Tanzania’s Catholic Bishops have endorsed growing calls—both local and international—for an independent investigation into the recent election violence, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Before joining hundreds of people for lunch, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the Jubilee of the Poor and prayed that all Christians would share "the love of God, which welcomes, binds up wounds, forgives, consoles and heals."

With thousands of migrants, refugees, unhoused people, the unemployed and members of the trans community present in St. Peter's Basilica or watching from St. Peter's Square, Pope Leo assured them, "In the midst of persecution, suffering, struggles and oppression in our personal lives and in society, God does not abandon us."

Rather, "he reveals himself as the one who takes our side," the pope said in his homily Nov. 16, the church's celebration of the World Day of the Poor. 

Volunteers with Vatican, diocesan and Rome-based Catholic charities joined the people they assist for the Mass. The French charity Fratello organized an international pilgrimage, bringing hundreds of people to Rome for the Mass, visits to the major basilicas of Rome and prayer services.

The Vatican said 6,000 people were at Mass in the basilica and another 20,000 people watched on screens from St. Peter's Square. By the time Pope Leo led the recitation of the Angelus prayer, some 40,000 people were in the square.

After the Angelus, as part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of their foundation, the Vincentian Fathers sponsored and served lunch for the pope and his guests. Members of the Daughters of Charity and volunteers from Vincentian organizations helped serve the meal and handed out 1,500 backpacks filled with food and hygiene products.

The luncheon featured a first course of vegetable lasagna, followed by chicken cutlets and vegetables and ending with baba, a small Neapolitan cake soaked in syrup. Rolls, fruit, water and soft drinks also were on offer. 

Before the Mass, Father Tomaž Mavrič, superior general of the Vincentians, symbolically gave Pope Leo house keys from the Vincentians' "13 Houses Campaign." The name of the project, which has constructed homes for the poor around the world, is an homage to St. Vincent de Paul and his decision in 1643 to use an endowment from French King Louis XIII to build 13 small houses near the Vincentian headquarters in Paris to care for abandoned children.

In his homily at the Mass, Pope Leo noted how the Bible is "woven with this golden thread that recounts the story of God, who is always on the side of the little ones, orphans, strangers and widows."

In Jesus' life, death and resurrection, "God's closeness reaches the summit of love," he said. "For this reason, the presence and word of Christ become gladness and jubilee for the poorest, since he came to proclaim the good news to the poor and to preach the year of the Lord's favor."

While the pope thanked Catholics who assist the poor, he said he wanted the poor themselves to hear "the irrevocable words of the Lord Jesus himself: 'Dilexi te,' I have loved you." 

"Yes, before our smallness and poverty, God looks at us like no one else and loves us with eternal love," the pope said, "And his church, even today, perhaps especially in our time, still wounded by old and new forms of poverty, hopes to be 'mother of the poor, a place of welcome and justice,'" he said, quoting his exhortation on love for the poor.

While there are many forms of poverty -- material, moral and spiritual -- the thing that cuts across all of them and particularly impacts young people is loneliness, he said. 

"It challenges us to look at poverty in an integral way, because while it is certainly necessary at times to respond to urgent needs, we also must develop a culture of attention, precisely in order to break down the walls of loneliness," the pope said. "Let us, then, be attentive to others, to each person, wherever we are, wherever we live."

Poverty is a challenge not only for those who believe in God, he said, calling on "heads of state and the leaders of nations to listen to the cry of the poorest."

"There can be no peace without justice," Pope Leo said, "and the poor remind us of this in many ways: through migration as well as through their cries, which are often stifled by the myth of well-being and progress that does not take everyone into account, and indeed forgets many individuals, leaving them to their fate."
 

On the Ninth World Day of the Poor, Pope Leo XIV shares lunch with around 1,300 people from around the world, and recalls the many people who suffer due to violence, war, and hunger.

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St. Margaret of Scotland, or Margaret of Wessex, was an English princess born in Hungary to Princess Agatha of Hungary and English Prince Edward the Exile around 1045. Her siblings, Cristina and Edgar the Atheling were also born in Hungary around this time. Margaret and her family returned to England when she was 10-years-old and her father was called back as a potential successor to the throne. However, Edward died immediately after the family arrived, but Margaret and Edgar continued to ...

