Friday, 9 May 2025

Habemus Papam Pope Leo XIV

For more photos, see here, while here we can follow his address given from the balcony above. Today, with a congregation made up of the cardinals who elected him yesterday, he said his first Mass as Pope in the Sistine Chapel.  The Mass was said in Latin and Italian, but the first reading, we note in the Mass booklet, was in English, while the second was in Spanish. A truly memorable moment was when the Pope, the first Pope to be a native speaker of English, opened his sermon with the words: "I begin with a word in English, the rest is in Italian," (37  minutes into the Mass). That was surely a truly historic moment, leaving us with a wonderful world-wide sampling of languages ‒ linguistic unity-in-diversity.  To which, let us now add our own: "Go mbeannaí Dia é mar Phápa agus sinn go léir leis".

See the BBC documentary, The Conclavehere.

click to enlarge

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

Electing a New Pope

                          Eligo in summum pontificem        (Washington Post)

Morning Mass in St Peter's, Wed. 7th May, Election Day
Listening to the sermon, weighing things up

Thursday, 1 May 2025

Requiescat in pace, Papa Franciscus (1936-2025)

Final procession up the nave of St Peter's after the funeral Mass
Imperial Rome, Pontifical Rome
Towards the final resting place in Santa Maria Maggiore

For his life, see here. For photos of his visit to Ireland in August 2018 for the World Meeting of Families, see here (i.e. this parish site). In this last, note the photo of Cardinal Kevin Farrell alongside Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at the Mass for the Pastoral Congress in the RDS (Wednesday 22nd). Now, seven years later, he is the "camerlengo" organising the conclave that will meet on Wednesday May 7th to elect a new Pope (more here).