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Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Pope Francis has avoided naming president Vladimir Putin – but has been sending messages directly to him.
“I repeat: Put down your weapons! God is with the peacemakers, not with those who use violence,” the Holy Father said.
Vladimir Putin’s history of making trips to the Vatican dates back more than two decades. The first time he met with Pope Francis, just eight months into his papacy in November of 2013, it was because they had a common interest – asking the United States not to take military action in the conflict in Syria.
But since then, the tone of the meetings with Pope Francis have been different. In 2015, they met after Russia annexed Crimea. Pope Francis urged Putin to respect the ceasefire agreement and allow humanitarian workers into the region. Their last meeting, in 2019, was seen by many to be a clashing of world views, as the two discussed Russia’s increased presence in Venezuela, Syria and Ukraine.
During that interaction, Pope Francis gave Putin a signed copy of the message of peace he gives to world leaders.
“This is the message of peace this year that I signed today for you,” he said.
And last Friday, Pope Francis made an unprecedented trip to the Russian embassy to the Holy See to express his concern about the war and attempt to make contact with Vladimir Putin’s political circles.
During his most recent general audiences, Pope Francis has made it clear that his heart remains with the Ukrainian people.
“Ordinary civilians are the real victims, who pay for the follies of war with their own skin,” he said.
Pope Francis asked that all those who are watching the conflict unfold should pray for those suffering.
“If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to Him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy, which invites us. Press forward and fear nothing.”
In the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers from the worst of the Russian attacks, they’re getting ready. One neighborhood includes a high rise apartment building, just on the outskirts of the city.
They’ve filled bags with sand donated by the army. They’ve posted Ukrainian flags to show their pride and allegiance. The locals don’t know if the Russian attack will come to their city, Lviv, but they’re not wasting any time to be ready.
One 23-year-old lives in the apartment building with his two brothers, a sister and his parents. He’s helping build the barricade to keep his community safe.
Dennis LaSalle makes sure to come to church every Ash Wednesday to receive his ashes, but this year, he entered St. James Cathedral Basilica with a heavy heart.
“There’s so much hatred in the world,” he said, referring not just to the war in Ukraine but to the deep cultural and political divisions tearing people apart, locally and globally.
As a result, LaSalle has made up his mind about how he will spend Lent.
“I’m going to give up having hatred and anger in my heart. I wish we would all do it, but if I want it to happen, it has to start with me,” he said as he sat in a pew waiting for the noon Mass to start. His decision was inspired by the pandemic.
“COVID taught me that life is short and we have to care for one another,” he explained.
Ash Wednesday 2022 marked the first time since the pandemic uprooted everyone’s lives that Catholics were able to take part in the holy day in a normal fashion.
It also marked Bishop Robert Brennan’s first Ash Wednesday since becoming Bishop of Brooklyn in November.
Bishop Brennan distributed ashes at the cathedral by rubbing them on the heads of each member of the congregation — a sharp contrast to last year, when the clergy sprinkled ashes on heads to avoid touching anyone.
Back in 2020, Ash Wednesday fell on Feb. 26, just as the pandemic was first taking hold nationally, but before the lockdown intended to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus began in New York City.
Now, even as confirmed cases of COVID-19 are declining locally and the worst appears to be over, the pandemic was still very much on the minds of people who gathered at the cathedral.
L. Brown, who declined to give her first name, lost a good friend to COVID last year and her visit to the cathedral was partly in memory of her buddy.
“I came because COVID made me think about life and how finite it is. I believe in a higher power helping all of us, so I’m here to acknowledge that,” she said.
Anne King was attending Mass for the first time in a month.
“Between the cold and the snow and COVID still around, I didn’t want to take a chance on going out. I’m 85 years old. It feels so good to be back. This is my church,” she said.
Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, is a good time to reflect, Bishop Brennan said. “One of the chief things about Lent is opening ourselves up to the grace of God. Opening ourselves to God who wants to give to us his very self,” he added.
Father Bryan Patterson, pastor of St. James Cathedral Basilica, said Ash Wednesday reminds people they have the chance to reach beyond their limitations for something greater.
“We have the opportunity to discover that God is here and that he loves us — even with our limitations,” he said.
This year, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis asked the faithful to think of Ukrainians on Ash Wednesday.
“What Pope Francis has asked us to do is to take prayer and fasting today and make it an intentional act of prayer and fasting — praying for peace in our world right now, particularly peace in Ukraine,” Bishop Brennan said.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians already crossed the border into Poland. But while some are sharing stories of survival, others are not.
Olga fled the country with her nine-year-old daughter Angelina. Olga had to leave her husband behind so he could fight with whatever he could find.
“It’s so difficult that I, I cannot tell you how difficult,” Olga said.
She is still shell-shocked, but she has friends to take her in.
“We heard the bombs. It’s like explosion,” Olga said.
As night falls in the bitter cold, more heartbreak. But the Polish people are offering refugees a warm welcome, warm clothes, a warm place to stay, a warm meal, even diapers and toys for children. It’s a grassroots effort smack in the middle of a supermarket parking lot, just a few kilometers from the border.
At the nearest Polish train station, refugees stuff themselves inside looking for help and many get just that. But not everyone is treated equally. One Cameroonian woman doesn’t want any more trouble, so she hides her face. She says that in Ukraine, she was shoved from the free train while trying to escape with her child while white Ukrainians were helped up and black men, she says, were treated worse.
