Session 1
Chapters1 and 2
THE BUILDING HOPE PRAYER
Pilgrim God, we give you thanks and praise.�You constantly journey with us even in our darkness and doubts.�We seek your way of loving kindness to walk together as one family.�Open our eyes to recognise you in the faces of one another,�in the breaking of bread and in the splendour of creation.�May the risen Christ sow seeds of hope and new life deep within us.�May our hearts and minds be filled with your Word,�bringing forth truth, justice and peace.�May the Holy Spirit working in and through us do much more�than we can dare to imagine as we live out our baptismal calling in humble and loving service.�We make this our prayer through Christ Our Lord.�Amen.
FAMILY OF ORIGIN – ITALY TO ARGENTINA
Nostalgia – the nostalgia for our roots – is a healthy feeling, since people with no roots are lost, and a person with no roots is sick. Roots give us strength to move forward, to bear fruit, to blossom ….
p11
My family was more fortunate. My grandfather’s brothers had invited them to Buenos Aires. They had been in Argentina since 1922 and had had suerte, good luck: …..”
p12
MIGRANT PEOPLE
….”With them they brought the poverty, the tragedies and sufferings of their condition, but also their strength, courage, perseverance, faith. And a multitude of talents that, as in the parable of the Gospel of Matthew, waited for the opportunity to bear fruit.”
p13
Francis and his empathy for migrants …..
“I too had been born into a family of migrants – my father and grandparents, like so many other Italians, had left for Argentina and knew the faith of those who are left with nothing.”
p14
HOPE FLOURISHES FROM AN OPEN CHILD LIKE HEART
“Let us be like children, let us be humble, let us be servants of others. Let us cultivate generosity, kindness and humility.”
“If we want to be able to understand how peace is made, and have the strength to make it, let us all be childlike. Like children holding their grandparents’ hands.”
p31
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.�If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.�If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.�When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
Confucius 551 BC – 479 BC
“May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you.”
Psalm 137:6
Session 2
Chapter 3,4 and 5
OPENING PRAYER
”Jesus, make my heart more like yours.”
A 7-word prayer taught to Pope Francis by his grandmother
Taught to the world in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday June 7th 2020
FRANCIS AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH �OUR MOTHER MARY
“I have experienced Mary’s maternal gaze for myself, and how it can bring light to darkness and rekindle hope. It is a gaze that can infuse trust and convey tenderness.
That gaze helps us to root ourselves in history and in the church, to take care of ourselves and each other.”
p51
BAPTISM
“It is the first encounter with Jesus, not a figure from the past, but with a
Person living today; whom we don’t get to know in the history books, but we encounter in life”.
p45
FORGIVENESS
“Not everything in life is resolved through justice. For a story of grace to begin again, someone needs to give more love than is owed, especially where evil needs to be kept at bay”
p 49/50
WORDS THAT FRANCIS USED TO�REMIND US OF OUR PRIORITIES IN LIFE
Please
Thank you
I’m sorry
CULTURAL ASSIMILATION
We are not asked to forget our own cultural origin but allow it to grow within the culture we find ourselves living in.
How can the Christian story continue to find a home in the culture/society of today?
p47
Session 3
Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9
OPENING PRAYER
Prayer for Our Earth in Laudato Si
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,�to be filled with awe and contemplation,�to recognize that we are profoundly united�with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light.�We thank you for being with us each day.�Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle,�for justice, love and peace.
LIFE AND THE ART OF ENCOUNTER
“The culture of encounter requires us to be ready not only to give but also to receive from others and it encourages us to step out from ourselves, to be pilgrims.”
p88
EDUCATION
“I remember all my teachers….. It was a very human education. And defense of the role of the schoolteacher, and of the school as an institution, was important. It must still be regarded as important today – maybe especially today.”
p 90
WHAT NOURISHED AND REVIVED FRANCIS
“During the year I always wake before five. Whereas on vacation I sleep rather more, pray rather more, read the things I enjoy, listen to music ….. And all of this relaxes and revives me.”
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes; it is the preservation of fire.”
Gustav Mahler
Page 91
POPE FRANCIS AND HIS LOVE OF MUSIC�
Luciano Pavarotti: 'O Sole Mio'
POPE FRANCIS THE CITIZEN
“I have always liked walking. The streets tell me so much. I learn a lot from them. I enjoy the city, the streets, pizzas, taverns, and a pizza eaten on an outside table. I am a citizen at heart.”
p81
Francis attended a Catholic boarding school in 1949, He speaks on p 95 of it being a formative experience, creating a conscience in him …”that was not just moral and Christian but human, social, playful, artistic…..Study, the values of living together, concern for those more in need, for those worse off ….I remember learning there to go without so as I could give it to someone poorer than me.”
