Jesus “tells us that for Him we are precisely this, friends: dear people beyond all merit and expectation, to whom He extends His hand and offers His love, His Grace, His Word; with whom ? with us, friends ? He shares what is dearest to Him, all that He has heard from the Father,” the Pope said to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square (video).

The Pope continued, “And so let us ask ourselves: what face does the Lord have for me? The face of a friend or of a stranger? Do I feel loved by Him as a dear person? And what is the face of Jesus that I show to others, especially to those who err and need forgiveness?”

“May Mary help us to grow in friendship with Her Son and to spread it around us,” Pope Francis concluded.

“Many times their training and their reality have been oriented towards a Tridentine model of the priesthood,” Cardinal Hollerich, the relator-general of the synod on synodality, said of parish priests, in an address to Pope Francis in the presence of participants. “And now they see that the identity they had for centuries is crumbling, and sometimes this identity is lost ... and there is the danger of wanting to build a new identity based on the experience of the past.”

“The identity of priests and parish priests (even bishops) is given to us by the Holy Spirit when we walk with the people,” he continued. “Then the sacraments are no longer the expression of a ritualism in search of identity, but become a true rite where God communicates himself to his people.”

Cardinal Hollerich’s reference to the “Tridentine model of the priesthood” appears to be a reference to the Council of Trent’s teaching on the priesthood, and not simply a reference to the traditional Latin Mass.

The archbishop of Luxembourg, now 65, gained notoriety in 2022 when he said that Catholic teaching on homosexuality is “false.” In 2023, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Hollerich to his nine-member advisory Council of Cardinals.

The Orthodox churches—and some of the Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome—celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar. Christian leaders of both East and West have explored the possibility of arriving at a common date for the Easter celebration. The issue will be moot in 2025, when the Julian and Gregorian calendars put Easter Sunday on the same date.

“Jesus asked St. Margaret Mary [for] acts of reparation for the offences caused by the sins of humanity,” the Pope said to participants in the conference, entitled Repairing the Irreparable. “If these acts consoled His heart, this means that reparation can also console the heart of every wounded person.”

“May the work of your conference renew and deepen the meaning of this beautiful practice of the reparation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a practice that today may be somewhat forgotten or wrongly judged obsolete,” the Pope added. “And may it also help to enhance its rightful place in the penitential journey of each baptized person in the Church.”

“Aging populations, low fertility rates, international migration, growing youth populations, and huge disparities in birth rates between countries have fundamentally altered population patterns compared to 30 years ago,” said Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations.

“Population growth is often erroneously cited as a major cause of the increasing number of people experiencing food insecurity, leading to the conclusion that fertility rate reduction strategies could be the answer,” he continued. “Recent decades have shown that this is not the case. Rather, population growth has gone hand in hand with significant increases in food production, demonstrating that it is fully compatible with shared prosperity and the achievement of integral human development for all.”

Archbishop Caccia made his remarks at a UN meeting marking the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. At the Cairo conference, the Holy See worked with many Muslim nations to head off attempts to declare an international right to abortion.

The Pope encouraged the recruits to maintain good relationships with their colleagues and with others during their terms at the Vatican. “Good relationships are the main path for our human and Christian growth and maturation,” he said. The Pope also praised the Swiss Guard for “generous and diligent” service.

New members of the Swiss Guard are traditionally sworn in on May 6, the anniversary of the day in 1527 when 147 members of the unit died in defense of Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome.

“I have always loved travelling by public transport,” the Pope recalled. “It’s a way to be among people, to feel their warmth and their worries.”

“The littlest ones retain a sense of beauty that is still intact,” the Pope added, as he reflected on a 2023 meeting with 7,500 children who had traveled by train for a papal audience.

Referring to Laudato Si’, the interviewer asked, “How much have governments done after the cry of alarm raised by you in 2015 in defense of the Earth and the environment?”

Pope Francis replied, “They haven’t done enough ... The crisis requires the involvement of all people: the whole of society should exercise healthy pressure, because it is up to every family to think that the future of their sons and daughters is at stake.”

In April, a convict who was on the “most wanted” list in the state of New York was arrested in St. Peter’s Square just before a papal audience. He was carrying three knives.

Police have not confirmed that either man was regarded as a threat to Pope Francis.

“Protecting marriage indeed means protecting an entire family, it means saving all the relationships generated by marriage: the love between couples, between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren; it means saving that witness of a love that is possible and forever, which young people struggle to believe in,” the Pope said.

“I see a great urgency today: to help young people to discover that Christian marriage is a vocation, a specific calling that God addresses to a man and a women so that they can fully realize themselves as generative, becoming a father and a mother, and bringing the grace of their Sacrament into the world,” the Pope continued.

