Category: Diocese of Scranton News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Catholic Church, its ministers and its members must find new ways to reach out to and welcome families who are distant from the church and have no understanding of how much God loves them, Pope Leo XIV said.

Writing to 40 theologians and pastoral ministers participating in a seminar on evangelizing with families, the pope said the first goal of outreach is to help people longing for love and meaning to find that in Jesus.

“How often, even in the not too distant past, have we forgotten this truth and presented Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvelous experience of encountering Jesus — God who gives himself to us — with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life,” the pope wrote in a June 2 message.

The Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life gathered the experts at its Vatican office June 2-3 to reflect on the theme, “Evangelizing with the Families of Today and Tomorrow: Ecclesiological and Pastoral Challenges.” The seminar followed the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.

Pope Leo told them, “This theme clearly expresses the church’s maternal concern for Christian families throughout the world as living members of the Mystical Body of Christ and the primary nucleus of the church, to whom the Lord entrusts the transmission of faith and the Gospel, especially to the new generations.”

Every human being, as St. Augustine taught, has a longing for God, the pope said. And parents have the first responsibility to respond to that longing by making their children “aware of the fatherhood of God.”

And while church attendance and formal religious affiliation in many places are declining, he said, “ours is a time marked by a growing search for spirituality, particularly evident in young people, who are longing for authentic relationships and guides in life.”

“Hence, it is important that the Christian community be farsighted in discerning the challenges of today’s world and in nurturing the desire for faith present in the heart of every man and woman,” he said.

But that, the pope said, requires paying special attention “to those families who, for various reasons, are spiritually most distant from us: those who do not feel involved, claim they are uninterested or feel excluded from the usual activities, yet would still like to be part of a community in which they can grow and journey together with others.”

“How many people today simply do not hear the invitation to encounter God?” Pope Leo asked.

Another problem, he said, is “an increasingly widespread ‘privatization’ of faith” so focused on the individual that newcomers have no experience of “the richness and gifts of the church, a place of grace, fraternity and love.”

“What drives the church in her pastoral and missionary outreach is precisely the desire to go out as a ‘fisher’ of humanity, in order to save it from the waters of evil and death through an encounter with Christ,” the pope said.

As an example, he pointed to young people who choose cohabitation instead of Christian marriage. What they need, he said, is “someone to show them in a concrete and clear way, especially by the example of their lives, what the gift of sacramental grace is and what strength derives from it. Someone to help them understand ‘the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life’ that God gives to married couples.”

When reaching out to families who are distant from the church, he said, patience and even creativity are needed.

“It is not a matter of giving hasty answers to difficult questions, but of drawing close to people, listening to them and trying to understand together with them how to face their difficulties.” Pope Leo said. “And this requires a readiness to be open, when necessary, to new ways of seeing things and different ways of acting, for each generation is different and has its own challenges, dreams and questions.”

The bishops have the first responsibility “to cast their nets into the sea and become ‘fishers of families,'” the pope said.

But it is a duty all Catholics share since “through baptism, each one of us has been made a priest, king and prophet for our brothers and sisters, and a ‘living stone’ for the building up of God’s house ‘in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity,'” he added, quoting from the homily at the inauguration of his papacy May 18.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Families are the cradle of the future of humanity, Pope Leo XIV said during a Mass concluding the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly.

“Today’s world needs the marriage covenant in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies,” he said in his homily at the Mass celebrated June 1 in St. Peter’s Square.

The day also marked World Communications Day, and in remarks after the Mass Pope Leo thanked all “media workers who, by taking care of the ethical quality of messages, help families in their role as educators.”

In the family, he said in his homily, faith “is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.”

Speaking to all married couples, the pope said that “marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful,” and enables them, “in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.”

“I encourage you, then, to be examples of integrity to your children, acting as you want them to act, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding ways to nurture it,” he told married couples.

“And you, dear children, show gratitude to your parents. To say, ‘thank you’ each day for the gift of life and for all that comes with it is the first way to honor your father and your mother,” Pope Leo said.