THE ART OF ENCOUNTER
Session 4
Chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13
OPENING PRAYER
Prayer inspired by Fratelli Tutti, nos. 64, 67, 70
Lord Jesus,
You teach us in your parable that there are two kinds of people - those who bend down to help and those who look the other way. Which kind of people will we be? We say, “Yes, Lord, I will love you and love my neighbour.”
But then we ask: The migrant... is she my neighbor? Those in poverty...are they my neighbours? Victims of war across the world... are they neighbours? One who faces racism... is he my neighbour? Those disabled or elderly... are they my neighbours?
You remind us: Yes. All of us neighbors.
Show us how to love, Lord.
May we open our eyes. May we emerge from our comfortable isolation.May we build a world of compassion and dignity.
Lord Jesus, who was neighbour to all, help us to persevere in love.
Help us to restore dignity to the suffering.
Help us to build a society based not on exclusion, but on community.
Amen.
THE INVITATION TO EXPLORE A VOCATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD
“I now had fallen from my horse, and everything was different.”
The influence of the friendship with Fr Duarte Ibarra as Francis contemplated his vocation.
My episcopal and papal motto:
Miserando atque eligendo: mercying and choosing –
“He had mercy on me.”
p110-111
THE MERCY OF GOD
Elected as pope by fellow cardinals, Francis said;
“peccator sum, sed super misericodia et infiníta patienta Domíní nostrí Jesu Chrístí confisus et in spiritu penítentíae accepto.
I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ and in a spirit of penance I accept.”
“I have a dogmatic certainty; God is in the life of every person.”
p112
PEOPLE THAT INSPIRED FRANCIS
“We all have people in our lives that leave a positive impact unlike any other.”
Esther Ballestrino De Careaga
She taught him about politics, gave him books to read and encouraged him to widen his knowledge. “She suffered greatly.”
In July 2015 he met her two daughters while on an apostolic visit to Paraguay.
When His two Jesuit brothers were arrested, Francis searched for them everywhere.
p116-124
VOCATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD
The reaction of his parents when Francis formally made a decision about his vocation to the priesthood. P131/132
Struck down with Gripe – Asian Flu which left him with three large Cysts on his lung. “The suffering didn’t go away but it had a different value, a meaning.” P 141
Joining the Jesuit Order (They managed the Seminary)
3 elements that attracted Francis to the Society of Jesus
Community – Missionary work – Discipline
p140
CHOOSING TO LIVE IN A COMMUNITY
“I didn’t see myself as a lone priest, a secular priest. I needed community. It was a need that I always sensed, the feeling and awareness of being part of a fabric,woven into a totality and not a loose thread.”
p138
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PAPACY
“Victims must know the Pope is on their side. And on this he will not take even one step back.”
p147
Session 5
Chapters 14, 15,16 and 17
OPENING PRAYER
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror,
Then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
p162
THE PRINCIPLE OF DIALOGUE
“ one, especially in the atomic age, can be blind to the destructive force of a culture incapable of dialogue. We must learn from the lessons of history. We will be judged for this.”
P 158/159
“The creative path of dialogue, even in its blessed toil, is the only antidote to the destructive folly that we have known, and still know.”
P 160
THE BALANCE BETWEEN TAKING A RISK AND STAYING SAFE
“Education always implies an imbalance between the two requirements: the sphere of safety and the area of risk.“
“Without risk, we don’t move forward. But nor do we advance very far by throwing ourselves into a ravine.”
“….. Always being sufficiently open-hearted and open-minded to leave space for surprise.”
p161
PEOPLE THAT INSPIRED FRANCIS
Fr Arrrupe S.J.
VISION OF THE CHURCH
“..... the Church is the people of God travelling in history, with their joys and sufferings.”
“The image of the church that I like is that of God’s holy faithful people …”
P 171
“I dream of a church that is more a mother and shepherdess, in which its ministers know how to be merciful, how to take care of others, how to look after them like the Good Samaritan.”
“The first reform must be that of attitude”
P 172
LEADERSHIP MODEL
“We are rejunevated only if we avoid closing ourselves up, if we enter into dialogue.”
p179
“Reality is better seen from the margins rather than from the centre.”
p180
POPE FRANCIS FIRST TED TALK 2017
In the address Francis advised leaders to be humble and inclusive.
THE CONCLAVE AND THE NAME FRANCIS
“During the days of the conclave, a homeless man was wandering around St Peter’s Square with a placard around his neck. On it was written “Pope Francis 1”.
p189
Subsequently Cardinal Hummes embraced Cardinal Bergoglio and said “don’t forget the poor”. Those words remained with him and it was then that the name Francis appeared.
p189
THE SIMPLICITY OF POPE FRANCIS
Session 6
Chapters 18,19, 20 and 21
OPENING PRAYER
“Lord take me as I am, with my defects, with my shortcomings, but make me become what you want me to be.”
