Vatican Secretary of State celebrates Mass for Pope’s health

ROME – Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, celebrated Mass for Pope Francis’s health and recovery today, praying for the Pontiff’s swift return from his month-long hospitalisation.

Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, Cardinal Parolin also condemned what he said is a rhetoric of hatred among people that leads to violence, and called for a greater sense of fraternity and reconciliation.

It has been said many times, he said, “that to seek peace we must first of all disarm language, don’t use aggressive, offensive language in the face of others … it is there, the Lord reminds us, that the war begins: words of contempt and hatred toward others.”

Cardinal Parolin celebrated a March 14 Mass inside the Pauline chapel of the Vatican’s apostolic palace together with members of the curia and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See for Pope Francis’s health as he continues to battle serious respiratory illness.

Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on February 14 for treatment of a complex respiratory infection and double pneumonia which have left him requiring constant high-oxygen flow.

Doctors have said the Pope is considered out of immediate risk of death, however, there is still no indication of when he might be discharged.

Thursday marked the 12th anniversary of Pope Francis’s election to the papacy, a milestone he celebrated at Gemelli with hospital staff, who surprised him with a cake and 12 candles.

Cardinal Parolin in his homily prayed that the Pope “can recover to return to us” promptly, and he also acknowledged the anniversary of Francis’s election, saying the event “makes our prayer even more intense and alive”.

This prayer, Parolin said, is not so much a request of God, “because God already knows what we need”, but is rather an occasion to put oneself in a position to listen to God’s voice, which he said “is the best way to let him hear our prayers…an open heart listening to his word”.

He then turned to the day’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus warned, “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.”

“But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment…and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna,” Jesus says in the passage, telling his followers that “if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Cardinal Parolin said that in the pursuit of justice, “if you don’t go beyond the human logic in seeking God’s will, you will never find it.”

This is first of all applied to those around us, he said, saying believers must forge a good relationship with God by forging a good relationship with others.

“We are called first of all to seek relation with God in others, those around us,” he said, saying Christian relationships “must be founded on charity. We know that charity, love of other, is the proof of our love of God.”

He questioned attendees, asking, “how can we love God whom we don’t see if we don’t love our brother, whom we do see?”

Parolin noted that in the Gospel, Jesus put hatred and insults toward others on the same level as murder, saying this might seem “paradoxical” and “a but extreme,” but this is how conflicts are often started.

“The wars that explode in the world” are not born on the battlefield,” but “are born here, in the heart,” he said, saying the reconciliation and charity toward others that Jesus encourages directly combats “attitudes of hatred and hostility”.

For Christians, there is a “duty of reconciliation” before coming to make offerings to God, he said, stressing the importance for faithful of reconciling with those who have hurt or insulted them, or with those whom they might have “offended, judged poorly, mistreated.”

(Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)

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