- Rose petals will fall from the Pantheon's “oculus” or eye this Sunday after the 10:30am Mass to mark the Catholic Feast of Pentecost (Red is the color for Pentecost)

- An exhibit entitled “Argentina - Il Gaucho, Tradition, Art and Faith” opened today at the Vatican’s Braccio di Carlo Magno hall (at the left hand colonnade of St. Peter’s Square) and runs to June 16: Free entry. The exhibit, planned well before Cardinal Bergoglio was elected Pope, will now honor the new Pontiff.

ARCHBISHOP FISICHELLA IS GUEST ON “VATICAN INSIDER”

My guest this week on Vatican Insider is Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council on Promoting the New Evangelization. You heard our conversation on a special Rome edition of BookMark that aired on EWTN television in January. This weekend is Part One of that conversation.

This weekend the Church celebrates Pentecost and will do so in Rome in the presence of an estimated 120,000 members of ecclesial communities who will join Pope Francis for a vigil on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square and for Mass the following morning. This Pentecost celebration with the ecclesial communities is a big event in the Year of faith celebrations, a Year entrusted to this pontifical council headed by Abp. Fisichella. You will hear us talk about the faith, the Year of Faith and the new evangelization. Part Two will air next weekend.

FRANCIS RECEIVES MISSIONARY DIRECTORS, LAUNCHES “MISSIO” APP

For the first time as Pope, Francis greeted the national directors of the Pontifical Missionary Works (POM) and thanked them because they help him “keep evangelization, the paradigm of every act of the Church, alive.” He said they are “entirely relevant, even more, they are still necessary today because there are so many peoples who have still not known and met Christ and it is urgent to find new forms and new ways that God's grace might touch the heart of each man and each woman and bring them to him.”

The Holy Father noted that the Missionary Works are also called “pontifical” because “they are at the Bishop of Rome's direct disposal, with the specific purpose of acting so that the precious gift of the Gospel might be offered to all.” “Certainly,” he said, “the mission that awaits us is difficult but, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it becomes an exciting mission.

In a light moment at the meeting, Pope Francis launched a new app called MISSIO that was produced by littleiapps.com for the Missionary Works. It will offer news and information in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. In this L’Osservatore Romano photo, you see the Pope getting a little help from some POM staff.

MISSIO can be uploaded at iTunes for Apple products and for Android at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.littleiapps.missio

ST. PETER AND A TRANSFORMING ENCOUNTER WITH CHRIST

(Pope Francis homily - May 17: Vatican Radio) The problem is not that we are sinners, but that we do not allow ourselves to be transformed by the encounter with Christ in love: this was the main focus of Pope Francis’ remarks at Mass on Friday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican in the presence of employees of the Vatican Museums.

At the center of the homily was the day's Gospel reading, in which the Risen Jesus thrice asks Peter if Peter loves Him. “It is,” said Pope Francis, “a dialogue of love between the Lord and his disciple,” one that retraces the whole history of Peter’s meetings with Jesus, from Peter’s first calling and invitation to follow the Lord, to his receiving the name of Cephas – the Rock – and with the name, his peculiar mission, “which was there, even if Peter understood nothing of it [at the time].”

Then, when Peter recognized Jesus as the Christ and went on to reject the way of the Cross, and Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan!” and “Peter accepted this humiliation.” Peter often “believed himself to be a good fellow,” was “fiery” in the Garden of Gethsemane, and “took the sword” to defend Jesus, but then denied him three times – and when Jesus looked on him with that look, “so beautiful [it was],” said the Pope, that Peter weeps. “Jesus in these meetings is maturing Peter’s soul, Peter's heart,” helping Peter to grow in love. So Peter, when he heard Jesus three times ask him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” was ashamed, because he remembered the time when, three times, he said he did not know the Lord:

“Peter was saddened that, for a third time, Jesus asked him, “Do you love me?” This pain, this shame – a great man, this Peter – [and] a sinner, a sinner. The Lord makes him feel that he is a sinner – makes us all feel that we are sinners. The problem is not that we are sinners: the problem is not repenting of sin, not being ashamed of what we have done. That's the problem. And Peter has this shame, this humility, no? The sin, the sin of Peter, is a fact that, with a heart as great as the heart Peter had, brings him to a new encounter with Jesus: to the joy of forgiveness.”

