Pope Francis: In life’s ups and downs, make prayer your constant

Vatican City, Dec 27, 2020 / 06:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis urged families across the world Sunday to look to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for “sure inspiration.”

In his Angelus address Dec. 27, the feast of the Holy Family, the pope encouraged … […]

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2018 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday, Pope Francis urged all people, and youth in particular, to meet with victims of human trafficking in order to learn more about how to fight the scourge of modern-day slavery.

Youth are in “a privileged place to encounter the survivors of human trafficking,” the Pope said Feb. 12. “Go to you parishes, to an association close to home, meet them, listen to them.”

Change starts with encounter, he said, so “don’t be afraid to encounter them. Open your hearts, let them enter, be ready to change.”

He urged youth who have been victims to speak out to others in order to help protect them and make them aware of the risks.

“Everyone who has been a victim of trafficking is an inexhaustible source of support for new victims and it’s important [to listen to them],” the Pope said, adding that “youth who have encountered organized crime can play a key role in describing the dangers.”

He also encouraged young people to overcome fear and learn the warning signs of trafficking.

Pope Francis spoke off-the-cuff Monday at a question-and-answer session falling a few days after the World Day of Reflection Against Human Trafficking.

During the encounter, Francis received questions from five youth – four women and one man – both migrants and non-migrants, who asked about how young people in the Church can fight the conditions in which trafficking thrives and how they can help other young people from falling into the illusions presented by traffickers.

Pope Francis stressed the importance of encounter. He thanked all the parishes, schools and institutions that listened to his 2015 appeal for every parish, shrine, religious community and monastery in Europe to welcome a family of refugees.

“I ask you present here today to work in favor of opening to the other, above all when they are wounded in their own dignity,” he said.

Social networks and media can also play a key role in helping to create these spaces, the Pope said, explaining that “the internet can offer great possibilities for encounter and solidarity among everyone, and this is a good thing, it’s a gift from God.”

However, these networks can also be misused, he said, noting that “for every instrument that is offered to us, the choice that man decides to make is fundamental.”

Underlying the scourge of human trafficking, the Pope said, is not only a significant amount of ignorance, but also “little will to understand the extent of the problem.”

This, he said, is because it touches our consciences: “A country that does or allows trafficking doesn’t like that this comes to light, because it would embarrass them a lot, so they cover it.”

Hypocrisy from those who condemn human trafficking while at the same time taking advantage of trafficked laborers or sex slaves presents a major obstacle to the abolition of trafficking, he said.

Speaking out against this can be an easier task for youth, the Pope said, because “they are less structured in their thought, less obscured by prejudices, more free to reason with their own mind. Youth don’t have anything to lose.”

He called trafficking a “crime against humanity” and a form of slavery which is “unfortunately increasingly widespread, which involves every country, even the most developed, and touches the most vulnerable people in society: women and young girls, children, the disabled, the most poor, whoever comes from situations of familial or social disintegration.”

“We need a common responsibility and a stronger political will to succeed on this front,” he said.

Pope Francis also highlighted education as a concrete means of helping other young people avoid the snares and illusions of traffickers. He pointed to the example of St. John Bosco, who established schools and a center for prayer and education to welcome boys living on the street.

“Education is the name of peace. Education is also the name of development…never children without an education. This is the first step,” the Pope said.

He also discussed the conditions that can pave the way for trafficking, such as extreme poverty and unemployment, violence, and corruption in government.

For those who have been victims of trafficking, the Church can offer guidance in the healing and rebuilding process, Pope Francis said, explaining that the Church “has always wanted to be at the side of people who suffer, in particular children and youth, protecting them and promoting their integral human development.”

This is especially true for minors “who are often ‘invisible’, subject to danger and threats, alone and manipulable,” he said. “We want, also in the most precarious realities, to be your grain of hope and support, because God is always with you.”

Pope Francis also voiced hope that those who have witnessed the dangers of trafficking would find at the upcoming Synod of Bishops “a place to express themselves, from which to call the Church into action.”

The Synod, which will be held this October in Rome, will discuss young people, the faith, and vocational discernment. The Synod is primarily a gathering of bishops, but about a dozen young people will also participate.

However, some 350 young people will participate in a pre-synod meeting at the Vatican next month. Pope Francis encouraged those present at the trafficking Q-and-A to contact organizers and ask to participate in that event.

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Vatican City, Dec 16, 2020 / 04:30 am (CNA).- People who pray for others are like God’s antennas, Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednesday.