Pope Leo XIV appeals for an end to discrimination and persecution against Christians, and prays that all violence may cease and believers may work together for the common good.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Leo XIV fulfilled a promise made by the late Pope Francis to return to Canada's Indigenous communities artifacts -- including an Inuit kayak, masks, moccasins and etchings -- that have been held by the Vatican for more than 100 years.

The pope gave 62 artifacts to the leaders of the Canadian bishops' conference Nov. 15, the Vatican and the bishops' conference said in a joint statement.

The bishops "will proceed, as soon as possible, to transfer these artifacts to the National Indigenous Organizations," which will ensure they are "reunited with their communities of origin," said a separate statement from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

Pope Leo "desires that this gift represent a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity," the joint statement said. "This is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artifacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the indigenous peoples."

The artifacts, which came from different First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities, "are part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, encouraged by Pope Pius XI during the Holy Year, to bear witness to the faith and cultural richness of peoples," the joint statement said.

"Sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925," it said, "these artifacts were subsequently combined with those of the Lateran Ethnologic Missionary Museum, which then became the 'Anima Mundi' Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums." 

Members of Canada's Indigenous communities have been asking for years that the items be returned. In the spring of 2022, when community representatives visited the Vatican for meetings with Pope Francis before his trip to Canada, they visited the Vatican Museums and were given a private tour of the collection.

Pope Leo's decision to give the artifacts to the Canadian bishops instead of to the government or to an Indigenous organization "is a tangible sign of his desire to help Canada's Bishops walk alongside Indigenous Peoples in a spirit of reconciliation during the Jubilee Year of Hope and beyond,” said Bishop Pierre Goudreault, president of the Canadian bishops' conference.

In 2023, the Vatican did something similar, giving the Orthodox Church of Greece three marble fragments from the Parthenon in Athens; the church then gave the marbles to the government.

Speaking to reporters in April 2023, Pope Francis had said the Canadian artifacts would be returned.

"This is the Seventh Commandment: if you have stolen something, you must give it back," he said. What can be returned to its rightful owners should be, he added.

The return of the artifacts "is an important and a right step," Joyce Napier, the Canadian ambassador to the Holy See, told Catholic News Service.

The artifacts will go first to Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, she said. There, the Indigenous communities, their experts and elders will try to identify them and their provenance and determine where they should be kept.
 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Meeting an international cast of film directors and actors, Pope Leo XIV spoke about the power of cinema to help people "contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity." 

Sitting in the front row of the Vatican's frescoed Clementine Hall Nov. 15 were, among others: directors Gus Van Sant and Spike Lee and actors Monica Bellucci, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen and Sergio Castellitto, who played the traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco in the 2024 film "Conclave."

In a video released a few days before the meeting, Pope Leo said his four favorite films were: "It's a Wonderful Life," the 1946 film directed by Frank Capra; "The Sound of Music," the 1965 film by Robert Wise; "Ordinary People," the 1980 film directed by Robert Redford; and "Life Is Beautiful," Roberto Benigni's 1997 film.

Pope Leo asked the directors and actors to "defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative."

"Beauty is not just a means of escape," he told them; "it is above all an invocation." 

"When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges," he said. "It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express."

Pope Leo acknowledged the challenges facing cinema with the closing of theaters and the increasing release of films directly to streaming services.

The theaters, like all public cultural spaces, are important to a community, he said.

But even more, the pope said, "entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined." 

At a time where people are almost constantly in front of screens, he said, cinema offers more. "It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens and even pain can find new meaning."

People need "witnesses of hope, beauty and truth," Pope Leo said, telling the directors and actors that they can be those witnesses.

"Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity," he said.

Being authentic, the pope said, means not being afraid "to confront the world's wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated."

"Good cinema does not exploit pain," Pope Leo said. "It recognizes and explores it."

"Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love," he told them. "Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it."

Coming to the Vatican during the Jubilee of hope, he said, the directors and actors join millions of pilgrims who have made the journey over the past year.

"Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires," the pope told them. "You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war."

The pope prayed that their work would "never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God."

 

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