Pope calls for migrants to be allowed cross borders
Pope Francis has called on political leaders to allow migrants enter their countries. Speaking before 40,000 people at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square, he said, “I like to see leaders who open their hearts and their doors” to the many migrants fleeing their countries.
Recalling our many “brothers and sisters who are living a real and dramatic situation of exile, far from their homeland, with the ruins of their homes and the fear still in their eyes, and even, unfortunately, the pain of the loss of their loved ones”, he asked: “How is it possible that so much pain can strike innocent men, women and children who find doors closed to them when they attempt to go elsewhere?”
Such migrants, he said, are stranded suffering on borders “because so many doors and so many hearts are closed”. While God does not forget their pain, he said, it is easy to ask where God is in such circumstances.
Persecution
“How many experiences of exile, expatriation, grief, and persecution that pushes us to doubt even the goodness of God, and His love for us,” he said, reminding Arab pilgrims in the square that, “The consolation of the Lord is near to those who pass through the agonising night of doubt, clinging and hoping for the dawn of the Mercy of God, which the totality of the darkness and injustice will never be able to defeat.”
The Pope returned to this theme in his Palm Sunday homily, breaking from his prepared text to compare European indifference to refugees seeking asylum on the continent to Pontius Pilate who washed his hands of Jesus’ fate ahead of his crucifixion.
Observing that Jesus had been a victim of indifference, “because no one wanted to take on the responsibility for his destiny”, the Pope said he was “thinking of so many people, so many on the margins, so many refugees” for whom “many don’t want to assume responsibility for their destiny”.
Benedict supports Francis’ emphasis on mercy
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has indicated his support for Pope Francis’ emphasis on mercy in a newly-published interview. The lengthy interview took place ahead of an October 2015 conference on the doctrine of justification by faith. It has been published as the introduction to Through Faith: Doctrine of Justification and Experience of God in the Preaching of the Church and the Spiritual Exercises, a book of the conference texts and conclusions.
Commenting on a modern tendency to ignore personal sins and need to be made right with God, instead focusing on the suffering of the world and the belief that God should be held to account for this, he said, “there continues to exist, in another way, the perception that we are in need of grace and forgiveness”, pointing to St John Paul II and Pope Francis’ emphasis on mercy.
Noting how Pope Francis “continually speaks to us of God’s mercy”, he said “it is mercy that moves us toward God”.
Vatican takes to Instagram
Pope Francis has expanded the papacy’s presence on social media by opening an account on the photo-sharing site Instagram. The first image posted on the account, which will use the name @Franciscus, showed the Pope praying. On Twitter, where his @Pontifex account has over 26 million followers, he said, “I am beginning a new journey, on Instagram, to walk with you along the path of mercy and the tenderness of God.”
Ahead of the launch, Msgr Dario Vigano, a Vatican communications official, said Pope Francis believes images can reveal many things, and that the account will allow people to share the Pope’s “gestures of tenderness and mercy”.