(We liked Pope Francis even when he was Jorge Bergoglio. This is the only story that ever brought down the whole website. People flocked to it after Cardinal Bergoglio was elected. - Ed. 2024)

Almost apologising for the actions of some priests, Bergoglio recalled the story of a young unmarried mother who had the courage to bring her child into the world and who then "found herself on a pilgrimage, going from parish to parish, trying to find someone who would baptise her child."

Vatican Insider reports that in his homily at the end of a Buenos Aires convention on urban pastoral care, Bergoglio called for an end to "sacramental blackmail" saying that "hijacking" of the sacraments is an expression of rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism.

"Sacraments are not a way for priests to affirm their own supremacy", said the Cardinal.

Rubbing the fragility and wounds of the faithful in their faces, or dampening the hopes and expectations of those who supposedly do not fulfil the 'requirements' in terms of doctrinal preparation, or moral status, is a pastorally misleading model which rejects the dynamics of Christ's incarnation.

"Jesus did not preach his own politics: he accompanied others", said Bergoglio.

Priests who deny the sacraments to people because of their life circumstances are the "hypocrites of today", and the "followers of the Pharisees", the ones Jesus turned his back on.

Emphasising that the Church is not an NGO or a proselyte of some multinational company", Bergoglio said denying baptism to children born out of wedlock is a form of "pharisaic Gnosticism" that "drives people away from salvation".

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• The Tablet
• Image: m24digital

Aregentina has 4,500 shanty towns and illegal settlements.

Seven priests - including Bishop Gustavo Carrara - who live and minister in the slums of Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, met with President Alberto Fernandez last week.

The priests' suggestions helped broaden understanding of the reality of those who live in the slums and what isolation would be like for them.

The filmed a video with Fernandez in the background, where they urged all people to stay home, including those in the country's slums.

"In the slums it is also possible to be in quarantine. We know that the neighbors sometimes have little space. If you see someone in the streets who needs help to isolate themselves, let us know.

"Let there be no grandparents in the streets, bring them to our parishes," the priests say in a video shared by Fernandez on Twitter.

"The parishes in the slums are open for whatever is necessary."

The priests and the president then prayed the Our Father.

The Holy Father, Poipe Francis, asked all Christians to do so last Wednesday to ask for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting took place in the president's house, as he is in semi-isolation because he's over 60. In Argentina this is considered an at-risk age for COVID-19 patients.

Fernandez brought the priests together because they have first-hand knowledge of the situation in the slums and have a sense of the general mood of the population.

They can also help keep people calm if the quarantine continues much longer.

An estimated seven percent of the population of Buenos Aires live in one of several shantytowns.

"We told the president that social peace has a lot to do with the help that is given," said one priest after the meeting.

"The president showed knowledge of the situation and assured us that more help is coming."

To help protect those most at risk, most of the 40 priests who live in the slums are setting up cots in their parish grounds so the elderly don't have to live on the streets. Schools are being re-purposed so homeless people and drug addicts can be cared for.

"If people are starving, they are going to go out and work," another priest said. "Even if this means placing themselves and others in danger."

"In our neighborhoods, the social issues are above health, even if they go hand in hand," he added. "If the social issue is not resolved, we won't be able to take care of the health of our neighbors."

Di Paola said rather than ask people to stay home in their almost unbearable homes, people should be to "stay in the neighborhood."

"They can take time out for walks but avoid social gatherings."

Source

• Crux
• Image: MercoPress

President Mauricio Macri heard Archbishop Mario Poli speak at the traditional May Revolution Day service at the local cathedral.

The Archbishop said "Attention should be prioritised toward children and the elderly, the most vulnerable (in society), to look after them is to guarantee the future of an independent and free country".

Archbishop Poli said politicians should not limit themselves to looking only at the coldness of statistics.

"We should not lose sensitivity to the pain of others," he said.

Continue reading

But then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, being frugal, would save the rubber bands and return them in a ball at the end of every month.

Guide Javier Cortese offered the anecdote while leading tours around central Buenos Aires, where the local government and private companies alike have capitalised on the popularity of Pope Francis.

Tour guides now take tourists to the most notable and mundane points — from his neighbourhood parish to the newspaper stand - visited by the pope during his life in Buenos Aires.

Cortese said the tours are nothing out of the ordinary, given the excitement in Buenos Aires over Pope Francis' unexpected election.

The idea for the tours "was hatched the same day" of the March 2013 election, he said.

The Buenos Aires government was quick to embrace Pope Francis' election; it investigated his past and put plaques at places like his childhood home.

Despite the early excitement, the tours in Buenos Aires may be running their course and, at some places, bring more bother than benefits. Continue reading.