Speaking to grandparents and elderly people, he asked that they “watch over your loved ones with wisdom and compassion, and with the humility and patience that come with age.”

The pope focused his homily on “The Prayer of Jesus” in the day’s Gospel reading (John 17:20-26) in which Jesus prays to the Father that all of Christ’s disciples not only follow him but also seek to be in union with the Father.

He re-read portions of the Gospel to emphasize God’s plan of unity for all of humanity, particularly: “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”

“Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves him. The Father does not love us any less than he loves his only-begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love,” Pope Leo said.

“In his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another,” he said, connecting the Gospel reflection to how it relates to celebrating the Jubilee of families.

Jesus’ prayer “makes fully meaningful our experience of love for one another as parents, grandparents, sons and daughters,” he said.

“That is what we want to proclaim to the world: We are here in order to be ‘one’ as the Lord wants us to be ‘one,’ in our families and in those places where we live, work and study. Different, yet one; many, yet one; always, in every situation and at every stage of life,” the pope said.

“If we love one another in this way, grounded in Christ,” he said, “we will be a sign of peace for everyone in society and the world. Let us not forget: Families are the cradle of the future of humanity.”

By beatifying and canonizing married couples who gave exemplary witness of married life, such as Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin and the Blessed Ulma family — mother, father and seven small children — “the church tells us that today’s world needs the marriage covenant” in order to discover and embrace God’s love and to defeat that which breaks down relationships and communities, he said.

No one chose to be born, he said, but someone was there to offer care. “All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.”

However, “that human kindness is sometimes betrayed. As for example, whenever freedom is invoked not to give life, but to take it away, not to help, but to hurt,” he said.

Nonetheless, the pope said, “even in the face of the evil that opposes and takes life, Jesus continues to pray to the Father for us. His prayer acts as a balm for our wounds; it speaks to us of forgiveness and reconciliation.”

More than 70,000 people from 131 countries gathered in the square after three days of jubilee events in Rome. Families of every age and size were present in the square; some were holding banners or flags, wearing matching hats or seeking shelter under umbrellas from the hot morning sun.

Pope Leo rode through the crowds before the start of Mass while temperatures were still in the high 70s. He broke from his usual blessing of infants and small children hoisted up to him when a young boy in the crowd held out his hand for a shake. The pope leaned far out from the popemobile to give him a “low five” to the cheers and fist pumps of the boy and his friends.

Before praying the “Regina Coeli” in the square, the pope prayed for all families, especially those “suffering due to war in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in other parts of the world. May the Mother of God help us to press forward together on the path of peace.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – As spring turned into summer, some 2,000 people closed the month of May with a rosary walk through the Vatican Gardens.

The temperature was still close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 p.m. May 31 when the pilgrims set off from behind St. Peter’s Basilica, led by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of the basilica.

At the top of the Vatican hill, at the ivy-covered replica of the grotto at Lourdes, France, they were joined by Pope Leo XIV.

The rosary walk, he said, brings together the most important aspects of the Jubilee Year: “praise, a journey, hope and, especially, faith pondered and demonstrated together.”

As they walked, the pilgrims recited the five joyful mysteries of the rosary — the Annunciation, the Visitation, the birth of Jesus, the Presentation and the finding of Jesus in the Temple — and listened to the Scripture passages that recount the events in the life of Mary and Jesus.

“Your steps have been marked by the Word of God, whose rhythm has marked your progress, your stops and starts, just as it did for the people of Israel in the desert on their way to the promised land,” the pope told the pilgrims.

The Christian life should be like that, too, Pope Leo said.

“Let us look, then, at our existence as a journey following Jesus, to be traveled, as we did tonight, together with Mary,” he said. “And let us ask the Lord to teach us to praise him every day with our life and our tongue, with our heart and our lips, with our voice and our conduct, avoiding dissonance: our speech in harmony with our lives, and our lips with our conscience.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a church and a world divided and fractured, priests are called to be witnesses of God’s love and forgiveness, which reconciles people and makes them one community, Pope Leo XIV told new priests.

