Thousands of police officers blanketed the city Saturday and blocked traffic around the Palais du Pharo, a 19th-century palace overlooking the city’s old port where Macron and his wife, Brigitte, greeted Francis on a windy morning.
Archbishop Dominique Mathieu (center) after his consecration as archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan, Iran, in Rome’s Basilica of the Twelve Apostles. Credit: Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
Rome Newsroom, Feb 18, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A Franciscan friar was ordained archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan this week and commissioned to “offer the light of the Gospel” in Iran.
Archbishop Dominique Mathieu, 57, was consecrated in Rome in the Basilica of the Twelve Holy Apostles on Feb. 16, the feast of St. Maruthas, the fourth-century bishop and patron saint of Iran.
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, offered the Mass, commissioning the new archbishop to “be a shepherd of His people in Iran.”
By Giada Aquilino
“Father, you take care of souls”. This is the phrase that Father Rosario Lo Bello has heard repeatedly since 2009 when he became pastor of the Saint Paul the Apostle Parish in Syracuse and began to carry out his pastoral and social ministry of what he calls a “reaffirmation of the public spaces” of the city, through raising awareness, empowerment and studying the landscape. Supporting him are a thousand parishioners from the Graziella neighborhood on the island of Ortigia. Only fishermen once frequented this island. Now it is shrouded in poverty, degradation and drug dealing. It is a raging river, Father Rosario tells Vatican News, while recounting his own dedication renewed each day, in defense of its panoramic, environmental and natural rights. Betraying a sense of relief, he confesses that in recent years he has found a type of “legitimization” in