Pope Francis to seminarians: When you are priests, go to prisons

“When you are priests, go to prisons, it is a priority,” was the exhortation that Pope Francis made to a group of Spanish seminarians, with whom he referred not only to physical prisons, but also to the ideological and moral ones that They end up distancing people from God.

This November 16, the Holy Father held a meeting in the Consistory Hall with the seminarians of the dioceses of Pamplona, ​​Tudela, San Sebastián and Redemptoris Mater.

“Your archbishop was very excited about this audience and told me that you appealed to the affection that I have for prisons, in such a way that I would also grant you this audience,” the Holy Father began, in a short improvised speech.

However, he reminded them, “the seminary is not a prison, it is a place to learn that a priest is a man, a human being who wants to redeem, like your Mercedarian archbishop, a redeemer of captives; because a priest cannot be anything other than a living image of Jesus, the Redeemer in capital letters.”

The Pontiff explained to them that this means many things, “but a very precise one is that we must go down to the prisons; to the government prisons, certainly, to offer those who are in them the oil of consolation and the wine of hope, but also to all those prisons that imprison the men and women of our society: the ideological prisons, the moral ones, those that they create exploitation, discouragement, ignorance and forgetfulness of God.”

Pope Francis reminded them that since he was bishop he has celebrated the washing of feet on Holy Thursday in prisons.

“I remember that, in a foot washing room – that prison was for women – I was washing the feet of a woman and when I was going to move on to the other, she grabbed my hand, came close to my ear and said ‘father, I killed my son’: The internal dramas in the conscience of those who live in a prison. When you are priests, go to prisons, it is a priority. And all of us can say what I feel: Why them and not me?

“You are going to receive the priestly anointing and it is to free captives, those who are chained, without realizing it. Chained by so many things: by culture, by society, by vices, by hidden sins,” he expressed.

In your ministry do not distinguish between persons

Then, Pope Francis gave the archbishop the text he had prepared for the seminarians, in which he reflected on the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, to invite them to be docile to the Holy Spirit, “make a desert to find God” and empty themselves. of so many things that we carry as burdens.”

Do not be afraid to face “the temptation of an idolatrous ministry where we are in the center, seeking material power or applause,” he encouraged.

He recalled that in that chapter Luke mentions “that Jesus went to Nazareth, his land, aware that in the eyes of the world he was nothing more than the son of Joseph, one like us.” “Never forget these roots,” the Pope wrote, “do not forget that you are children of the People.”

“This text from Luke also teaches us that in our apostolate we cannot make distinctions between people, even if they are foreigners or even enemies, because for God we are all his children. When we look at our brother, let us recognize in him his willingness to receive the grace that the Lord offers him,” he added.

Pope Francis also mentioned that, in another passage from the Gospel of Luke, “the Lord grieves with indignation at the hardness of the heart of his contemporaries who do not understand Jesus’ request to free a woman bound by an evil spirit for many years.” .

“You, on the contrary,” wrote the Pontiff, “always be ready to bless, to liberate, and when you feel paralyzed by the hands that He anointed, extend them with confidence like the cripple in the Gospel of Mark. It is what Jesus did on the Cross, engraving our wound in his Heart and in his arm, destroying our death with his love and crossing with his Passion the abyss that separated us from God.”

“Be brave, selfless and tireless to bring the divine mercy that the Lord has so generously poured out on you by choosing you for this ministry. May He bless you and the Holy Virgin take care of you,” concludes Pope Francis’ text.