The Sunday Mail
POPE Francis is famously a pontiff who seems to be missing an “off” switch. The first quarter of 2016 shapes up as a period so dense with activity that it may tax even his prodigious reservoirs of energy. Read below some of the events on his calender.
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Sunday, Jan 17 — Synagogue visit: Francis will be the third pope to visit Rome’s storied synagogue, after St. John Paul II in 1986 and Benedict XVI in 2010. Pope Francis generally gets high marks for his outreach to Judaism, including his well-known friendship with Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires, but is seen with ambivalence by some Jews for his stance on Israel and Palestine. When Pope Benedict visited six years ago, Jewish leaders used the occasion to protest possible sainthood for Pope Pius XII; it remains to be seen what may be on their minds when Francis comes calling.
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Thursday, Jan 21 — Sanctuary Workers: The first major jubilee event for a specific group features a celebration for workers at shrines and sanctuaries. In effect, it’s the first chance for Pope Francis to start drilling down about what his message of mercy implies in the nitty-gritty of Catholic life. Based in part on his Latin American heritage, the pontiff has a keen appreciation for the spiritual importance of shrines and pilgrimages.
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Monday, Jan 25 — The conversion of Paul: Pope Francis will travel across Rome to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to lead an ecumenical vespers service for the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Because the basilica has long been a center of ecumenical activity, it’s generally a chance for the pope to reflect on Christian unity. It is also the only major papal basilica in Rome currently led by an American, as Cardinal James Harvey is the archpriest.
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Saturday, Jan 30 — Jubilee audience: This will be the first of what will be a series of monthly “jubilee audiences” to be held on Saturdays, which gives Francis a platform to lay out his vision for the Year of Mercy. The events will be held in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall, and will supplement his regular weekly audiences on Wednesdays.
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Tuesday, Feb 2 — Presentation of the Lord: The feast commemorates the Biblical episode when Mary and Joseph took the infant Jesus to the temple in keeping with Jewish law. This year, February 2 also marks the close of what Pope Francis had designated as a “Year of Consecrated Life,” so expect him to reflect on the role of women and men religious in the Church.
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Saturday, Feb 6 — Padre Pio: A sociologist might argue that in Italy, the Holy Trinity isn’t Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather God, the Madonna, and Padre Pio.
It’s hard to find a bar, restaurant, or taxi cab in the country that doesn’t have a holy card or a medal bearing the famed Capuchin stigmatic’s image, renowned for his compassion for suffering, and Francis will celebrate a jubilee day for Padre Pio prayer groups. In effect, it’s a chance to take the Year of Mercy to the populist level.
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Wednesday, Feb 10 — Ash Wednesday: Francis opens Lent this year by commissioning a special corps of priests known as “Missionaries of Mercy,” who will be his ambassadors for the jubilee. They will have authority to forgive sins reserved under Church law to the Holy See, such as abortion or desecrating the Blessed Sacrament. Francis may have to give them a bit of direction on Ash Wednesday, since some priests coming to Rome to take part have told Crux no one really has explained what they are supposed to do when they go home.
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Feb 12-18 — Mexico: Papal trips to Mexico are always memorable, drawing vast crowds and generating wild enthusiasm, and certainly one by history’s first Latin American pontiff shapes up as a mega-event.
The trip will end with a Febriary 17 stop in Ciudad Juarez, just across the US border from El Paso, where Francis is expected to make a major statement on immigrant rights right after Americans have chosen candidates in Iowa (February 1) and New Hampshire (February 9).
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Friday, Feb 22 — Jubilee of the Roman Curia: Famously, Francis took the mandarins of the Roman Curia to the woodshed in December 2014, cataloguing 15 spiritual illnesses with which he implied they may be infected, such as careerism, the “terrorism of gossip,” and “spiritual Alzheimer’s.” He went a little softer this year, offering a set of virtues rather than vices. This session shapes up as a chance for Francis to lay out a vision of what a reformed Vatican bureaucracy, animated by mercy, might look like. — Cruxnow.com
