The Vatican screens the documentary ‘San Damiano’, which tells the story of a young Polish man who, with fifty euros in his pocket, flees his past and arrives in Rome, living among the homeless near the central train station.

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The President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ethiopia (CBCE) and Metropolitan Archbishop of Addis Ababa, Cardinal Berhaneyesus Souraphiel, has expressed profound sorrow, prayers, and solidarity with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church following the devastating accident that claimed at least 36 lives and injured more than 200 others.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Migrants and refugees often are "privileged witnesses of hope through their resilience and trust in God," Pope Leo XIV said.

"Often they maintain their strength while seeking a better future, in spite of the obstacles that they encounter," he said Oct. 2 during a meeting with participants in the conference "Refugees and Migrants in Our Common Home," organized by the Augustinian-run Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia.

The Vatican dicasteries for Promoting Integral Human Development and for Culture and Education and the U.S. bishops' Migration and Refugee Services were among the co-sponsors of the conference, held in Rome Oct. 1-3 just before the Jubilee of Migrants and the Jubilee of Missions Oct. 4-5.

Pope Leo encouraged participants to share migrants' and refugees' stories of steadfast faith and hope so that they could be "an inspiration for others and assist in developing ways to address the challenges that they have faced in their own lives."

The pope also returned to a theme he had mentioned in September when discussing migration -- the "globalization of powerlessness." 

Overcoming the widespread sense that no one can make a difference "requires patience, a willingness to listen, the ability to identify with the pain of others and the recognition that we have the same dreams and the same hopes," Pope Leo XIV told the group.

Faced with a growing sense of being unable to change or improve the situation, he said, "we risk becoming immobile, silent and sad, thinking that nothing can be done when we are faced with innocent suffering."

Before the conference, Villanova held the official launch of its Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration, which promotes programs of scholarship, advocacy and service to migrants at the university and with the local community.

Pope Leo praised the project's goal of bringing together "leading voices throughout a variety of disciplines in order to respond to the current urgent challenges brought by the increasing number of people, now estimated to be over 100 million, who are affected by migration and displacement."

Michele R. Pistone, founder and faculty director of the institute, told conference participants that she was inspired by Pope Francis, who called on universities to do more teaching, research and social promotion with migrants and refugees.

"Now, Pope Leo XIV is again asking us to become missionary disciples working to reconcile a wounded world," Pistone said.

"In order for us to understand the other, we need to meet them and encounter them and have dialogues with them," she told Catholic News Service Oct. 2. "That's what Pope Francis called us to do, and now Pope Leo is calling us to do."

"To see the human face in every immigrant, in every person, is just so important and so central to our Gospel," Pistone said.

Sister Norma Pimentel, a Missionary of Jesus and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas, said, migrants "are missionaries of hope to us, because their presence with us honestly sanctifies who and where we are."

People who fear migrants and refugees or are convinced they are migrating just to take jobs from citizens need to take the time to actually meet a newcomer, Sister Pimentel said. Then, "they will stop seeing them as somebody that is invading my space, but rather as somebody who I have the opportunity to be able to show the presence of God." 

She has the same message for U.S. President Donald Trump or any political leader, she said: "Please come and see them. Please see their faces. Please see these families that are directly affected by your decisions and your laws and how you feel you must proceed to be as president."

The 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign succeeded in sending the erroneous message that migrants are "invaders that come and take over our land and destroy our America and take our jobs," she said.

"They're not here to destroy or to hurt anybody, but rather to be part of a community that will embrace them, as Pope Francis would say, would integrate them into the community and would protect them so that they can be a good part of who we are in America," she told CNS.

Addressing the conference Oct. 1, she said that "in a world marked by fear, division and uncertainty, we are invited to be people of hope, pilgrims of hope, of that hope which comes from our trust in the Lord. It is a living force, one that shapes how we see others, how we act and how we respond."

"In this Jubilee Year of Hope, we are called to find within ourselves kindness and compassion and courage, especially courage," Sister Pimentel said.

"Today, unfortunately, we are witnessing an unprecedented assault on humanity worldwide," she said, but as her bishop, Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, has said, "We may not have the power to stop the injustices that are destroying our communities. But we do have the power to love. We can be neighbors to those living in fear and who are afraid to go to work or even to go to the supermarket."

"No government can stop us from living out our faith and caring for our refugee brothers and sisters," she said.
 

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) -- People of faith cannot love God while despising his creatures, and people cannot call themselves Christians without caring for everything fragile and wounded, including the earth, Pope Leo XIV told climate activists and political and religious leaders.

"There is no room for indifference or resignation," he said, inaugurating an international conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."

Seated behind a slowly melting chunk of ice from a glacier in Greenland, the pope said, "God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created, for the benefit of all and for future generations, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters." 

"What will be our answer?" he asked.