Image: Javier Cortese, centre, leads tours of sites important or notable during the life of Pope Francis CNS/David Agren

The statue, a lifesize likeness of the Pope, had been installed for about 10 days in the gardens of the Buenos Aires cathedral where he had been archbishop.

But as soon as he heard about it, the Pope telephoned the cathedral and asked for it to be removed.

The statue was created by artist Fernando Pugliese, who had created other monuments dedicated to John Paul II and Mother Teresa.

Made of fiberglass and resin, it was in a courtyard closed to the public, but could be glimpsed from the street, where the pontiff appeared to smiling and waving.

Local people had been posing for photographs next to it ever since it was erected. But within a few hours of the Pope's phone call it had disappeared.

The artist had intended to populate Buenos Aires with variously sized sculptures of the first pope from Latin America, in public and private spaces related to his life in Argentina.

"I've known Jorge Bergoglio for 14 years. I've always admired him and his very humble personality fascinates me," he told reporters.

Meanwhile, back at the Vatican, Pope Francis gave an off-the-cuff talk to about 6000 seminarians and religious novices.

Urging them to live out their vocations with joy, he said: "True joy doesn't come from things. No, it is born of an encounter, of the relationship with the other. It's born of feeling ourselves accepted, understood, loved, and of accepting, understanding and loving."

He cautioned his listeners to avoid the temptation of thinking "the latest smartphone, the fastest moped and a car that turns heads" will make them happy.

The Pope said it pains him when he sees a nun or priest driving an expensive car. When a car is needed, he added, "get a humbler one".

Sources:

Clarin

Patheos

Catholic News Agency

Image: Patheos

The article says a priest in the commercial centre of Buenos Aires was finishing distributing Communion at Mass in 1996 when a woman told him she had found a discarded host on a candleholder at the back of the church.

The priest placed the host in a container of water and put it in the tabernacle. A week later he discovered that the host had turned into a bloody substance.

According to the 2010 article by Father M. Piotrowski in Love One Another magazine, the priest informed Cardinal Bergoglio, who had the host professionally photographed.

For several years the host remained in secret in the tabernacle, then the cardinal decided to have it scientifically analysed in New York by a team of scientists who did not know its origin.

One of the scientists, Dr Frederic Zugiba, a cardiologist and forensic pathologist, determined that the substance was a fragment of heart muscle containing human DNA.

He said the presence of a large number of white blood cells indicated that the heart was alive when the sample was taken.

"What is more," he said, "these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest."

The tests were witnessed by two Australians, journalist Mike Willesee and lawyer Ron Tesoriero.

Willesee, formerly a leading television journalist, had been brought back to his Catholic faith through filming a woman with stigmata and documenting Eucharistic miracles.

When Willesee told Dr Zugiba that the analysed sample came from a consecrated host, the doctor said: "How and why a consecrated host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science — a mystery totally beyond her competence."

Sources:

Love One Another

Milagro Eucaristico Buenos Aires Argentina (YouTube video)

The Conversion of Mike Willesee (ABC Compass)

Image: The Absolute Primacy of Christ

"It seems my brother cardinals went almost to the end of the world [to choose a pope]," he told the crowd in St Peter's Square in his first address, a joke which belied his image as the cardinal who never smiles.

Up until 13 March, he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

Pundits did not see him as a favourite for the job of succeeding Benedict XIV and his advanced age - at 76, he is just two years younger than Benedict at the time of his election in 2005 - may surprise those expecting a younger man as the 266th pope.

However, he appeals to both Church conservatives and reformers, being seen as orthodox on sexual matters, for instance, but liberal on social justice.

"We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least," he was quoted as saying by the National Catholic Reporter at a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007.

"The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers."

He was born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires, of Italian descent.

According to his official Vatican biography, he was ordained as a Jesuit in 1969 and went on to study in Argentina and Germany.

A bishop from 1992, he became Cardinal of Buenos Aires in 1998, and at the 2005 conclave was seen as a contender for the papacy.

His election took many by surprise in his home city, where many had thought his age ruled him out, the BBC's Marcia Carmo reports from there.

But any surprise soon gave way to the jubilant blaring of car horns on the streets.

As Cardinal Bergoglio, his sermons always had an impact in Argentina and he often stressed social inclusion, indirectly criticising governments that did not pay attention to those on the margins of society, our correspondent says.

Francesca Ambrogetti, who co-authored a biography of him, told Reuters news agency that part of his public appeal lay in his humble lifestyle. Continue reading

Sources

• BBC
• Image: The Guardian
  

See also:

• Politico
• Heavy
• The Telegraph