This year we are celebrating the eighth centenary of the living nativity scene that Francis of Assisi held at Greccio (Italy), in 1223[1]. It is generally considered that this event gave rise to “the enchanting image of the Christmas crèche”[2] and to the “intense spiritual atmosphere that surrounds Christmas”[3]. Sadly, today we have turned Christmas into an excuse for consumerism. Between lights, shopping, and gifts we are losing the ability to contemplate the humility and poverty of the Child Jesus, who calls us to follow in his footsteps by faithfully observing the Gospel. Pope Francis invites us to “encourage” in our society the enchanting tradition “of the Christmas crèche”. He recognizes that it originated in the living nativity scene of Saint Francis in Greccio. This papal recognition does not negate the obvious similarities of that celebration with the medieval tradition of staging the Christmas mysteries. Saint Francis’ crèche was not the first staging of the nativity but its connection to the Eucharist, the way people present felt involved, and the charism of the Saint of Assisi may explain why the popular belief has considered Saint Francis as the initiator and propagator of the nativity scenes. Benedict XVI confirms that “the…

    As a seventy-seven- year old I am at high-risk from the Corona virus.  I would like to share some scattered reflections from my pastoral experience as a priest-moral theologian. Epidemics since antiquity have always spread along trade routes with even more swiftly and dramatically in an age of globalization.  Despite the devastation, humanity has learned to overcome and not to succumb.  When the Black Death stuck in 1349 it took nearly half of Sienna’s population, leaving the walls of its new cathedral standing ‘in mid-air”.  Today, still unfinished, they have been absorbed as part of the cathedral’s history.  Since the Spanish flu just after World War I four great influenza epidemics have swept the world.   By the 1970ies scientists had vaccines for many extremely contagious diseases and predicted that epidemics might be consigned to the past.  They were quickly disillusioned by the arrival of AIDS, Ebola, Saas and now the Corona virus.  In fact, specialists kept warning that a tremendous outbreak was not just possible but highly likely and that we were medically and psychologically unprepared. A remarkable fact emerged from the Ebola epidemic in North Africa in the 1990ies.  Cultural anthropologists discovered that a tribe had escaped…