Pope Leo spoke Oct. 1 during the opening session of a three-day conference titled, "Raising Hope for Climate Justice." Organized by the Laudato Si' Movement and with the support of the Vatican dicasteries for Promoting Integral Human Development and Communication, the event was held at the Focolare Movement's Mariapoli Center near the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo.

The conference brought together some 500 delegates representing global leaders, faith-based organizations, governments and NGOs active in climate justice in order to celebrate what has been achieved since Pope Francis' landmark encyclical was published in 2015 and to hammer out new strategies for expanded partnerships and concrete action.

"We are one family, with one Father," Pope Leo said, and "we inhabit the same planet and must care for it together."

"I, therefore, renew my strong appeal for unity around integral ecology and for peace!" he said.

Pope Leo noted, as Pope Francis did in his follow-up exhortation "Laudate Deum," that "some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most." 

"What must be done now to ensure that caring for our common home and listening to the cry of the earth and the poor do not appear as mere passing trends or, worse still, are seen and felt as divisive issues?" he asked.

"Everyone in society, through nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups, must put pressure on governments to develop and implement more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls," the pope said.

"Citizens need to take an active role in political decision-making at national, regional and local levels," he said. "Only then will it be possible to mitigate the damage done to the environment."

Pope Leo asked the audience to "give thanks to our Father in heaven for this gift we have inherited from Pope Francis!" which was followed by enthusiastic applause.

"The challenges identified in Laudato Si' are in fact even more relevant today than they were 10 years ago," he said, and these challenges, which are social, political and spiritual, "call for conversion."

"It is only by returning to the heart that a true ecological conversion can take place," Pope Leo said, saying, "We must shift from collecting data to caring; and from environmental discourse to an ecological conversion that transforms both personal and communal lifestyles."

For believers, he said, "we cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded."

Integral ecology thrives on four relationships: with God, with others, with nature and with ourselves, he said. "Through our commitment to them, we can grow in hope by living out the interdisciplinary approach of Laudato Si' and the call to unity and collaboration that flows from it."

Pope Leo also expressed his hope that a number of upcoming U.N. summits, including the 2025 Climate Change Conference being held in Brazil in November, "will listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, families, Indigenous peoples, involuntary migrants and believers throughout the world."

"I encourage everyone, especially young people, parents and those who work in local and national administrations and institutions, to play their part in finding solutions for today's cultural, spiritual and educational challenges, always striving tenaciously for the common good," he added.

Among the participants who spoke during the opening session in the presence of the pope was Brazil’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, and the former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has long been involved in initiatives for the protection of creation. 

Indicating Pope Leo, Schwarzenegger said he was in the presence of a true "action hero" because of his election as pope and leader of a city-state whose goal is to become the first carbon-neutral state in the world.

Pope Leo later quipped in his opening remarks that "if there is indeed an action hero with us this afternoon, it is all of you who are working together to make a difference."

Schwarzenegger outlined how he continued to help take aggressive action on fighting climate change while he was governor of the state of California from 2003 to 2011, reducing greenhouse gases by 25% and promoting other green initiatives.

Warnings that environmental legislation would ruin the state's economy were "a bunch of nonsense," he said. "Today, California has the strictest environmental laws in the United States, and we are number one economically" in the U.S. and "the fourth largest economy in the world" with a $4 trillion GDP.

Instead of people "whining" and wondering what to do, he said, everyone should "get to work" because "everyone has the power" to do something, he said.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell reaffirms elderly people as 'an invaluable treasure for the People of God' in his opening remarks to the International Congress on the Pastoral Care of the Elderly, taking place at the Jesuit General Curia.

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A number of countries have expressed their concern over Israel’s interception of a flotilla trying to carry aid to Gaza.

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The Jubilee of the Missionary World and the Jubilee of Migrants will bring tens of thousands of pilgrims from over 100 countries to Rome from October 4–5, with events including a Mass with Pope Leo XIV, international prayer gatherings, and the Festival of Peoples.

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Pope Leo XIV receives the participants of the International Conference "Refugees and Migrants in Our Common Home" currently taking place at the Augustinianum and calls for action in response to the emergency affecting over 100 million people impacted by the migration phenomenon.

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After her audience with Pope Leo XIV, Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration, speaks to Vatican News about the Catholic Church’s moral authority and practical outreach to advance the rights of migrants.

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Leger was raised at the court of King Clotaire II and by his uncle, Bishop Didon of Poitiers. Leger was made archdeacon by Didon, was ordained, and in about 651, became abbot of Maxentius Abbey, where he introduced the Rule of St. Benedict. He served Queen Regent St. Bathildis and helped her govern when Clovis II died in 656, and was named bishop of Autun in 663. He reconciled the differing factions that had torn the See apart, introduced reforms, fortified the town, and was known for his ...