PASTORAL VISIT OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS AT THE DIOCESE OF PIAZZA ARMERINA AND DI PALERMO ON THE OCCASION OF THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH DEL BEATO PINO PUGLISI MEETING WITH THE YOUNG ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
Piazza Politeama (Palermo)
[…]
The second question. Let’s see if I wrote something … Really, your island is a meeting
place of many cultures … I do not know Sicily, it’s the first time: I’ve been in
Lampedusa and now, now, here. Even your language, your dialects have roots of
many languages, many, because it has been a crossroads of cultures and all have
left a cultural trace. You are a people [fruit of] the meeting of cultures and people. I
liked to hear this, to hear from you, from you, that Sicily – it is at the center of the
Mediterranean, has always been a meeting ground. It is not just a beautiful cultural
tradition, it is a message of faith. Your vocation will surely be men and women of
encounter. Meet and meet; encourage meetings, because today’s world is a world of
confrontation; of wars, of clashes … People are not understood … And faith is
founded on the encounter, an encounter with God. God did not leave us alone, He
came down to meet us. He there He comes to meet us, He precedes us, to meet us.
Faith is founded on the encounter. And [in] the meeting between us, how important
is the dignity of others? God wants us to be saved together, not alone, that we are
happy together, not selfishly alone; that we save ourselves as a people. This word,
“people”: you are a people with a great identity and you must be open to all peoples
who, like in other times, come to you. With that work of integration, of acceptance,
of respecting the dignity of others, of solidarity … For us they are not good intentions
for educated people, but distinctive traits of a Christian. A Christian who is not in
solidarity is not a Christian. Solidarity is a trait of the Christian. What is lacking today,
of which there is famine, is love: not sentimental love, which we can look at in the
teleromanzi, in the telenovele, but the concrete one, the love of the Gospel. And I
will tell you, to you and to all those who have asked the question with you: how is
your love? How is the thermometer of your love?[…]
