Vatican City, Feb 15, 2019 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Friday that people need to overcome their fear of migrants and refugees, and look for the face of Christ in each immigrant arriving in their countries.
“The Lord speaks to us today and asks us to let Him free us from our fears,” Pope Francis said in a homily Feb. 15 at the Fraterna Domus di Sacrofano, a Catholic retreat center north of Rome.
In fear, we tend to become closed off, Pope Francis explained. “This withdrawal into ourselves, a sign of defeat, increases our fear of ‘others,’ the unknown, the marginalized, the strangers.”
“It is not easy to enter the culture of others, put yourself in the shoes of people so different from us, understand their thoughts and experiences. And so often we give up the meeting with the other and raise barriers to defend ourselves,” he continued.
“Faced with the wickedness and ugliness of our time, we … are tempted to abandon our dream of freedom. We feel legitimate fear in front of situations that seem to us with no way out. And the human words of a leader or prophet are not enough to reassure us,” he said.
However, when fear holds one back from encountering the stranger, it is a missed opportunity to practice charity, the pope explained.
“The meeting with the other, then, is also an encounter with Christ. He told us himself. It is He who knocks on our door hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned, asking to be met and assisted,” he said.
“It is really Him, even if our eyes [struggle] to recognize Him: with broken clothes, with dirty feet, with a deformed face, with a wounded body, unable to speak our language,” Pope Francis added.
Pope Francis celebrated the opening Mass for a Feb. 15-17 gathering called, “Freedom from Fear,” a meeting of people and organizations dedicated to welcoming migrants. The event was organized by the Italian bishops conference and Caritas Italiana.
In the Mass, Pope Francis prayed that all pastors “know how to train all the baptized to welcome to migrants and refugees.”
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A smiling Pope Francis arrives in St. Peter’s Square on April 13, 2025, in a surprise visit at the end of the outdoor Palm Sunday Mass. / Credit: Bénédicte Cedergren/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Apr 13, 2025 / 10:50 am (CNA).
Marking another in a series of recent surprise public appearances, Pope Francis on Sunday briefly greeted thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square to celebrate Palm Sunday.
“Happy Palm Sunday and beginning of Holy Week!” the Holy Father said with some difficulty to the cheers of the large crowd that filled the square and spilled out along the Via della Conciliazione.
Unable to participate in the Palm Sunday Mass, the 88-year-old pontiff, still convalescing after a serious bout of double pneumonia that kept him hospitalized for 39 days, arrived in a wheelchair toward the end of the outdoor liturgy, smiling and without nasal tubes as he passed by clergy, religious men and women, and lay people standing near the altar.
Pope Francis offers a blessing to the gathered faithful from a ramp at St. Peter’s Basilica during Palm Sunday celebrations, April 13, 2025. The Holy Father made a brief appearance following the main liturgy presided over by Cardinal Sandri. Credit: Bénédicte Cedergren / EWTN News
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, vice dean of the College of Cardinals, presided over the Mass as the pope’s delegate and read the Holy Father’s written homily to crowds of people waving palms and olive branches under overcast skies.
In his prepared homily, the pope exhorted Christians to “experience the great miracle of mercy” by accompanying Jesus in his journey to the cross.
“Let us decide how we are meant to carry our own cross during this Holy Week: if not on our shoulders, in our hearts,” the pope shared. “And not only our cross, but also the cross of those who suffer all around us.”
Pope Francis’ homily focused on Simon of Cyrene who, in St. Luke’s gospel, “unexpectedly found himself caught up in a drama” of Christ’s crucifixion.
“As we make our own way towards Calvary, let us reflect for a moment on Simon’s actions, try to look into his heart, and follow in his footsteps at the side of Jesus,” the pope observed.
Religious sisters hold palm fronds and olive branches during Palm Sunday celebrations at St. Peter’s Square, April 13, 2025. The traditional symbols commemorate Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem as crowds laid branches before him, marking the beginning of Holy Week. | Credit: Bénédicte Cedergren / EWTN News. Credit: Bénédicte Cedergren / EWTN News
Though the man from Cyrene did not take up Jesus’ cross and follow him out of “conviction” but, rather, of “coercion,” the Holy Father praised him for being present to help the suffering Jesus and, in an “unexpected and astonishing way,” becomes “part of the history of salvation.”
