Pope encourages personal retreats for Lent
January 16, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis has announced plans to spend the first week of Lent in a personal spiritual retreat, and has asked the leaders of the Roman Curia to join him in private prayer.
To preserve the time for prayer and reflection, the Pope asked Vatican officials to close their offices and “engage in prayer from the afternoon of Sunday, 18 February, to the afternoon of Friday, 23 February.” During that week papal audiences will be suspended.
In the past, the Pope and the officials of the Roman Curia would gather in the Vatican’s Redemptoris Mater chapel for a preached Lenten Retreat. Pope Francis altered that pattern by organizing the annual retreats outside Rome, to take Vatican officials away from their usual routines.
In 2021 the Pontiff cancelled the Lenten Retreat because of the Covid lockdown, and in 2022, citing the “continuing epidemiological emergency,” he did the same. Last year he took another step, asking officials of the Curia to spend the week in private prayer.
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