Amidst the recent kerfuffle about the Vatican trying to restrict too much friendliness at the Exchange of Peace, Pope Francis has made it clear that he advocates more hugging – outside the liturgy, at least.
This morning Pope Francis celebrated Mass with some young Jesuits at St. Martha’s guesthouse. The occasion was the first memorial celebration of the Jesuit St. Peter Faber, whom Pope Francis canonized last year.
After Mass a young Italian Jesuit told Vatican Radio (my loose translation, with a bit of help from Xavier Rindfleisch and some confratelli):
It was really great. It was a touching moment, an extremely sober and simple celebration, without great ceremony. Personally, at the end, when I said goodbye to him, I asked him if I might embrace him, and then he pulled me strongly to himself and said to me, “Now that’s how real men hug.” Then he showed me how, instead, he had been taught to hug confreres [in religious life], with a clear distance. He said to me, “That’s not good. Your embrace pleased me more.”
Meanwhile, according to this morning’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Vatican congregation for religious life, sees a need for reform in the strict separation between men and women religious. This is not right, he said, because one does not acknowledge and incorporate the value of the other. He admonished religious orders to find ways for men and women, in harmony with church teaching, to “look each other in the eye.” He also called for an open engagement of religious with sexuality, in order to develop a normal relationship to their bodies while taking to heart traditional church values.
awr
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