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Illustration: The Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875)
Apostolic Journey of Pope Francis to Ajaccio (A Mediterranean port on the west coast of Corsica)
on the occasion of the congress “popular religiosity in the mediterranean”
Angelus prayer with bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated men and women and seminarians
Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption – Ajaccio – Sunday, 15 December 2024
“Let us not forget this: at the center is the Lord”
Dear Brother Bishops
Dear consecrated women, dear priests, deacons and seminarians!
I have been in this beautiful country for only one day, but I would have liked to have had at least a brief moment to meet and greet you.
This gives me the opportunity, first of all, to say thank you: thank you for being here, for giving your lives; thank you for your work, for your daily commitment; thank you for being a sign of God’s merciful love and witnesses of the Gospel.
I was happy to greet one of you: he is 95 years old and has been a priest for 70 years!
This is the continuation of a beautiful vocation. Thank you brother for your testimony!
And from ‘thank you’ I turn immediately to God’s grace, which is the foundation of the Christian faith and of every form of consecration in the Church.
In the European context in which we find ourselves, there is no lack of problems and challenges in the transmission of the faith, and every day you face them, discovering that you are small and fragile: you are not very numerous, you do not have powerful means, the environments in which you work are not always favorable to welcoming the proclamation of the Gospel.
And sometimes a film comes to mind, because some are willing to accept the Gospel, but not the ‘speaker’. That film had this line: ‘The music yes, but the musician no’.
Think of it, faithfulness to the transmission of the Gospel. This will help us. Yet this priestly poverty, I would like to say, is a blessing! Why? It strips us of the pretense of doing it alone, it teaches us to consider the Christian mission as something that does not depend on human strength, but above all on the work of the Lord, who always works and acts with the little we can offer him.
Let us not forget this: at the center is the Lord. Not me at the center, but God.
For some presumptuous priest who puts himself at the center, we say: this is a priest yo, me, mí, conmigo, para mí. Me, me, with me, for me.
No, the Lord is at the center. And this is something that perhaps every morning, at sunrise, every pastor, every consecrated person should repeat in prayer: even today, in my service, not me at the center, but God, the Lord.
And I say this because there is a danger in worldliness, a danger that is vanity.
To be a ‘peacock’. Looking too much at oneself. Vanity.
And vanity is a bad vice, with a bad smell. To be a peacock.
The primacy of divine grace does not mean, however, that we can sleep soundly without taking responsibility. On the contrary, we must see ourselves as ‘co-workers of God’s grace’ (1 Cor 3:9 – we are God’s fellow workers;[a] you are God’s field, God’s building.). And so, walking with the Lord, each day we are brought back to an essential question: how am I living my priesthood, my consecration, my discipleship? Am I close to Jesus?
When I was making pastoral visits in the other diocese, I would meet some good priests who worked very, very hard. ‘Tell me, what do you do in the evening?’ – ‘I’m tired, I have a bite to eat and then I go to bed to rest a bit, to watch television’ – ‘But you don’t go to the chapel to greet your head?’ – ‘Eh no…’ – ‘And you, before you go to sleep you do this, pray a Hail Mary?
At least be polite: come to the chapel and say: ‘Bye, thank you very much, see you tomorrow’.’
Do not forget the Lord! The Lord at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the day.
He is our leader. And He is a leader who works harder than we do! Do not forget this.
And I ask you this question: how do I live discipleship? Fix it in your heart, don’t underestimate it, and don’t underestimate the need for this discernment, this looking inward, so that we don’t get ‘ground up’ in the rhythms and external activities and lose our inner consistency. For my part, I would like to leave you with a twofold invitation: take care of yourselves and take care of others.
The first: take care of you. Because priestly or religious life is not a ‘yes’ that we say once and for all.
You do not live off the Lord! On the contrary, the joy of encountering him must be renewed every day, listening to his voice every moment and choosing to follow him, even when we fall. Get up, look to the Lord: “Forgive me, help me to go on”. This fraternal and childlike closeness.
Let us remember this: our life is expressed in the gift of ourselves, but the more a priest, a nun, a religious gives of himself, spends himself, works for the Kingdom of God, the more it becomes necessary that he also takes care of himself.
A priest, a nun, a deacon who neglects himself will also end up neglecting those entrusted to him.
For this we need a small ‘rule of life’ – religious already have one -, which includes a daily appointment with prayer and the Eucharist, dialogue with the Lord, each according to his or her own spirituality and style.
And I would also like to add: to preserve a few moments of solitude; to have a brother or sister with whom we can freely share what we carry in our hearts – in the old days this was called the spiritual director, the spiritual director -; to cultivate something we are passionate about, and not to spend our free time, but to take a healthy rest from the weariness of ministry. Ministry is tiring!
One should be afraid of those people who are always active, always in the center, who perhaps out of too much zeal never rest, never take a break for themselves.
Brothers, this is not good; we need spaces and moments in which each priest and each consecrated person can take care of himself. Not to have a face-lift to look better, no, to talk with the Friend, with the Lord, and especially with the Mother – don’t leave Our Lady, please – to talk about one’s life, how things are going. And always have for this both the confessor and some friend who knows you well and with whom you can talk and make a good discernment. Presbyterian ‘mushrooms’ are not good!
