VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bulletin
Titular churches and diaconates of the new cardinals, 19.11.2016
This morning in St. Peter’s Basilica the Holy Father celebrated an ordinary public consistory for the creation of seventeen new cardinals, to whom he imposed the biretta, consigned the ring and assigned the respective title or diaconate church.
At the beginning of the event, Archbishop Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio in Syria and the first among the new cardinals, addressed a greeting and some words of gratitude to the Holy Father on behalf of them all.
The ceremony began with greetings, prayer and the reading of a passage from the Gospel according to St. Luke (6, 27-36), after which Pope Francis pronounced the following homily:
“The Gospel passage we have just heard (cf. Lk 6:27-36) is often referred to as the ‘Sermon on the Plain’. After choosing the Twelve, Jesus came down with his disciples to a great multitude of people who were waiting to hear him and to be healed. The call of the Apostles is linked to this ‘setting out’, descending to the plain to encounter the multitudes who, as the Gospel says, were ‘troubled’. Instead of keeping the Apostles at the top of the mountain, their being chosen leads them to the heart of the crowd; it sets them in the midst of those who are troubled, on the ‘plain’ of their daily lives. The Lord thus shows the Apostles, and ourselves, that the true heights are reached on the plain, while the plain reminds us that the heights are found in a gaze and above all in a call: ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.