PASTORAL VISIT OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO ALESSANO (LECCE) AND TO MOLFETTA (BARI), ON THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF H. E. MSGR. TONINO BELLO: MEETING WITH THE FAITHFUL, ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS
Square in front of the Cemetery (Lecce)
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Dear brothers and sisters, this vocation of peace belongs to your land, to this
marvellous frontier land — finis-terrae — which Fr Tonino called “window on the
world”, because the South of Italy opens up to the many Souths of the world, where
“the poorest are ever more numerous while the rich become ever richer and ever
fewer”[4]. You are an “open window, from which to observe all the poverty that looms
over history”[5], but above all, you are a window of hope that the Mediterranean, a
historical basin of civilization, may never be a tense arc of war, but a welcoming ark
of peace[6].
[…]