Leading Christian communities not as “lords” but as stewards, “we will rebuild the credibility of a wounded church sent to a wounded humanity within a wounded creation,” he told the 11 men he was about to ordain to the priesthood May 31.

“It is not important to be perfect, but it is necessary to be credible,” the pope said in his homily at the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The 11 men had been scheduled to be ordained May 10 by Pope Francis, but the ordination was pushed back when the pope died April 21.

Seven of the new priests studied at the Rome diocesan seminary while four of them attended the Rome Redemptoris Mater Seminary, which is run by the diocese and the Neocatechumenal Way.

Pope Leo told the men, who ranged in age from their late 20s to early 40s, “You bear witness to the fact that God has not grown weary of gathering his children, however diverse, and of constituting them into a dynamic unity.”

The ministry of a priest, like that of the pope and the bishops, is to gather all people in the church, the pope told them. “Make room for the faithful and for every creature to whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit us and amaze us.”

“The people of God are more numerous than we see,” he said. “Let us not define its boundaries.”

God will place many people in their paths, Pope Leo told the new priests. “To them consecrate yourselves, without separating yourselves from them, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift you have received some kind of privilege.”

An ordination obviously is a joyful occasion for the church, he said. But “the depth, breadth and even duration of the divine joy we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from whom you come, of which you remain a part and to which you are sent.”

While the identity of the ordained priest “depends on union with Christ the high and eternal priest,” the pope said, the church’s ordained ministers must recognize and encourage the exercise of the common priesthood of all believers that flows from baptism.

“We are the people of God,” he said. “The Second Vatican Council made this awareness more vivid, almost as if anticipating a time when a sense of belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied.”

Being part of the people of God and called to lead them, he said, means the priests always must try to be role models of Christian living with the transparency of their lives, “lives known, readable lives, credible lives!”

“We stand within God’s people, so that we can stand before them with a credible witness,” Pope Leo said.

Like the still-visible wounds of the risen Jesus, the flaws of individuals and the fractures within humanity are also signs that God’s love transforms everything and everyone, he said. “Everything that to our eyes seemed broken and lost now appears to us in the sign of reconciliation.”

(OSV News) – The four years Robert F. Prevost spent at Villanova University in Philadelphia – from the fall of 1973 until May 1977, when he graduated with a degree in mathematics and began his novitiate with the Augustinian order – included the opening salvos of the pro-life movement.

On Jan. 22, 1974, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined abortion on demand as a constitutional right, Villanova students, including Prevost, the future Pope Leo XIV, were part of a pro-life demonstration at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. The principal speaker was Cardinal John J. Krol of Philadelphia, who was then president of the U.S. bishops’ twin conferences, now called the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

That same day in Washington Nellie Gray, a Texas-born former government lawyer renowned for her bluntness, led, along with the Knights of Columbus, the first national March for Life, which drew many thousands of marchers and included the formation of a “circle of life” around the U.S. Capitol.

She became famed for never seeking compromise. Typical of Gray’s comments was one to The Catholic Commentator, the newspaper of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1979: “We won’t settle for just a little bit of abortion, because babies can’t be just a little bit dead.”

The national march has evolved since then. Even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the March for Life’s participants have included student groups arriving in Washington by bus from around the country. It is currently focused on state abortion laws as well as one of its original goals, a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

The bus pilgrims have included Villanova students since 1975.

Prevost was a founding member of Villanovans for Life, which had an office on campus by the spring of 1974. That September, students Margaret Mary Dowdall and Robert Dodaro formalized it as a club. According to Villanovans for Life, they are the oldest collegiate pro-life club in the United States and currently have 50 members.

Villanova classmate Laura Pyne told OSV News that she recalled meeting Prevost on the bus from Philadelphia to the march in Washington, but was uncertain whether the year was 1975, 1976 or 1977.

“He was a member of the Augustinian pre-novitiate group of young men who went to a seminary high school in Michigan and then attended Villanova,” she said. “They were all wonderful young men.”