And another thing is part of this care: fraternity among yourselves.
We learn to share not only the labors and challenges, but also the joy and friendship among us: your bishop says something I like very much, namely that it is important to move from the ‘Book of Lamentations’ to the ‘Book of Songs’. We do this very little. We like lamentations! And if the poor Bishop forgot his skullcap that morning. He takes something to gossip about the Bishop.
It is true, the Bishop is a sinner like each one of us. We are brothers!
Change from the ‘Book of Lamentations’ to the ‘Book of Songs’.
This is important, even a Psalm says so: ‘You have changed my lament into a dance’ (Ps 30:12).
Let us share the joy of being apostles and disciples of the Lord! Joy must be shared.
Otherwise, vinegar will take the place of joy.
It is an ugly thing to find a priest with a bitter heart. It is ugly. ‘But why are you like this?’ – ‘Eh, because the bishop doesn’t like me… Because they appointed that other guy as bishop and not me… Because… Because…’. The complaints. Please stop before complaints, envy. Envy is a ‘yellow’ vice. Let us ask the Lord to change our complaining into dancing, to give us a sense of humor, evangelical simplicity.
The second thing: to care for others. The mission each of you has received always has only one purpose: to bring Jesus to others, to give hearts the consolation of the Gospel.
I like to recall the moment when the Apostle Paul is about to return to Corinth and writing to the community he says: ‘On my own account I will gladly give myself, indeed consume myself for your souls’ (2 Cor 12:15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you the more, am I to be loved the less?).
To consume oneself for souls, to consume oneself in the offering of oneself for those entrusted to us. And I am reminded of a young saintly priest who died of cancer not long ago.
He lived in a slum with the poorest people.
He used to say: ‘Sometimes I feel like closing the window with bricks, because people come at all hours and if I don’t answer the door, they knock on the window’.
The priest with a heart open to all, without making distinctions.
Listening, being close to the people, is also an invitation to find, in today’s context, the most effective pastoral ways of evangelization.
Do not be afraid to change, to revise old patterns, to renew the languages of faith, learning that mission is not a matter of human strategies: it is first and foremost a matter of faith.
Take care of others: those who are waiting for the Word of Jesus, those who have drifted away from Him, those who need guidance or consolation for their suffering.
Caring for everyone, in formation and especially in encounter.
Meeting people, where they live and work, that is important.
And then, one thing I hold so dear: please always forgive. And forgive everything. Forgive everything and always. To priests I say, in the sacrament of Reconciliation, do not ask too many questions. Listen and forgive. A Cardinal – who is a bit conservative, a bit square, but he is a great priest – said in a lecture to priests: ‘If someone [in Confession] starts to stutter because he is ashamed, I tell him: it’s OK, I understand, move on to something else. In reality I have not understood anything, but He [the Lord] has understood’.
Please don’t torture people in the confessional: where, how, when, with whom… Always forgive, always forgive! There is a good Capuchin friar in Buenos Aires, whom I made a cardinal at the age of 96.
He always has a long queue of people, because he is a good confessor, I used to go to him too.
This confessor once told me: ‘Listen, sometimes I get the scruple of forgiving too much’ – ‘And what do you do?’ – ‘I go and pray and say: Lord, forgive me, I have forgiven too much. But immediately I say: But if it was You who gave me the bad example!’
Always forgive. Forgive everything. And this I also say to religious women and men: forgive, forget, when they do something bad to us, the ambitious community fights… Forgive.
The Lord has given us the example: forgive everything and always! Everyone, everyone.
And I will make you a confession: I already have 55 years of priesthood, yes, the day before yesterday I did 55, and I have never denied absolution.
And I like to confess, a lot. I have always looked for ways to forgive.
I don’t know if it is good, if the Lord will give me…. But this is my testimony.
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and wish you a ministry full of hope and joy. Even in moments of weariness and discouragement, do not let go.
Turn your hearts back to the Lord. Do not forget to weep before the Lord! He manifests Himself and is found if you take care of yourselves and others. In this way He offers consolation to those whom He has called and sent. Go forth with courage: He will fill you with joy!
Now we turn in prayer to the Virgin Mary.
In this Cathedral, named after her Assumption into Heaven, the faithful people venerate her as Patroness and Mother of Mercy, the ‘Madunnuccia’.
From this Mediterranean Island, we raise to her the plea for peace: peace for all the lands bordering this Sea, especially for the Holy Land where Mary gave birth to Jesus.
Peace for Palestine, for Israel, for Lebanon, for Syria, for the entire Middle East!
Peace in tormented Myanmar. And may the Holy Mother of God obtain the longed-for peace for the Ukrainian people and the Russian people.
They are brothers – ‘No, Father, they are cousins!’ – They are cousins, brothers, I do not know, but let them understand each other! Peace! Brothers, sisters, war is always a defeat. And war in religious communities, war in parishes always is a defeat, always! May the Lord give us all peace.
And let us pray for the victims of the cyclone that struck the Mayotte Archipelago in the past few hours.
I am spiritually close to all those who have been affected by this tragedy.
And now all together, let us pray the Angelus –
The Angelus Prayer (English)
V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, etc.
V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
Hail Mary. . .
V. And the Word was made flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary. .
.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray:
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts,
that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel,
may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection.
Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
