General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis urged his priests Thursday to avoid “clerical hypocrisy” and treat their flocks with mercy as he delivered a lengthy set of marching orders to Rome-based priests at the start of a busy few days leading to Easter.
A strong-looking Francis presided over a Holy Thursday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during which the oils for church services are blessed. Later in the afternoon, he travels to Rome’s main women’s prison for the annual Holy Week ritual in which he washes the feet of inmates in a symbol of humility and service.
The 87-year-old Francis, who has been hobbled by a long bout of respiratory problems this winter, appeared in good form for the morning Mass. He read aloud a long homily, after skipping his text at the last minute during Palm Sunday Mass last weekend.
In his remarks, Francis warned priests against “sliding into clerical hypocrisy,” or preaching one thing to their flocks but doing differently in their own spiritual lives. Rather, he urged them to always show mercy to the faithful and not judge them, and weep instead for their own sins.
Doing so, he said, “means looking within and repenting of our ingratitude and inconstancy, and acknowledging with sorrow our duplicity, dishonesty and hypocrisy,” he said.
The Mass was the first major papal liturgy in St. Peter’s since Bernini’s great columned canopy over the altar, known as a baldacchino, was covered in scaffolding for a months-long renovation and cleaning.
Francis has a busy few days coming up that will test his stamina.
On Friday, he is due to travel at night to the Colosseum for the Way of the Cross procession re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion. On Saturday, he presides over an evening Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica followed a few hours later by Easter Sunday Mass in the piazza and his big noontime Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) speech highlighting global conflicts and disasters afflicting humanity.
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By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — More than 100 long-finned pilot whales that beached on the western Australian coast Thursday have returned to sea, while 29 died on the shore, officials said.
Some of us await the day we retire with greater impatience, others with less.
Washington, DC – A special concert by Mario Frangoulis’ launched the Golden Jubilee Weekend celebrations for the American Hellenic Institute (AHI) at the famed Warner Theater in Washington, DC on April 12.
LORAIN, OH – Fr. Michael Gulgas, 67 of Amherst, fell asleep in the Lord, on the mid-Lenten celebration of the Holy Cross in St.