The Pope also emphasized that “it is important that newlyweds experience a nuptial mystagogy, that will help them to live the beauty of their Sacrament and a spirituality of the couple.”

Warning against clericalism, the Pope then spoke of the “importance of co-responsibility between married couples and priests within your movement. You have understood and live tangibly the complementarity of the two vocations: I encourage you to take this into the parishes, so that the laypeople and priests discover its richness and necessity.”

Swiss President Viola Amherd confirmed that the Pontiff has been asked to join in the meeting, which will be held in Switzerland on June 15-16. Although no formal response has been given, she said, the Vatican is “very positive” about the summit. Delegations from 160 different nations have been invited to participate.

“The founding and growth of Amsterdam are linked to our faith and the Catholic Church,” the Pope said. “A key moment in the city’s history is the Eucharistic miracle that took place in 1345 and is still commemorated today by a silent procession and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.”

“It is my hope that you will continue to live and work in your magnificent city with God’s blessing, and that, inspired and sustained by the Eucharist, you will keep bearing joyful witness to our faith and to practical love of our neighbor,” the Pope added, after referring to various pastoral initiatives in the Dutch city. “May your efforts to promote fraternity and solidarity among the people of Amsterdam bear abundant fruit.”

“We have rebuilt a new life for each of us in the most terrible moments of existence, between life and death, we still lived with Jesus,” said Suhail Abo Dawood, who spoke of soaring food prices and the recent arrival of food aid.

“A few days ago, our Lord Jesus gave us a beautiful gift: we received a chicken or two from the church for each family in the parish and we also shared it with some neighbors in the complex,” he continued. “Six months had passed since we last ate chicken, and our weak bodies were finally able to be nourished with protein.”

“By reciting the Rosary and celebrating Holy Mass daily, we will overcome this savage war in Gaza, praying for a single intention, which is lasting peace and love in the Holy Land of Christ Jesus,” he concluded.

Bishop Doran observed that official medical boards have removed a ban on abortion from their codes of conduct and taken a neutral stand on euthanasia. But he vowed that the Church “will stand with our doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who refuse to be bullied into participating in ending the lives of their patients.”

Father Roger Landry said that while some radical students were sincere in their concern for the civilians in Gaza, the protests were “an instrumentalization of what’s going on in Gaza to advance an agenda.”

“Switzerland supports the reconstruction of the barracks and the recruitment of new Swiss Guards,” Amherd tweeted after the meeting. She said that during the audience, “I spoke about the civil war in Sudan, about the common commitment to international humanitarian law and against the death penalty.”

Amherd also meet with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.

The parties, according to a Vatican statement, discussed the “good relations” between the Holy See and Switzerland, the Swiss Guard and the renovation of their barracks, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Holy Land, and “the necessary commitment to promoting peace, in the search for a diplomatic solution leading to an end to hostilities as soon as possible.”

The European nation of 8.6 million (map) is 56% Christian and 9% Muslim.

The Vatican reported that their conversation had centered on the persecution of Christians in Albania under the Communist regime. The Pope and the Albanian leader also discussed the prospects for Albania’s entry into the European Union, and the conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza.

The Pontiff wrote to Sister Gramick?one of the founders of New Ways Ministry, whose advocacy for homosexuals drew a caution from the Vatican and, in 2010, from the US bishops’ conference?after she had written to complain about the condemnation of gender ideology in Dignitas Infinita.

Responding quickly to the complaint, the Pope said that the Vatican document’s negative judgement “refers not to transgender people but to gender ideology, which nullifies differences.”

The move by the diocese?unprecedented in the many cases of diocesan bankruptcies in the US?suggests that a dramatic showdown is coming in the case. Attorneys for sex-abuse claimants are currently demanding more than twice the sum proposed in the last reorganization plan submitted by the diocese.

Plaintiffs voted in February to reject a proposed $200-million settlement, which diocesan officials described as “the highest offer in the history of diocesan bankruptcies.” The diocese now argues that the creditors are “demanding an unrealistic amount of money,” and asking the court to dismiss the case.

The diocese, which now faces more than 500 sex-abuse suits, filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2022. The contentious process has already cost about $100 million in legal fees.

“I ask you first to live out your specific ministerial charism in ever greater service to the varied gifts that the Spirit sows in the People of God,” he wrote in his May 2 letter.

“With all my heart, I suggest that you learn to practice the art of communal discernment, employing for this purpose the method of ‘conversation in the Spirit,’ which has proved so helpful in the synodal journey and in the proceedings of the synodal Assembly itself,” the Pope continued. “Finally, I would like to urge you to base everything you do in a spirit of sharing and fraternity among yourselves and with your bishops.”

The Pope wrote to the world’s parish priests at the conclusion of Parish Priests for the Synod. The four-day Vatican meeting was announced in February amid criticism that parish priests were insufficiently included on the Synod on synodality.