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To bring about peace, “prayer is the most powerful weapon there is,” Pope Francis told thousands of young adults and catechism teachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday. The meeting in Martyrs’ Stadium in Kinshasa, the capital city of the DRC, took place on February 2, the third day of the pope’s visit to the central African country. On February 3, Francis will fly to Juba, South Sudan, for the second leg of his peace pilgrimage. Pope Francis on Thursday interacted with an enthusiastic crowd of around 65,000 young people and adults, some of whom traveled days to be present for the papal visit. During the second half of his speech, the pope was repeatedly drowned out by the energetic audience, which broke out in cheering, singing, and dancing despite the hot weather. The pope invited those present in the stadium to open and close their hands while meditating on whether they wanted to choose peace or violence.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253529/pope-francis-to-congolese-youth-prayer-is-your-secret-weapon-for-peace
President Joe Biden is wrong on taxpayer funding of abortion and wrong on Pope Francis’s view of it, the president of the US bishops conference said Wednesday. The president suggested Tuesday that neither the pope nor all Catholic bishops oppose public funding for abortion in the United States. Biden, a Catholic who supports legal and publicly funded abortion, made that assertion in a brief exchange with EWTN’s White House correspondent, Owen Jensen, on the White House lawn. On Wednesday, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), released a statement contradicting Biden’s comments. “As we are taught by Jesus, human life is sacred. God calls us to defend and nurture life from the moment a new human being is conceived. The Catholic Church has been clear and consistent in this teaching,” Broglio said. “The Catholic bishops of the United States are united in our commitment to life and will continue to work as one body in Christ to make abortion unthinkable.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253528/head-of-us-bishops-conference-contradicts-biden-s-claims-about-taxpayer-funded-abortions
Today, the Church celebrates the Presentation of the Lord in the Jewish temple. At the beginning of the eighth century, Pope Sergius inaugurated a candlelight procession; at the end of the same century the blessing and distribution of candles which continues to this day became part of the celebration, giving the feast its popular name: Candlemass.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/presentation-of-the-lord-427