By Tyler Arnold
Washington DC, February 28, 2025/19:30
The speakers and participants of the national breakfast of Catholic prayer of 2025 prayed on Friday for Pope Francis in the middle of his in progress diseases, underlined a message of hope and drew attention to the political efforts in progress pro-life.
“The Holy Father is still in precarious circumstances, but thanks to God (and) thanks to the prayers of Catholics around the world,” said News Monssignor Roger Landry, National Director of Pontifical Mission Societies USA.
During his remarks during the event, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nonce in the United States, said that Pope Francis was grateful for prayers because he remains in critical – but stable – hospital in the middle of his battle against pneumonia and other respiratory affirmations.
“(Pope Francis) takes care of the people of this country and he appreciates our unity with him in faith and in hope,” said Pierre, adding: “He wants to encourage us in prayer and action for the common good.”
The annual event included a prayer for the health of the Holy Father Directed by Vice-President JD VANCE And a rosary of divine mercy prayed for the pontiff, for the leaders of the country and the world, led by the actor and activist Mexican Eduardo Verástegui.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNX2MPKLDVU
Alessandro Disanto, co-founder of the Catholic Hallow prayer application, recited the last prayer of novena for the country.
The organizers also awarded several service prizes during the event, notably to the representative Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, who received the CHRISTIFISLIS LAICI Prize For his constant defense of the right to life and religious freedom. Smith also spoke during breakfast.
Kansas City’s botter, Harrison Butker, and San Diego’s businessman, Terry Caster, received “Heroes of Hope” awards for their promotion of the Catholic faith.
A message of hope
The theme of breakfast 2025 was focused on the theological virtue of hope, which is also the theme of 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.
During his opening remarks, Mark Randall, president of breakfast, said that “even if we recognize our concern” for the health of Pope Francis, “we are raised by the theme of this stage rally: hope.”
“Hope is the anchor that binds us to faith and guides us to love,” said Randall. “As Pope Francis has so beautifully written it:” Hope is not something distant or elusive. It’s already in us. It is simply up to us to strengthen through the grace of God and to share with the world. »»
Offering the opening speech of the event, Archbishop James Shea, president of the University of Marie in Northern Dakota, said that “hopeless, everything collapses for us”.
“Hopefully, human beings are miserable and unhappy creatures. This does not matter – you can give us the richness, health and prosperity of all kinds, but ultimately hopeless, we will get tired of it. »»
Shea explained that Christian hope in eternal life in heaven helps to guide faithful people to do good things here on earth.
(The story continues below)
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“Our citizenship is in paradise and we must know that the efforts we put on this world, all our efforts for good and true and the beautiful have an effect in time and eternity because God works alongside us, giving strength and wisdom, the courage of our smallest and even of our meager and faulty,” said Shea.
Smith defends life
By accepting his price for his efforts to defend life and religious freedom, Smith has talked at length about abortion and religious persecution in the world.
“Even if sometimes we are tired and was lasted – I know that I do it – none of us has the luxury of growing up,” said Smith. “The existential threats to human life and dignity today have entered a new phase that absolutely raises our time, our talent and our intervention.”
Smith described surgical abortions to “brutally dismember defenseless babies” and chemical abortions like “poisonous babies” and said that the dangers posed to women “should also be exposed”.
The Congress member thanked President Donald Trump for executive actions aimed at restoring Mexico City policy, which prohibits federal funding for the promotion of abortion abroad. He also criticized the administration of former president Joe Biden for having used the president’s emergency plan for the relief of AIDS (PEPFAR) to “push the laws on the problem of abortion and the change of the whole world”.
Smith, who co-chases the Congressal Pro-Life Caucus, described the abortion of “a weapon of mass destruction” during his speech.
“We all have very deep concerns about nuclear weapons, other weapons of mass destruction, but abortion is a weapon of mass destruction,” he added. “More than 66 million babies have been abandoned in the United States since 1973, a number of numbly deaths of children.”
Tyler Arnold is a journalist for the staff of the Catholic press agency, based in the EWTN News Washington office. He previously worked on the Place Center and was published in a variety of points of sale, in particular the Associated Press, the National Review, the American Conservative and the Federalist.