Speech by Pope Francis at a Caritas school in Papua New Guinea

We offer the official version offered by the Vatican Press Room of the speech given by Pope Francis at the Caritas Technical Secondary School of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, during his trip to Asia and Oceania.

Congratulations to all of you who sang and danced. They do it very well!

Dear sisters and brothers, good afternoon.

I greet His Eminence, whom I thank for the words he addressed to me. I also thank the superior of the community, the director, the lay people and religious, and everyone present, especially you children, who are wonderful.

I am glad to meet you and share this festive moment. I also thank your colleagues, who asked me two difficult questions.

One of them asked me: “Why am I not like the others?” In truth, the only answer I can find to this question is: “because none of us is like the others, because we are all unique before God.” For this reason, I not only reaffirm that “there is hope for everyone” – as has been said – but I also add that each of us has a role and a mission in the world that no one else can carry out, and although this brings with it hardships, at the same time it produces a lot of joy, in a different way for each one. Peace and joy are for everyone.

Certainly we all have limits, there are things that we know how to do better and others that we find difficult or that we are never able to do, however, this does not determine our happiness. It is rather the love we put into everything we do, give or receive. Give love, always, welcome with open arms the love we receive from the people who love us. This is the most beautiful and the most important thing in our life, in any condition and for anyone, even for the Pope, did you know that? Our joy does not depend on anything else, our joy depends on love.

And this leads us to the other question: “How can we make our world more beautiful and happy?” Of course, with the same “recipe”, learning day by day to love God and others with all our heart and trying to learn – even in school – everything we can, in order to do it in the best way, studying and making an effort. to the maximum in every opportunity that is presented to us to grow, improve and perfect our talents and abilities.

Have you ever seen how a cat prepares itself when it has to make a big jump? First you concentrate and point all your efforts and muscles in the right direction. And maybe he does it so fast that we don’t even notice it, but he does it. And so we too must concentrate all our forces, directing them towards one goal, which is love for Jesus—and, in Him, for all the brothers and sisters we meet along the way—and then with impulse fill everything and everyone with our affection. . In this sense, none of us is “a burden”—as they have said—we are all beautiful gifts from God, a treasure for each other.

Thank you, children, thank you very much for this meeting and thank you to all of you, who here work together with love. Keep this light always on as a sign of hope, not only for yourself, but for all those you meet and even for our world, sometimes so selfish and concerned with banal things. Keep the light of love burning and please pray for me too.