“I do not recall what year or years our new pope attended the March for Life,” she said. “If only we had known the future, we would have taken notes and lots of pictures!”

Pyne, however, said she has a sharper memory of Prevost once attending a Halloween party costumed as Groucho Marx. The comedy legend was undergoing a sort-of renaissance in the 1970s until his death in 1977.

Not all Villanovans for Life participated in the national march, making memory recall of who went and who didn’t 50 years ago a bit hazy. A typical response was like that from Father William Lego, pastor of St. Turibius Parish in Chicago, a member of Villanovans for Life and a friend of the pope’s since grade school: “I did not attend a march in Washington, and I do not remember if the pope did.”

Father John Lydon, another founding member of the club, is the former president of the Catholic University of Trujillo in Peru and worked for 10 years with then-Bishop Prevost for 10 years when he was the bishop of Chiclayo and taught canon law at the university.

“I know I was at several Marches for Life in Washington, but I can’t recall if I went with Villanovans for Life,” Father Lydon told OSV News. “I presume so, but can’t remember.”

According to her children, the late Margaret Mary Filoromo (formerly Dowdall) — who was honored by Villanovans for Life at their 50th anniversary dinner in March 2024 — took immense pride in the other founding members of the club, including her co-founder, the now-Father Dodaro, who did not respond to an interview request.

Filoromo, who met her future husband, Mike Filoromo, in Villanovans for Life and married him in 1979, built a career in nursing and headed the Chester County Pro-Life Coalition. She never forgot her college friend, the future pope, before her death last June.

“I have heard about him all my life,” her daughter, Maura Filoromo, told OSV News from her home in suburban Philadelphia. “She talked about where he was in Peru, when he became head of the Augustinians (prior general), and so on. She was really proud of all he accomplished.”

Filoromo added, “When he became cardinal less than two years ago, she told everyone she knew. She said to me, ‘My friend could become pope. Wouldn’t that be wild?'”

Pope Leo’s college years at Villanova were bracketed by pro-life demonstrations. At his commencement on May 19, 1977, a group of students — with a coffin as a prop — objected to the honorary degree being given to Jesuit Father Robert Drinan. Father Drinan, as a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts (in office 1971-1981), supported a legal right to abortion. He received the degree anyway.

The national March for Life events held from 1975-77 — the timeframe for when then-Robert Prevost would have participated — had a freewheeling and somewhat raucous character. They usually began with a rally on the West Terrace of the Capitol and then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Ellipse, near the White House, for a second rally.

The 1977 march was more boisterous than usual thanks to, not in spite of, temperatures hovering around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It was held on a Saturday, which undoubtedly improved attendance, but since congressional offices were closed, the lobbying effort was useless.

At the Capitol rally, estimated by U..S. Capitol Police to have 35,000 attendees, all battered by the chill, participants demanded that the speeches by politicians be cut short and began to chant, “March! March! March!” Then at Lafayette Park, some marchers made their way to the fence of the White House (then occupied by President Jimmy Carter) and chanted, “Come out, Carter!”

In any event, Villanovans for Life has a founding member now with a global platform to speak on the dignity of all human life. Pope Leo’s first comments on abortion since his May 8 election to the papacy were made in May 16 remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

He said, “It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman.”

The pope added, “In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”

He said the church “can never be exempted from speaking the truth about humanity and the world, resorting whenever necessary to blunt language that may initially create misunderstanding. Yet truth can never be separated from charity, which always has at its root a concern for the life and well-being of every man and woman.”

(OSV News) – A habit worn by St. Pio of Pietrelcina and other rare relics are coming to the U.S., brought by Capuchin friars from the very monastery that was home to the beloved saint known as Padre Pio.

The National Center for Padre Pio in Barto, Pennsylvania, and the Padre Pio Foundation of America in Cromwell, Connecticut, announced the visit in a May 19 joint press release.

