Reflecting on Pope Francis’ historic election in 2013 as the first Jesuit, first Latin American, and first non-European pope in over a millennium, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB praised Pope Francis’ bold pastoral approach and deep personal witness.
The instructions are found in St John Paul II’s 1996 Apostolic Constitution, Univer-si Dominici Gregis, which was revised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 and again just before he resigned in 2013.
“Together with the risen Jesus,” Pope Francis wrote his final message to the world on Easter Sunday 20 April, those who trust in God “become pilgrims of hope, witnesses of the victory of love and of the disarmed power of life.”
In a three-part series exclusive to The Record, Dr Marco Ceccarelli takes an in-depth look at the life works of Pope Francis.
Never the one to lose hope, explains Ceccarelli, Pope Francis answered to problems within and outside of the Church by prescribing a culture of encounter and dialogue between people of good will.
Pope Francis’ campaign against clericalism was waged when meeting both ordinary parish priests and “princes of the church,” as cardinals once were known.
Pope Francis listened to survivors carefully with great empathy, and he regularly met with them privately, Father Zollner said. He tried to be a model for all Catholics and especially those in authority, he added.
Over the course of his 12 year pontificate, Pope Francis never relented in his ap-peals to world leaders and ordinary citizens to treat migrants humanely.
In the presence of some 1500 mourners, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB spoke about the deep pastoral heart of Pope Francis—someone who sought not to be an untouchable figurehead, but a fellow pilgrim. By Jamie O’Brien.