The Lord did not abandon his promise, when said, “You are rock.” In the episode recounted in Friday’s Gospel, we saw Jesus saying, “Feed my sheep,” and the Lord “[gave] over His flock to a sinner.”:

“Peter was a sinner, but not corrupt, eh? Sinners, yes, everyone: corrupt, no. I once knew of a priest, a good parish pastor who worked well. He was appointed bishop, and he was ashamed because he did not feel worthy, he had a spiritual torment. And he went to the confessor. The confessor heard him and said, ‘But do not worry. If after the [mess Peter made of things], they made him Pope, then you go ahead! .’ The point is that this is how the Lord is. That’s the way He is. The Lord makes us mature with many meetings with Him, even with our weaknesses, when we recognize [them], with our sins.”

Pope Francis went on to say that Peter let himself be shaped by his many encounters with Jesus, and that this, he said, “is something we all need to do as well, for we are on the same road.” The Holy Father stressed that Peter is great, not because he is good, but because he has a nobility of heart, which brings him to tears, leads him to this pain, this shame - and also to take up his work of shepherding the flock”:

“Let us ask the Lord, today, that this example of the life of a man who continually meets with the Lord, and whom the Lord purifies, makes more mature through these meetings, might help us to us to move forward, seeking the Lord and meeting Him, allowing us [really] to encounter Him. More than this, it is important that we let ourselves encounter the Lord: He always seeks us, He is always near us. Many times, though, we look the other way because we do not want to talk with the Lord or allow ourselves to encounter the Lord. Meeting the Lord [is important], but more importantly, let us be met by the Lord: this is a grace. This is the grace that Peter teaches us. We ask this grace today. So be it.”

BUENOS AIRES: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF POPE FRANCIS

If a trip to Buenos Aires is on your agenda, you will enjoy the following story from Associated Press (AP) from Argentina’s capital city:

(AP) — You can see the streets where he grew up and played soccer, the church where Jorge Bergoglio prayed as a teenager and the cathedral where the man who would become Pope Francis said Mass. You can even visit the stand where he bought his newspapers every weekend and where he went for a haircut. With an Argentine on the throne of St. Peter, the South American country’s capital city has launched a series of guided tours to give visitors a glimpse of the places that formed Francis, even if the bus and walking tours are just a modest, and so far non-commercial first stab at papal tourism.

The tour bus is a single-story cruiser with sealed windows above a huge image on each side of Francis and the words “Pope Circuit” in papal yellow, which also happens to be the official color of the metropolitan government that began offering the tours last weekend.

For three hours, the bus winds through Buenos Aires twice each Saturday and Sunday and can carry about 40 passengers, rolling past 24 sites linked to the new pope, but stopping only twice and leaving little opportunity for snapshots. There’s no charge for the trip, or for more limited walking tours of downtown and neighborhood sites offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“I loved the tour ... It’s to live the history of Bergoglio, of his family, and I also visited his neighborhood, which I had never seen,” said Alicia Perez, a 71-year-old Argentine who was one of the few non-journalists on inaugural bus tour.

The house at 531 Membrillar where the pope and four siblings grew up with his mother and father, Regina Maria Sivori and Mario Bergoglio, in the 1930s and 40s is gone now, but the bus cruises down the tree-shaded middle-class street past the property, where another dwelling was later built.

Nearby there’s the little plaza where he played soccer as a boy, and the narrow, neo-classical San Jose de Flores church where he worshipped as a teenager and felt called to devote his life to God.

Visitors also see the seminary in the leafy neighborhood of Villa Devoto where Bergoglio decided to become a Jesuit priest, and the Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks more like a classical Greek temple than a typical Catholic church. Bergoglio eventually presided as the capital’s archbishop in the imposing structure, which also houses the tomb of South American independence hero Jose de San Martin.

The tour also passes the Jesuit College of El Salvador, where Bergoglio taught literature and psychology in the 1960s, and the Salvador University he later oversaw.

The tour leaves out the gritty slums where Bergoglio’s church was a frequent benefactor, but there’s a nod to his reputation for ministering to society’s outcasts: a swing past the Devoto prison where he often said Mass on the Thursday before Easter.

The bus finally stops at the parish of San Jose del Talar, where visitors can pray at a sanctuary that features a painting of the Virgin untying knots and passing them to angels. Bergoglio had the painting brought from Germany in the 1980s, and ever since, attendance at the church has soared.

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