Capuchin Father Francesco Dileo, provincial minister of the Capuchin Friars Minor of San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy — the monastery at which the saint served — will lead the relics tour, which will take place Oct. 11-14 at the Barto center and Oct. 15-18 at St. Pius X Church in Middletown, Connecticut.

The friars will bring with them a full-size habit worn by the saint, one that has previously never left Italy, along with a second relic.

Padre Pio’s habit is “far more than a simple garment,” and is rather “a sacred symbol of his vocation, humility, and total devotion to Christ,” said Christina Calandra Rocus, whose late mother, Vera Calandra, founded the National Center for Padre Pio after a profound encounter with the saint during his earthly life.

With her husband’s encouragement, Calandra traveled to visit Padre Pio two years after the birth of their fifth child, Vera Marie, who suffered from congenital and life-threatening defects to her urinary tract. During two audiences, the priest blessed Vera and her daughter, as well as Christina and her brother Michael, who had accompanied their mother. Upon their return to the U.S., doctors discovered a bladder growing in place of the one they had removed from Vera Marie, and her health steadily improved. The family founded the center in 1971 in gratitude for Padre Pio’s intercession.

Vera Marie Calandra, now the center’s vice president, said the “unprecedented visit” of the “rare and intimate relic” marked “an occasion of deep spiritual reflection and prayer” — both of which were hallmarks of Padre Pio’s life.

Born Francesco Forgione in 1887 in Pietrelcina, Italy, the future saint entered the Capuchin order at age 15 and was ordained in 1910. Between 1915 and 1918, he served intermittently in the Italian Army’s medical corps during World War I, but was ultimately discharged due to poor health. He returned to his monastery at San Giovanni Rotondo, and in 1918 received the stigmata (the wounds of Christ), the first priest to receive such marks in the history of the Catholic Church.

Amid sustained physical and spiritual suffering — compounded by austerity and long hours of prayer — he established Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, now a renowned national research hospital located in San Giovanni Rotondo. The Capuchin also devoted himself to the healing of souls, often spending more than 15 hours a day hearing confessions. Padre Pio died in 1968 and was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, with whom he had been friends since 1947.

A detailed schedule of the relics tour is available on the websites of both of the centers, which are the only two organizations in North American officially recognized by the Capuchins of Our Lady of Grace Friary.

Julie Fitts Ritter, executive director of the Padre Pio Foundation of America, said the visit of the friars and the relics tour — which she described as a “tremendous privilege” — promise “to deepen the devotion of all who love Padre Pio and carry on his legacy of faith, healing, and compassion.”

SCRANTON – A total of 110 couples who are celebrating milestone anniversaries this year will be recognized at the Cathedral of Saint Peter on Sunday, June 1, 2025.

The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will serve as principal celebrant and homilist for the Diocese of Scranton’s annual Wedding Anniversary Mass that recognizes married couples who are celebrating their 25th and 50th anniversaries. The Mass will begin at 2:30 p.m.

In all, the couples registered to attend the Mass will signify 4,645 years of married life.

Marriage is a vocation to holiness. All marriages can grow in knowledge, faith, joy, and love. Whether a married couple is just starting or has fifty years (or more) under their belt, the church can always help strengthen and bless your marriage.

CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton will broadcast the Mass live and provide a livestream on the Diocese of Scranton website and all Diocesan social media platforms.

SCRANTON – Thirteen priests who are celebrating milestone anniversaries of their ordination year will be recognized during the 2025 Mass for Priest Jubilarians at 12:10 p.m. on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton.

The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will serve as principal celebrant and homilist. During the Mass, the Bishop will recognize a combine 625 years of service to the priesthood.

Reverend John J. Turi will be recognized for 70 years of priestly service. Father Turi was ordained a priest on June 4, 1955.

In addition to Rev. Turi, priests who are celebrating 65, 60, 50, and 25 year ordination anniversaries will be honored at the Mass.

The 2025 Mass for Priest Jubilarians will be broadcast live by CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton and will be available for viewing on the Diocese of Scranton website, YouTube channel, and links will be made available across all Diocesan social media platforms.

Please join us for this special celebration!