A family that eats together stays together

Pope Francis will visit Mexico’s violence-plagued states of Michoacan and Chihuahua as well as the impoverished region of Chiapas during his February visit, the foreign minister said Wednesday. Francis has denounced the leaks as a crime but vowed to press ahead with his reform agenda.

Many of those surveyed (17% of Americans and 35% of American Catholics) said the Pope’s views on global warming had influenced their own. He lined up with a few dozen people at a Caritas soup kitchen, getting a registration card like everyone else and tucking into a typical Florentine ribollita bean soup served on plastic plates with plastic utensils.

Telling participants that making the teachings of the Second Vatican Council come alive in the church was a strong pastoral motivation for St. John Paul II, Pope Francis asked them to “have in your hearts the same longing to live and implement the council and bring the light of Christ to the world”.

Despite the tumult, Francis has remained remarkably steady and determined, issuing an important mission statement this week outlining his vision of a church that shuns power, prestige and money in favor of solidarity with the poor and oppressed.

The Pope said that Christians have a special vocation to live the virtue of togetherness, and noted how Jesus made a point to eat with his friends, and even presented the Kingdom of God as a joyful banquet.

“The Pope will be staying here at the Nunciature and that is the law and tradition of the church”, said Balvo, who is also Vatican’s ambassador to Kenya and Sudan. “When there’s a party, a birthday or an anniversary, we meet around the table”, he said. In bright contrast to the rumors, document leaks have helped expose those who abuse their office in the Vatican and strengthens the pope’s goal of “rooting out the rot”.

“Changing things is always hard because we’re always tempted to continue in the daily ho-hum way we do things”, Francis’ top collaborator, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told Vatican Radio this week. He continued, saying the key was to “transform what can be normal resistance in the face of change into the tools for reform”.