April 26.   Jocelyn was studying Church history and their assignment was to study persecution from the early days until today. “More stories of death and persecution.  Saul who had been a so-called righteous Jew, was in the forefront of the persecution. How much harm has been done in the world and the Church too because of this religious narrowness.   I’m learning a lot.  It’s interesting that nowadays when Pope Francis is preaching so much more tolerance that intolerance seems to be on the rise too,” she said to the family. Prince added, “In his own special intentions he asks us to pray for him and for unity and tolerance. I’ve heard that ISIS wants to assassinate him, so I think we should say a special prayer for him.” 

Scripture Devout men buried Stephen. But Saul laid waste the Church and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.  From Acts 8:1b – 8. Pope Francis: It pains me greatly to discover how some Christian communities can tolerate different forms of enmity, division, calumny, defamation, vendetta, jealousy and the desire to impose certain ideas at all costs even to persecutions which appear as veritable witch hunts.  Whom are we going to evangelise if this is the way we act?  EG 100    When in the name of an ideology there is an attempt to remove God from a society that society ends up adoring idols and very soon men and women lose their way, their dignity is trampled and their rights violated.   You know well how much suffering is caused by the denial of freedom of conscience and of religious freedom and how that wound leaves a humanity which is impoverished because it lacks hope and ideals to guide it.   FT274. Reflect, share and act, pray. Discuss the popes of our time and offer special prayers for Pope Francis.