle of gold against Johnny's soul and leads off with the bow across the strings, making 'an evil hiss.' The rendition may be technically perfect, but it lacks soul. When Johnny takes his turn, the fiddle vibrates with verve and passion—and he prevails. Whoever prevails in the cardinals' deliberations will inherit a church with plenty of gilding but still in need of some of the verve and passion that Francis brought to the task.
