Pope Francis asked the Valencia seminarians to give themselves to the “broken people” with whom they meet for the effects of the torrential rains on October 29 that left 227 deaths219 of them in that autonomous community of Spain.
“Being a priest is being another Christ, it is to make a mud in the crying of the people, and when they see the broken people, because in Valencia there are broken people, who have lost their lives to pieces, you replace you pieces, pieces, of yourself, of yourself, of yourself, yourself, yourself, As Christ does it in the Eucharist, ”the Holy Father encouraged them.
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“Please, dease for free, because everything they have received for free, do not forget the gratuity,” he added during the encounter with an extensive group of trainers and seminarians from the Spanish dioceses of Valencia, Orihuela-Aliante, Segorbe- Castellón, Mallorca and Ibiza.
From the Clementine room of the Vatican, the Pontiff specifically urged them to “take the suffering of people and try to comfort them with phrases of circumstances and goodism.”
In this way, he insisted -as he has already done on other occasions -that “hope” is not “optimism.” And he added: “Optimism is an expression lighthope is something else. ”
On this, he made it clear that Catholic hope is born from Jesus, God made flesh “that he has not felt disgust of our mud and that, instead of saving us from mud, mud has become mud for us.”
Pope Francis started his speech admitting his difficulty in expressing their feelings, “thinking about Christmas surely atypical with that experience that ‘God has become mud’ in you.”
In turn, he stressed that the DANA It is not “an atypical phenomenon that we simply expect does not happen again.”
In this regard, he stressed that this devastating meteorological phenomenon “is the extrapolation of what every human being who faces a loss and feels alone, misplaced, needed to support to continue.”
However, Pope Francis pointed out that the pain and mourning that derive from this traumatic experience, despite their hardness, “opens us to hope because, forcing us to play background and to leave behind everything that seemed to sustain us, it allows us to go beyond”.
However, he warned that this is not something that “we can make alone”, because “it is immense darkness that you have lived and are living.”
Next, the Holy Father paid tribute to the volunteer who were involved in the help of the victims: “I think of the selfless help of so many people, the eyes full of delivery of the people, have been able to illuminate us with the tenderness of God”.
Since the floods happened, Pope Francis has been aware of events. His way of turning to the victims of Spain has had different faces: in condolence texts, in video tonsing, in his words before the faithful in the Sunday Angelus, placing before him, in the Plaza de San Pedro, To the Virgen de los Desamparadosthe Valencian Patroness and naming two auxiliary bishops in the midst of the tragedy.
Even, on November 15, he sent in his name to the zero zone of the tragedy, to the prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development, the Cardal Jesuita Michael Czerny
Victoria Cardiel
Victoria Cardiel is a journalist specialized in social and religious information issues. Since 2013, he has covered all the news of the Vatican for various media, such as the Spanish news agency Europa Press, or the weekly of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Alfa and Omega.