In his address Dec. 16, the pope insisted that those who seek solitude and silence to intercede for others are not evading reality.  

“Whoever can knock on the door of someone who prays finds a compassionate heart which does not exclude anyone,” he said, seated beside a traditional depiction of the nativity.

He added: “These people pray for the entire world, bearing its sorrows and sins on their shoulders. They pray for each and every person: they are like God’s ‘antennas’ in this world.”

In his audience address, the pope continued his cycle of catechesis on prayer, which he began in May. He dedicated the address to the prayer of intercession, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church recognizes as one of the principal forms of prayer, alongside blessing and adoration, petition, thanksgiving, and praise.

Speaking via livestream from the library of the Apostolic Palace due to coronavirus restrictions, the pope underlined that prayer was not a form of escapism.

He said: “Those who pray never turn their backs on the world. If prayer does not gather the joys and sorrows, the hopes and the anxieties of humanity, it becomes a ‘decorative’ activity, a superficial, theatrical attitude, an intimist attitude.”

“We all need interiority: to retreat within a space and a time dedicated to our relationship with God. But this does not mean that we evade reality.” 

The pope noted that when Christians pray behind closed doors, as Jesus recommended in Matthew 6:6, they still “keep the doors of their hearts wide open.”

“In every poor person who knocks at the door, in every person who has lost the meaning of things, the one who prays sees the face of Christ,” he said. 

He quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says that intercession is “characteristic of a heart attuned to God’s mercy.”

“This is beautiful,” he said. “When we pray we are in tune with God’s mercy.” 

Speaking off the cuff, he added: “Jesus is our intercessor, and praying is a bit like doing as Jesus did: interceding in Jesus to the Father, for others. And this is very beautiful.”

The pope said that to pray seriously one must love one’s neighbors, no matter what errors they have made.  

“It can be said: in a spirit of hatred one cannot pray; in a spirit of indifference one cannot pray. Prayer is only given in a spirit of love. Those who do not love pretend to pray, or they think they are praying, but they do not pray, because they lack the very spirit that is love.” 

He continued: “When a believer, moved by the Holy Spirit, prays for sinners, no selection is made, no judgment or condemnation is uttered: they pray for everyone. And they pray for themselves. At that moment they know they are not that different from those for whom they pray: they feel they are a sinner among sinners and they pray for everyone.” 

The pope highlighted the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, recorded in Luke 18:9-14, in which Jesus contrasts the prayer of a self-satisfied Pharisee with that of a humble tax collector.  

“The lesson of the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is always alive and current: we are not better than anyone, we are all brothers and sisters who bear fragility, suffering and being sinners in common,” he said. 

The pope observed that those who intercede for others are largely unknown to the world, but not to God, and they help to sustain the world.

“The Church, in all of her members, has the mission of practicing the prayer of intercession. This is especially so for those who exercise roles of responsibility: parents, teachers, ordained ministers, superiors of communities…. Like Abraham and Moses, they must at times ‘defend’ the persons entrusted to them before God,” he said.

“In reality, we are talking about protecting them with God’s eyes and heart, with His same invincible compassion and tenderness. Praying with tenderness for others.”

He concluded: “Brothers and sisters, we are all leaves on the same tree: each one that falls reminds us of the great piety that must be nourished in prayer, for one another. Let us pray for one another: it will do us good and do good to all.”

In his greetings to Polish-speaking Catholics, the pope noted that the Novena to the Child Jesus begins on Dec. 16, nine days before Christmas. 

He said: “In your Advent journey this year, in a special way, may St. Joseph accompany you. May the Divine Child, who saw in him the tenderness of God, fill your hearts, especially in these difficult times, with the certainty that our Heavenly Father is a God of tenderness, who is good to all and His mercy extends over all His children. I bless you from my heart.”

Addressing Italian-speakers, the pope reflected on the difficulties of celebrating Christmas amid coronavirus restrictions.

“I would like to exhort everyone to ‘hasten the step’ towards Christmas, the real one, that is, the birth of Jesus Christ,” he said. 

“This year restrictions and inconveniences await us; but let us think of the Christmas of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph: it was not all rosy! How many difficulties they had! How many worries! Yet faith, hope and love guided and sustained them.” 

“May it be the same for us! May this difficulty also help us to purify a little our way of experiencing Christmas, of celebrating it, moving away from consumerism: may it be more religious, more authentic, more true.”

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