We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Vatican City, Jun 18, 2025 / 06:03 am (CNA).

After a turn in the popemobile to greet thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the general audience on Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV continued his catechesis on “Jesus Christ, Our Hope.”

The pope reminded listeners that Jesus is capable of healing and unblocking the past, which at times paralyzes us — inviting us to move forward and decide what to do with our own history.

The Church: A house of mercy

The Holy Father invited the faithful to reflect on moments in which “we feel ‘stuck’ and trapped in a dead end,” where it seems “pointless to keep hoping — we resign ourselves and no longer have the strength to fight.”

Referring to the Gospel passage from John 5:1–9, which recounts the healing of a paralytic, the pope said that it is Jesus who “reaches people in their pain” — the sick and those who had been cast out of the Temple for being considered unclean.

These people, the Holy Father recalled, hoped to get well in a pool whose waters were believed to have healing powers. According to the custom of the time, the first person to plunge into the pool when the water stirred would be healed.

“That pool was called Betzatà, which means ‘house of mercy.’ It could be seen as an image of the Church, where the sick and the poor gather, and to which the Lord comes to heal and bring hope,” he added.

The paralysis of disillusionment

Jesus then approaches a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years and had never managed to enter the pool. The Pope pointed out that “what often paralyzes us is precisely disillusionment. We feel discouraged and risk falling into neglect.” When Jesus speaks to the paralytic, he asks a “necessary” question: “Do you want to be healed?”

“Sometimes we prefer to remain in the condition of being sick, forcing others to take care of us. It can also become an excuse to avoid deciding what to do with our lives. But Jesus leads this man back to his true and deepest desire,” Leo XIV said.

The paralytic, feeling defeated, replies that he has no one to help him into the pool — an attitude which, according to the pope, “becomes a pretext for avoiding personal responsibility.”

Regarding the man’s fatalistic view of life, the pope said that at times “we think things happen to us because we are unlucky, or because fate is against us. This man is discouraged. He feels defeated by life’s struggles.”

With Jesus, we discover that life is in our hands

Nevertheless, Jesus “helps him discover that his life is also in his own hands. He invites him to rise up from his chronic condition and take up his mat. That mat is not thrown away or abandoned: it represents his past illness — his history,” the pope continued.

The past, he explained, had kept the man stuck, forcing him “to lie there like someone already dead.” But thanks to Jesus, he is able to “carry that mat and take it wherever he wants — he can decide what to do with his history. It’s a matter of walking forward, taking responsibility for choosing which path to take.”

Finally, the pope invited the faithful to ask the Lord “for the gift of understanding where in our life we have become stuck. Let us try to give voice to our desire for healing. And let us pray for all those who feel paralyzed and see no way out,” he said.

ACI MENA, Jun 18, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Amid renewed tensions in the Middle East, the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul and its surrounding areas has continued its tradition of celebrating first holy Communion for children in Qaraqosh (Baghdeda), Iraq. Over 450 boys and girls received the sacrament during liturgies held over the past month in various churches of the town.

In his homilies during the celebrations, Archbishop Benedictus Hanno praised the steadfast faith of the local Christian community, emphasizing their determination to return to their ancestral homeland despite the suffering they endured due to forced displacement. 

“When we see this radiant group receiving the body of Christ in faith, we know our families remain firm in their commitment, and our Church continues to grow and flourish,” he said.

Hanno also highlighted the vital role of Catholic families in nurturing the faith of their children: “When the father and mother are united in faith, the family becomes a fortified castle, capable of resisting temptation, evil, and moral deviation,” he said.

The archbishop stressed that these celebrations are “a great joy for our Church and a living testimony to the renewal and perseverance of Christian faith.”

Christians from Qaraqosh and neighboring towns were forcibly displaced from their historic homeland in the Nineveh Plain when ISIS seized the region on Aug. 6, 2014. 

“They did not hesitate to give up their homes and possessions in order to preserve their faith... they are persecuted for their belief, and there is nothing more noble than holding onto one’s faith,” Hanno said in an earlier interview with ACI MENA, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner.

Despite the large-scale emigration of Christians from Iraq, many have returned to Qaraqosh after its liberation in 2017, determined to rebuild their churches and homes and to remain rooted in their land.

Qaraqosh — known in Syriac as “Baghdeda” and located in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province — remains one of the country’s largest Christian towns. However, the number of Christians has declined from about 60,000 before 2014 to around 30,000 today.

According to the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy’s chancery office, the number of Syriac Catholics alone dropped from 55,000 before the ISIS occupation to just 27,000 today, not including Christians from other churches.

During his historic visit to Iraq in 2021, Pope Francis visited Qaraqosh and met with the faithful at the Grand Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

This story was first published by ACI MENA, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner. It has been translated for and adapted by CNA.

Feast date: Jun 18

St. Osanna was a Dominican tertiary, who spent her adult life serving the poor and the sick and offering spiritual direction to many. However, she was also a mystic and a visionary, eventually bearing the pain and red marks of the stigmata, though not the bleeding.

She was born in 1449 to a noble Italian family. Her visions, first of angels and of the Trinity, began at the young age of five. She felt a call to religious life and became a tertiary at 17, having already rejected a marriage arranged by her father.

Her visions continued into her adult life, and she often fell into ecstasies. She was also a strong critic of the lack of morality of her day. She died in 1505.

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