He responds to the warmth of the crowd with a resounding «Viva Napoli». But before leaving the city, Pope Leo entrusts it to the Madonna with the prayer composed by Cardinal Domenico Battaglia and recited by two young people in front of the statue of the Immaculate Conception in the presence of the Pontiff.
Here is the full text
Our Mother, Mary, Woman of the journey and face of tenderness, we approach you with the heart of this city, made of wounded dreams and stubborn hope.
To you, Maria, we entrust our Naples:
the beauty of its alleys and the effort of those who can’t make it,
the cry of those seeking dignity and the silence of those who are afraid.
We deliver to you the hands of our young people,
so that they are builders of a future that smells of justice.
You who have known exile and waiting, stay close to those who live on the outskirts of existence, to those who have no voice, to those who fight against illegality with the sole strength of an honest heart.
Teach us the audacity of care and the courage of proximity.
Help us not to look the other way,
to transform tears into commitment and waste stones into foundations of brotherhood.
Under your mantle, O Mother, we place our fragility: make them slits of light.
We entrust this land to you, Maria.
We hand it over to you like a mother hands over her difficult child to hope.
We entrust you with the Naples of the neighborhoods, where the coffee tastes of brotherhood and the bread is still shared; but also the Naples of the suburbs, where the darkness seems to eat the future and the cry of those who have no voice breaks the silence of the righteous.
Place your mantle on the diverse souls of this city and the entire diocese:
on young people who dream of staying and on those who have their suitcase in hand;
on the elderly who are a living memory in the lowlands
and on the children who play between the cracks of the buildings, so that their eyes never stop searching for the sea.
We entrust to you the honest hands of those who struggle and the tired hands of those who have made mistakes, because no one is lost if they find a gaze that welcomes them.
Give this city the courage to choose,
the strength to get up every time you fall,
the dignity of not bending your back in the face of evil.
Make us a street church, Maria.
Teach us not to pass by, to become the “neighbor” of every solitude.
Transform our fears into courage and our resignations into civil passion.
Under your gaze, this “thousand colors” Naples finally becomes a single table where no one is excluded,
where hope is not a vain wait, but a work in progress.
Make Naples increasingly a welcoming city,
who raises those who fall and who never stops dreaming of a time of peace and celebration.
Be you, Mother, our port and our path.
Amen
