Pope Francis on loneliness
In an interview with news agency Adnkronos, Pope Francis said: “Am I lonely? I have thought about this. And I have decided there are two kinds of loneliness.
“One can say I feel alone because people who should cooperate with me are not, because those who should roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty for others are not doing so, or because they don’t follow my indications. and so forth – and we can call that functional loneliness,” Francis reflected.
“Then there is the real loneliness that I do not feel, because I have found many people who take risks for me, who put their lives on the line, who fight with conviction because they know we are in the right and are on the right road, despite a thousand obstacles and the resistance we face.”
UK bishops disappointed
In reaction to the UK lockdown, the bishops of England and Wales said: “It is a source of deep anguish that the government is requiring the cessation of public communal worship. We have not yet seen any evidence that would make the banning of communal worship, with all its human costs, a productive part of combatting the virus. We ask government to produce this evidence that justifies the cessation of acts of public worship.”
Fuller respect for human life
Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who has just been appointed as the first Black American cardinal, said: “Those advocating euthanasia are violating a right to life. Those who denigrate immigrant populations in their midst are violating a gift of human life.
“And so I wish that we (US bishops) had been more expansive, so that all people who are working for the dignity and the respect of human life felt that their concerns, beginning with life within the womb, but including all of those other moments, were included.”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)