“All the black guys, no, no,” the Cameroonian refugee said. “There was one inside the chamber that went inside the train. And [someone] show him [a] gun and [he had to] walk out. And he walked out… it was terrible.”
She says discrimination was rearing its ugly head at the most terrifying moment.
“The free train, they help their people,” she said, “but do not want to help blacks.”
President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address to plug his historic U.S. Supreme Court nominee: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. She will have a chance to speak for herself when she meets with four top senators today. The two Republicans might need some persuading.
“I’m troubled by the combination of this slim appellate record and the intensity of Judge Jackson’s far left dark money fan club,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The two Democrats Jackson is meeting are already voicing their support.
“She has issued 500 separate legal opinions,” said Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin. “Her record is pretty well known, enough so that we confirmed her for the second DC Circuit Court just a few months ago.”
Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schume voiced his support.
“In choosing Judge Jackson, President Biden has hit a home run,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The White House says Jackson will talk with any other senators who’d like to meet her. Mitt Romney is taking her up on that offer.
“Like anyone nominated by the president of the United States, she deserves a very careful look, a very deep dive,” said Sen. Mitt Romney.
Senator Lindsay Graham says he might not meet with Jackson. He calls her “the preferred candidate of the radical left.” Judge Jackson has to win over at least 50 U.S. senators to be confirmed. If she can, the nation’s first black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court might be attending next year’s State of the Union speech.
ROME (CNS) — Prayer, charity and fasting have a medicinal power to purify oneself, help others and change history, Pope Francis wrote in a homily read by Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, burns incense as he celebrates Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome March 2, 2022. Cardinal Parolin presided in place of Pope Francis, who was not able to attend because of knee pain. (Photo: CNS/Remo Casilli, Reuters)
Prayer, charity and fasting “are weapons of the spirit and, with them, on this day of prayer and fasting for Ukraine, we implore from God that peace which men and women are incapable of building by themselves,” the pontiff wrote.
Italian Cardinal Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, presided over the March 2 Ash Wednesday Mass instead of Pope Francis, who had been prescribed rest for severe knee pain by his doctors. The 85-year-old pontiff had led the weekly general audience earlier in the day.
Before the Mass, Cardinal Parolin, other cardinals, bishops, religious and lay faithful walked from the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm to the Dominican-run Basilica of Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill. At the basilica, Cardinal Parolin received ashes on the top of his head from Cardinal Jozef Tomko, titular cardinal of the basilica, and distributed ashes to a number of cardinals, Benedictines, Dominicans and others attending the Mass.
The rite of receiving ashes helps people reflect on “the transience of our human condition,” the pope wrote in his homily. It is like a medicine that has a bitter taste and yet is effective for curing the illness of appearances, a spiritual illness that enslaves us and makes us dependent on the admiration of others.”
Today we enter the time of #Lent. Our prayer and fasting will be a plea for #peace in #Ukraine, bearing in mind that peace in the world always begins with our personal conversion, following Christ.
“Those who seek worldly rewards never find peace or contribute to peace. They lose sight of the Father and their brothers and sisters,” he wrote. “Let us make a diagnosis of the appearances that we seek, and let us try to unmask them. It will do us good.”
Lent is also a journey of healing, he wrote, that requires living each day with “a renewed spirit, a different ‘style'” that is aided by prayer, charity and fasting, he wrote.
“Purified by the Lenten ashes, purified of the hypocrisy of appearances,” prayer, charity and fasting “become even more powerful and restore us to a living relationship with God, our brothers and sisters, and ourselves,” he wrote.
“Lenten charity, purified by these ashes, brings us back to what is essential, to the deep joy to be found in giving,” without pride and ostentation, but hidden and “far from the spotlights,” wrote the pope.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin arrives in procession with other cardinals to celebrate Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome March 2, 2022. Cardinal Parolin presided in place of Pope Francis, who was not able to attend because of knee pain. (Photo: CNS/Paul Haring)
And, he wrote, fasting is not a diet for the body, but a way to keep the spirit healthy, freeing people from being self-centered.
Fasting should also not be restricted to food alone, he wrote. “Especially during Lent, we should fast from anything that can create in us any kind of addiction,” so that fasting will have an actual impact on one’s life.
“Prayer, charity and fasting are not medicines meant only for ourselves but for everyone: Because they can change history,” because those who experience their effects “almost unconsciously pass them on to others” and because these are “the principal ways for God to intervene in our lives and in the world,” he wrote.
In his written homily, the pontiff asked people to stop being in a rush and to find the time to stand in silence before God.
“Let us rediscover the fruitfulness and simplicity of a heartfelt dialogue with the Lord. For God is not interested in appearances. Instead, he loves to be found in secret, ‘the secrecy of love,’ far from all ostentation and clamor.”
In just one moment, Ukrainians, some wrapped in flags, all driven to defend, responded when they saw a Russian vehicle approach.
“We are fighting for our rights, for our freedoms, for our life. and now we’re fighting for survival,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The U.N. estimates at least 102 civilians have died so far, but that figure likely underestimates the true toll.
Ukraine’s President accuses Russia of war crimes, which the Kremlin rejects, for bombing the city of Kharkiv.
The Russian military warns of more attacks.
Satellite images from late Monday show a 40-miles long Russian convoy approaching Ukraine’s capital.
The U.S. Secretary of State floated the idea Tuesday of kicking Russia off the U.N. human rights council.
“These are the human rights abuses this Council was created to stop. If we cannot come together now, when will we come together,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
