General Audiences

Pope at Audience: Bring your young children, closer to the elderly, always bring them closer

20/04/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today, with the help of the Word of God that we have heard, we open a passage through the fragility of old age, marked in a special way by the experiences of confusion and despondency, of loss and abandonment, of disillusionment and doubt. Of course, the experiences of our frailty in the face of life’s dramatic – sometimes tragic – situations can occur at any stage of life… Read more »

The Pope at Audience: Every war represents an outrage against God

13/04/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

We are in the middle of Holy Week, which lasts from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Both these Sundays are characterized by the feast that takes place around Jesus. But they are two different feasts.

Last Sunday, we saw Christ solemnly entering Jerusalem, as though for a feast, welcomed as the Messiah: cloaks (cf. Lk 19:36) and branches cut from trees (cf Mt 21:8) were laid before him on the ground… Read more »

Pope at Audience: Elderly can guide and save future generations

16/03/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

The bible narrative – with the symbolic language of the time in which it was written – tells us something shocking. God was so embittered by the widespread wickedness of humans, which had become a normal style of life, that he thought he had made a mistake in creating them and decided to eliminate them. A radical solution… Read more »

Pope at Audience: children and the elderly give us another ability to see life

02/03/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

In the Bible account of the genealogies, one is immediately struck by their tremendous longevity: we are talking about centuries! When does old age begin here, we wonder? And what is the significance of the fact that these ancient fathers live so long after fathering their children? Fathers and sons live together for centuries! This passage of time in terms of centuries, narrated in a ritual style, confers a strong, very strong symbolic meaning to the relationship between longevity and genealogy… Read more »

Pope at General Audience: We need to get back the alliance between generations in this culture of waste

23/02/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning! 

We have finished the catechesis on St Joseph. Today we begin a catechetical journey that seeks inspiration in the Word of God on the meaning and value of old age. Let us reflect on old age. For some decades now, this stage of life has concerned a veritable “new people”, the elderly. There have never been so many of us in human history… Read more »

Pope at Audience: to be Christian means safeguarding all lives

16/02/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today we conclude the cycle of catecheses on the figure of St Joseph. These catecheses are complementary to the Apostolic Letter Patris corde, written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St Joseph as Patron of the Catholic Church by Blessed Pius IX. But what does this title mean? … Read more »

Pope at Audience: Faith in resurrection helps us face death without fear

09/02/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

In last week’s catechesis, again inspired by Saint Joseph, we reflected on the meaning of the communion of saints. And leading on from this, today I would like to explore the special devotion the Christian people have always had for Saint Joseph as the patron saint of the good death. A devotion born of the thought that Joseph died cared for by the Virgin Mary and Jesus, before leaving the house of Nazareth… Read more »

Pope at Audience: The Church is the community of saved sinners

02/02/2022   The Vatican

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

In recent weeks we have been able to deepen our understanding of the figure of Saint Joseph, guided by the few but important pieces of information given in the Gospels, and also by the aspects of his personality that the Church over the centuries has been able to highlight through prayer and devotion. Starting precisely from this sentire commune (“common feeling”) of the Church that has accompanied the figure of St Joseph, today I would like to focus on an important article of faith that can enrich our Christian life and also shape our relationship with the saints and with our deceased loved ones in the best possible way: I am talking about the communion of saints… Read more »

Pope at Audience recognises the suffering of parents in raising their children

26/01/2022

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today I would like to focus on the figure of St Joseph as a man who dreams. In the Bible, as in the cultures of ancient peoples, dreams were considered a means by which God revealed himself. The dream symbolises the spiritual life of each of us, that inner space that each of us is called to cultivate and guard, where God manifests himself and often speaks to us… Read more »