Pope Leo XIV message for the World Grandparents Day and the greatest 2025

Next, the message loaded with hope that Pope Leo XIV wrote on the occasion of the World Grandparents and the greatest 2025:

Happy who does not see his hope faded (cf. if 14,2)

Dear brothers and sisters:

The jubilee we are living helps us discover that hope is always a source of joy, at any age. Also, when it has been tempered by the fire of a long existence, it becomes a source of a full bliss.

The Holy Scripture presents several cases of men and women already advanced in years, to which the Lord invites to participate in his salvation designs. Let’s think about Abraham and Sara; Being already elderly, they remain incredulous to the Word of God, which promises a child. The impossibility of generating seemed to have removed their gaze of hope regarding the future.

The reaction of Zacarías before the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist is no different: “How can I be sure of this? Because I am the old man and my wife is of advanced age” (Lk 1,18). The old age, sterility and deterioration seem to turn off the hopes of life and fertility of all these men and women.

Also the question that Nicodemus makes Jesus, when the teacher tells him about a “new birth”, seems purely rhetorical: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter for the second time in his mother’s bosom and be born again?” (Jn 3,4). However, on each occasion, in the face of a seemingly obvious response, the Lord surprises his interlocutors with an act of salvation.

The elders, signs of hope

In the Bible, God often shows his providence addressing advanced people in years. This is the case not only with Abraham, Sara, Zacarías and Isabel, but also with Moses, called to free his people being octogenarian (cf. ex 7,7). With these elections, God teaches us that, in his eyes, old age is a time of blessing and grace, and that for him the elderly are the first witnesses of hope. “What does it mean in my old age?” San Agustín is asked about it, when I miss the forces, you don’t abandon me.

And here God answers you: on the contrary, that your vigor faint, so that mine is present in you, and so you can say with the apostle: “When I weaken, then I am strong” “(Comments to Psalm 70, 11). The fact that the number of people of advanced age is increasing then becomes a sign of the times that we are called to discern, to correctly read the story we live.

The life of the Church and the world, in effect, is only understood in the succession of generations, and embrace an old man to understand that history is not exhausted in the present, nor is it consumed between fleeting encounters and fragmentary relationships, but that it makes its way to the future. In the book of Genesis we find the moving episode of the blessing given by Jacob, already old, to his grandchildren, the children of José. Their words encourage them to look at the future with hope, as in the time of God’s promises (cf. Gn 48,8-20).

If, therefore, it is true that the fragility of the elderly needs the vigor of young people, it is also true that the inexperience of young people needs the testimony of the elderly to trace the future. How often our grandparents have been for us example of faith and devotion, of civic virtues and social commitment, of memory and perseverance in the evidence! This beautiful legacy, which have transmitted to us with hope and love, will always be for us of gratitude and coherence.

Signs of hope for the elderly

The jubilee, from its biblical origins, has represented a time of liberation: the slaves were released, the conded debts, the land restored to their original owners. It was a moment of restoration of the social order loved by God, in which the inequalities and oppressions accumulated over the years were repaired. Jesus renews these events of liberation when, in the synagogue of Nazareth, he proclaims the good news to the poor, the view to the blind, the liberation to the captives and the freedom to the oppressed (cf. Lc 4,16-21).

Considering elderly people from this jubilee perspective, we are also called to live with them a liberation, especially loneliness and abandonment. This year is the right time to do it; God’s fidelity to his promises teaches us that there is a bliss in the elderly, an authentically evangelical joy, which asks us to demolish the walls of indifference, which often imprison the elderly. Our societies, in all their latitudes, are being used too often to let such an important and rich part of their fabric be marginalized and forgotten.

Faced with this situation, a change of rhythm is necessary, which witnesses an assumption of responsibility by the entire Church. Each parish, association, ecclesial group is called to be the protagonist of the “revolution” of gratitude and care, and this has to be done visiting the elderly, creating for them and with them support networks and prayer, interwoven relationships that can give hope and dignity to the one who feels forgotten.

Christian hope always drives us to risk more, to think big, not to be content with him the situation of which. Specifically, to work for a change that restores the elderly estimates and affection.

Therefore, Pope Francis wanted the world day of grandparents and the elders to be celebrated above all going to the meeting of who is alone. And for that same reason, it has been decided that those who cannot come to Rome this year, on a pilgrimage, “will be able to achieve jubilee indulgence if they will visit for an adequate time to the elderly in solitude, (…) as making a pilgrimage towards Christ present in them (cf. Mt 25, 34-36)” (Apostolic Penitentiary, norms on the concession of the granting of the retirement. Visiting an old man is a way to meet Jesus, who frees us from indifference and loneliness.

In old age you can expect

The ecclesiastical book states that bliss is one of those who do not see their hope faded (cf. 14,2), letting understand that in our life – especially if it is long – there may be many reasons to look back, rather than the future. However, as Pope Francis wrote during his last admission to the hospital, “our physique is weak, but, even so, nothing can prevent us from loving, gathering, surrendering, being for each other, in faith, luminous signs of hope” (Ángelus, March 16, 2025). We have a freedom that no difficulty can take away: to love and pray. All, always, we can love and pray.

The love for our loved ones – by the spouse with whom we have spent much of life, by children, by the grandchildren who rejoice our days – do not go out when the forces vanished. On the contrary, this affection is often precisely the one that revives our energies, giving us hope and comfort.

These signs of vitality of love, which have their root in God, give us courage and remind us that “although our outside man is destroyed, our inner man is renewing day by day” (2 co 4,16). Therefore, especially in old age, we will perseverate confident in the Lord. Let us renew every day by the encounter with him, in prayer and in Holy Mass.

Let us transmit with love the faith that we have lived for so many years, in the family and in everyday encounters; We always praise God for his benevolence, let’s cultivate unity with our loved ones, that our heart covers the one who is further and, in particular, whom he lives in a situation of necessity. We will be signs of hope, at any age.