“Between him and Jesus, there is no dialogue; not a single word is spoken. Between him and Jesus, there is only the wood of the cross,” the pope wrote.
“When we think of what Simon did for Jesus, we should also think of what Jesus did for Simon — what he did for me, for you, for each of us: he redeemed the world,” he added.
Placing emphasis on Christ’s infinite love which, “in obedience to the Father,” bore the sins of all humanity, the pope highlighted that Christians believe in a God who “suffered with us and for us.”
“Let us remember that God has made this road a place of redemption, for he walked it himself, giving his life for us,” the pope urged.
Pope’ Angelus message
In his Palm Sunday Angelus address released by the Vatican, the Holy Father asked Christians to continue to pray for those who are suffering in the world because of war, poverty, and disasters.
“The 15th of April will mark the second sad anniversary of the beginning of the conflict in Sudan, in which thousands have been killed and millions of families have been forced to flee their homes,” he said in his message.
“The suffering of children, women and vulnerable people cries out to heaven and begs us to act,” he added.
On Friday, Sudanese paramilitaries killed the entire nine-member staff of the last medical clinic in a refugee camp in the western region of Darfur, Sudan, according to a report in the New York Times, citing aid groups and the United Nations. In all, at least 100 people were killed in an assault on the camp, which is populated by a half-million people displaced by the country’s civil war, the report said.
Noting other ongoing civil wars affecting populations in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the pope asked people to pray for peace in Congo, South Sudan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Myanmar.
In his address, the Holy Father also asked people to remember the victims and families of the Santo Domingo disaster, in the Dominican Republic, which killed more than 200 people after a nightclub roof collapsed on April 8.
“May Mary, Mother of Sorrows, obtain this grace for us and help us to live this Holy Week with faith,” Pope Francis said.
Vatican City, Oct 27, 2018 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The prevention of sex abuse and abuse in all its forms is a topic of the 2018 Synod of Bishops’ final document, which says the right formation of educators and youth is a key first step. &nb… […]
3 Comments
It is not primarily a problem of “fear” but a problem of identity and assimilation and cultural differences. But Francis doesn’t realize this and how vacuous his understanding of the common good is as a result.
I think the recent attacks on Churches on France (including desecration of the Eucharist), the gang rapes of women in Germany, and acts of terrorism in Germany, Spain and elsewhere shows that we we should in fact fear a certain class of “migrants” and “refugees” (or as they are increasingly being called, rapefugees).
I am all for accepting genuine refugees who genuinely flee their home countries for their lives but as the Czech President Milos Zeman noted, most of these “refugees are not women, children, elderly, or religious minorities. They are young Muslim men aged 18-30 (military age), so why are they not fighting for their countries against ISIS instead of runnign away like cowards? And why do they shoe utter contempt for women and non-Muslims in their host countries?
I say those swarming over the USA southern border be loaded into the papel jet and dropped off in st peters square. Then we can say “Pope Francis be not afraid “
It is not primarily a problem of “fear” but a problem of identity and assimilation and cultural differences. But Francis doesn’t realize this and how vacuous his understanding of the common good is as a result.
I think the recent attacks on Churches on France (including desecration of the Eucharist), the gang rapes of women in Germany, and acts of terrorism in Germany, Spain and elsewhere shows that we we should in fact fear a certain class of “migrants” and “refugees” (or as they are increasingly being called, rapefugees).
I am all for accepting genuine refugees who genuinely flee their home countries for their lives but as the Czech President Milos Zeman noted, most of these “refugees are not women, children, elderly, or religious minorities. They are young Muslim men aged 18-30 (military age), so why are they not fighting for their countries against ISIS instead of runnign away like cowards? And why do they shoe utter contempt for women and non-Muslims in their host countries?
I say those swarming over the USA southern border be loaded into the papel jet and dropped off in st peters square. Then we can say “Pope Francis be not afraid “