Words of Pope John Paul 1
p197
FIDUCIA SUPPLICANS
“Receptiveness, and certainly not relativism, nor any change of doctrine is the spirit and heart of Fiducia supplicans, the declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the blessing of couples who live in irregular situations …. It is the people who are blessed, not the relationships ……
Throughout my pastoral life, I have always welcomed and accompanied these brothers and sisters in just the same way as others.”
p198,199
GENDER THEORY
“But if God loves us in our humanity and in our differences, any ideological colonization is extremely dangerous, such as gender theory hat seeks to cancel differences on the pretext of making everyone equal.
……It reminds us that cancelling difference, in the end means cancelling humanity.”
p199/200
TRADITION AND CHURCH
“Tradition is not a statue. Nor is Christ a statue. Christ lives. Tradition means growing ….. moving forward.”
The Church is not an orchestra in which everyone plays the same note but one in which each person follows their own score, and it is precisely this which must create harmony ……aspiring to unity does not mean uniformity.”
p203
REFLECTIONS ON POPE BENEDICT
PEACE MAKER
PEACE
“Peace is possible, I will never tire of repeating it. It is the fundamental condition for respecting the rights of every human and for the development of every nation.
I pray that the seeds of that spiritual retreat will ripen and bear fruit.”
p212
POPE FRANCIS AND THE PANDEMIC
“The pandemic upset everyone’s plans including my own.
p220
The pandemic brought us in touch with our personal and social fragility, and at the same showed us once again how, among the storms of history, we are all in the same boat.”
p215
POPE FRANCIS AND A VISIT TO THE MIDDLE EAST
While visiting Islamic leaders …..”I recall one particular phrase that I carried with me as a precious gift: Human beings are either brothers by religion or equals by creation”
p 225
Session 7
Chapters 22, 23, 24 and 25
OPENING PRAYER
“What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? [….] No, in all these we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us.”
Romans 8: 35-37
p252
HOPE
“Christian hope is invincible because it is not a desire. It is the certainty that we are all traveling, not toward something that we want to be there, but something that is already there.”
p252
“The Christian family is a factory of hope.”
p249
‘God cannot deprive us of hope, because He cannot deny Himself’
1 Thess. 5:8
p253
FRANCIS AND HUMOUR
“Few other living creatures know how to laugh: we are made in the image of God and our God smiles. We must smile with Him. We can even smile at Him, with the affection that we feel for fathers, and in the same way that we play and joke with people that we love. (…….)
We are descendants of Abraham and Isaac, whose name literally means ‘he who laughs’.”
p259
However …… Francis tells us that…
“Life inevitably has its sadnesses, which are part of every path of hope and of every path towards conversion. But is important to avoid wallowing in melancholy at all costs, not to let it embitter the heart.
Francis acknowledges the temptation among clerics to be more authoritarian than authoritative …. A little humour goes a long way
p261
FRANCIS AND CONNECTION WITH PEOPLE
Francis describes three languages of the heart, mind and hands.
….”the hands is the most sensorial … story of the young blind child ….
“he saw me by touching me with his hands”
Four World Youth Days …. Brazil, Poland, Panama and Portugal
p271
… “The truth is that more than judging our young we need firstly to ask their forgiveness. We need to do this to fail to listen to their most genuine need, for not having taken them seriously.”
p273
WORLD YOUTH DAY�PANAMA 2019
FRANCIS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Laudato Si
…”Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people whether at home or around the world ….”
Laudato Deum
FRANCIS AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH
The church will go on, I am just on step in its history
I dream of a papacy that is increasingly one of service and of communion
p285
FRANCIS AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH
The church must grow in creativity, in understanding the challenges of the modern day, opening itself to dialogue, not closing itself in fear. A Church that is closed, frightened is a dead church.
We need to have faith in the Spirit, which is the Church’s engine and its guide, and which always makes a noise. Just think of the story of Pentecost on the apostles, which causes an enormous din:
“and suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were “ (Acts 2;2)
p287
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON FRANCIS
Sharing your own personal insights of Francis.
2 – 3 minutes to reflect and share with the group
The most beautiful sea
hasn’t been crossed yet.
The most beautiful child
hasn’t grown up yet.
Our most beautiful days
we haven’t seen yet.
Nâzim Hikmet
p284
������JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO �POPE FRANCIS�17TH DECEMBER 1936 – 21ST APRIL 2025�
Solas na bhFlaitheas dá anam agus leaba
I measc na naomh go raibh aige