“Love is the only strength capable of changing the world.” Cardinal Giovan Battista Re traces the profile of the new Pope in the homily of the Pros Eligando Romano Pontifice remembering that, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, Cardinals are called to elect “The pope whose church and humanity need in this hairpin of history so difficult and complex». Then call to “every personal consideration” to have “in the mind and heart only the God of Jesus Christ and the good of the Church and humanity”.
Underlines the passage of the Gospel in which John reports the words of Jesus to the disciples in the Upper Last: “This is my commandment: that you love each other, as I loved you.” Almost to clarify, says the Cardinal “that” as I loved you “and indicate until where our love must come, Jesus below says:” Nobody has a greater love than this: to give life for one’s friends “”. This is the new commandment. A love that reaches everyone and transforms. “Which knows no limits and must characterize the thoughts and action of all his disciples, who in their behavior must always show authentic love and commit to the construction of a new civilization, what Paul VI called” Civilization of Love “”.
A love that is service, as Jesus showed by washing his feet to the Apostles. An invitation “to fraternal love, to the mutual help and the commitment for ecclesial communion and for universal human fraternity. Among the tasks of every successor of Peter there is to grow communion: communion of all Christians with Christ; communion of bishops with the pope; communion of bishops among them. Not an self -referential communion, but all aimed at communion between people, peoples and cultures, Having at heart that the Church is always “home and school of communion”. The call to maintain the unity of the Church in the wake of Christ to the Apostles is also strong. The unity of the Church wanted Christ; A unit that does not mean uniformity, but firm and profound communion in diversity, provided that you remain in full loyalty to the Gospel “.
Each Pope, recalls the dean, “continues to embody Peter and his mission and thus represents Christ on the ground; He is the rock on which the Church is built ». And therefore “the election of the new Pope is not a simple alternation of people, but it is always the apostle Peter who returns”.
Under Michelangelo’s images of the universal judgment, the cardinals have “responsibility to put the” sums of the keys “(Dante) in the right hands. We therefore pray because the Holy Spirit, who in the last hundred years has given us a series of truly holy and large popes, gives us a new pope according to the heart of God for the good of the Church and humanity “.
A Pope, continues Cardinal Re “who knows how to awaken everyone’s consciences and the moral and spiritual energies in today’s society, characterized by great technological progress, but who tends to forget God. Today’s world awaits a lot from the Church for the safeguarding of those fundamental, human and spiritual values, without which human coexistence will not be better or the bearer of good for future generations ». And therefore, also invoking the intercession of Mary, the dean hopes that “the Holy Spirit illuminates the minds of the cardinal voters and makes them agreed in the election of Pope he needs our time. “
