With each March edition, we mark the anniversary of the founding of CNEWA by Pope Pius XI on 11 March 1926.

On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis opened the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica and inaugurated the jubilee year 2025, which focuses on the virtue of hope. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. Permit me to suggest we reflect, pray and consider the intimate and organic link between the virtue of hope and the mission of CNEWA and Pontifical Mission.

The opening lines of the Lord’s Prayer — in fact, the entire prayer — are an expression of the virtue of hope. From the opening lines, we recognize ourselves as creatures before the Creator, entrusted with a specific mission. We are to be agents of God’s holiness, bringing his kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. We are to be agents of God’s holiness, who seek to carry out his will.

The church, through doctrine and pastoral leadership, teaches us that hope gives us purpose on our pilgrim journey through life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength” (1817).

Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2007 encyclical dedicated to Christian hope, “Spe salvi,” writes: “Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well” (2).

Pope Francis continues to encourage us regularly to nurture hope on our Christian journey, saying at a General Audience on 8 May last year, “Hope is the answer offered to our heart, when the absolute question arises in us: ‘What will become of me? What is the purpose of the journey? What is the destiny of the world?’ ”

Very often, Pope Francis links the virtue of hope with the ability of people to smile. When we find ourselves in darkness, with a loss of direction, overwhelmed by our difficulties and challenges, it is oftentimes the virtue of hope, Pope Francis says, “which teaches us to smile.” In dramatic language, he uses an image I have often contemplated and used when he writes, “When we are before a child, although we have many problems and many difficulties, a smile comes to us from within, because we see hope in front of us: A child is hope!” (General Audience, 7 December 2016).

During this jubilee year, let us pray for a deepening of the virtue of hope within ourselves. Let us journey as pilgrims of hope in our families, among friends, in our places of work, in the public square of our republic, and by our desire to be agents of healing and hope throughout CNEWA’s world! 

The articles contained in this edition challenge us to re-commit our lives to the virtue of hope.

• This year, as the church marks the 1,700th anniversary of the first great ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325, Father Elias Mallon, S.A., special assistant to the president, offers insightful and important reflections. In addition to its contribution to the development of dogma in our profession of faith that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is “consubstantial with the Father,” the council also offered us an early view of the meaning of ecclesial synodality — that all baptized, according to their particular gifts, build the body of Christ, the church.

• The first-person testimony of Dr. Nabil Antaki on health care in Syria, which CNEWA has been funding for more than a decade, calls for your prayers, your awareness, your donations.

• CNEWA has been caring for needy and vulnerable children through the support of homes for orphaned and at-risk youth, as reported in this edition of the magazine, and the improvement of church-run schools in Minya, Luxor and Cairo. Please pray with us and for us and become a partner through your generous support.

• Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and chair of CNEWA’s board, has made clear his support for those suffering, dying and displaced. In this issue, Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia shares his experience from a recent trip to Ukraine, where CNEWA has partnered with Caritas Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and other church-run groups, as we make every effort, as Pope Francis calls us, to be instruments of hope in “martyred Ukraine.”

• In November, I visited CNEWA’s staff in Kerala, southern India, where the church, while facing many challenges, continues to respond to the needs of people in the periphery of Indian society, as the article in this issue highlights.

As we journey through the holy season of Lent, from 5 March to 17 April, let us examine the ways in which we see in the Lord’s Prayer a challenge to live the virtue of hope. Let us try to avoid the two sins against the virtue of hope: despair and presumption. 

With my gratitude and prayers,

Peter I. Vaccari

President

Read this article in our digital print format here.