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December 17th, 2013
10:32 AM ET
Pope celebrates birthday with homeless men (and one cute dog)By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN) - Pope Francis marked his 77th birthday on Tuesday by welcoming three homeless men to a Mass and a meal at the Vatican, according to Catholic officials. The Pope wanted a "family" environment, with just a few top aides, the staff of Casa Santa Marta - the Vatican guesthouse - and the homeless men, one of whom brought his dog, the Vatican said. (The Vatican originally said four homeless men joined the Pope's birthday celebration before revising the number late Tuesday.) Afterward, the group sang "Happy Birthday" to Francis, and he invited everyone to eat breakfast with him at the hotel's dining room, according to the Vatican. The homeless men were brought by the Pope's aide in charge of charity, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, who has been taking Francis' concern for the poor directly to the streets of Rome. The Vatican's sharing of the Pope's birthday plans is sure to burnish Francis' image as "the People's Pope," a man who eschews pomp and ceremony, favoring small and intimate gatherings instead. Francis has famously refused to live in the sumptuous papal apartment, picked out a used Fiat to scoot around Rome and dropped the fancy papal vestments and high theological language of his predecessors. Emphasizing his common-man roots, Francis said recently he was a janitor and a bar bouncer in Argentina before becoming a priest. Pope: I was once a bar bouncer Perhaps as a birthday present to himself, the Pope, without going through the usual church channels, announced the canonization of a 16th-century Jesuit priest on Tuesday. The Rev. Pierre Favre (known in the United States as Peter Faber) was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, the Catholic order of priests to which Pope Francis himself belongs. Francis has praised Favre's "careful interior discernment" and "simple piety." In September, the Pope used a similar process to announce the canonization of the late Pope John XXIII, who will officially be made a saint, along with Pope John Paul II, in April. In the Pope's birthplace of Buenos Aires, where Francis was an archbishop, Catholics are celebrating his birthday by pitching a "missionary tent" in one of the city's most troubled areas, where they will minister to migrants, prostitutes, the homeless and jobless, the Vatican said. "God has always walked alongside his people," beginning with the Hebrew patriarchs, the Pope preached at Tuesday morning's Mass. God became man at Christmas to redeem and share in the lives of saints and sinners alike - even "high-level sinners," Francis said.
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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The lamb of god
If we drew a map of our galaxy, and represented the earth and sun as two dots one inch apart (thus a scale of one inch equals ninety-three million miles), we would need a map at least four miles wide to locate our next nearest star, and one twenty-five thousand miles wide to reach the center of our galaxy! Indeed, this is a rather impressive universe.
not my words.
and i sure didn't snap my fingers and command nothing to become the universe.
far from feeling obligated to appreciate the magnificence of the universe as a christian duty, i stand in silent awe that i actually no the genius who painted and sculpted it for our enjoyment. sort of like knowing Rembrandt, Renoir, Picasso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeedE8vH1FQ
#
the bread of life
no one, ever, has contrived such a story, especially for the benefit of future generations on political grounds, knowing the consequences included a considerable risk of execution and without any financial motivation.
At this time of the year, I send out a reminder to all my friends:
Jesus wasn't born, he was written!
bono talks it and walks it literally helping to reduce national debt in africa through his own money
More people have written about him and more has been written about him than any other human being in history. More words have been sung and more music has been written and performed about this human being than all others
Children, verily, verily I say to you, watch out! For broad is the path to ruin. Wide is the gate to spiritual death. And narrow is the way and small is the gate that leads to real spirituality and authentic robust living!
"God has always walked alongside his people," beginning with the Hebrew patriarchs, the Pope preached at Tuesday morning's Mass.
God became man at Christmas to redeem and share in the lives of saints and sinners alike – even "high-level sinners," Francis said.
it is frightening to fall into a conscious awareness that we indeed have somehow begun a personal relationship with this god of the old time preachers
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