Pope Francis has highlighted how helping the poor is a call to our humanity, which not only helps them, but us too.
In Rome on the occasion of their pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles, the Holy Father welcomed the Pro Petri Sede Association, praised their nourishing their faith and manifesting their fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter, and lauded their serving the poor.
The “Pro Petri Sede” Association is made up of members from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The association annually offers economic assistance for the needs of the Holy See.
Thanking them for their service, the Pope said: “The growing number of marginalized people who live in great precariousness challenges us and calls for an impetus of solidarity to give them the material and spiritual support of which they are in need.”
He went on to say how helping the poor helps us. “In the throes of their difficulties,” he said, “they are often witnesses of what is essential, of family values; they are capable of sharing with one who is poorer than they are and they know how to rejoice.”
Warning them that indifference and egoism are always lurking, the Jesuit Pope reminded them that to forget the poor is not Christian.
“Care of the poor,” he said, “enriches us, putting us on a path of humility and truth.”
Their presence, he said, is a call to our common humanity, to the fragility of life, to our dependence on God and on brothers.
The Pontiff invited those gathered to ask the Lord to give them merciful and poor hearts, “which know their own poverties and which spend themselves for others,” and exhorted them to pray insistently for peace, “that political leaders might find ways of dialogue and reconciliation.”
The Holy Father concluded, entrusting them to the intercession of Mary, Saint Peter, and their nations’ saints, and imparting his Apostolic Blessing.
***
On ZENIT’s Web page:
Full Translation: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-address-to-the-pro-petri-sede-association
