On Sunday, July 26, 2009, 15 years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the saints that the Catholic Church celebrates on this day, Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, the grandparents of Jesus, and the importance of grandparents in the family.
From the “beautiful mountains of the Aosta Valley”, where he spent the holidays that year, the Holy Father gave “thanks to God, who has granted me the joy of these days characterized by authentic relaxation, despite the small misfortune that you know well and that it is visible.”
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Before the angelus prayer On that day, Benedicto thus referred to the fracture he suffered a few days before in his right hand, after a fall that even led him to undergo surgery; after which he finally recovered.
Benedict XVI referred to the “saints Joachim and Anne, parents of the Virgin and, therefore, grandparents of Jesus. This liturgical memory makes us think about the issue of education, which occupies an important place in the pastoral care of the Church.”
The parents of the Virgin Mary are considered by the Catholic Church to be patrons of grandparents. In 2021, Pope Francis established the World Day of Grandparents and Older Persons, which is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of July, this year on the 28th.
In his words in 2009, Benedict XVI said that the liturgical memory of the parents of the Virgin Mary “invites us to pray for the grandparents, who in the family are the repositories and often the witnesses of the fundamental values of life.”
“The educational task of grandparents is always very important, even more so when, for various reasons, parents cannot ensure an adequate presence with their children when they are growing,” he stressed.
“I entrust all the grandparents of the world to the protection of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, imparting to them a special blessing,” Benedict XVI continued.
“May the Virgin Mary, who—according to a beautiful iconography—learned to read the Holy Scriptures at the knees of her mother Anne, help you always nourish faith and hope in the sources of the Word of God,” he concluded.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.