«It seems that you know: Today I turn 70 years old. I give thanks to the Lord, to my parents, and I thank those who had a memory in prayer. Many thanks to everyone ».
At the end of the Angelus, with a joke, the Pope referred to his birthday while the faithful in St. Peter’s Square applauded and the musical bands present began to play to wish the Pontiff. For this anniversary, greetings to the pontiff from all over the world arrived. To offer them, “on behalf of the Italian people”, together with their “sincere votes of spiritual and personal well -being” was the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.
In his message, the Head of State highlights the “Pressing appeals of the pontiff so that the way of dialogue, for the common good of the peoples” ceases, “ In a time when “the fear has grown that the world has started along a dangerous ridge, animated by a widespread logic of abuse and tract marked by lacerating conflicts. To pay every day an intolerable tribute of blood and destruction are above all thousands of civil victims “, writes Mattarella, adding that” in the face of these anxieties, women and men of good will urgently feel the need for peace and justice “and that “From every continent we look at with lively hope” to the Pope’s words.
The president, then quoting Sant’Agostino, who said that “we are the times”, remarks that it is up to everyone to “and in particular to those who cover public offices” commit “In order for the circumstances to improve, reopening horizons of dialogue, justice and concrete protection of the dignity of each person”and ensures Leone XIV the collaboration of the Italian State in the “His High Apostolic Mission”.
Also by the Italian episcopal conference they came to the pope “The most fervent wishes for the churches in Italy”, with “praise and thanksgiving prayers for his ministry”.
Thanking the pontiff “for the paternal spirit” with which he “accompanies and urges the Italian Church”, the bishops join him “in the invocation for one ‘disarma and disarming peace ‘ In all the situations of conflict that bloody vast areas of the planet “, while they continue to make themselves” close to the populations experienced by suffering with solidarity and human promotion actions “and hope” that the unity of intent, voices and prayers that rise from the whole world to imitate peace solutions can soon find listening “.
The Pope dedicated his speech before Angelus to the feast ofExaltation of the Holy Crosswhich is celebrated today, September 14, “day in which, according to tradition, the discovery of the wood of the cross by Sant’Elena, in Jerusalem, in the 4th century, explained Leone.
“But what does it mean for us, today, to celebrate this party?”, Asked the pontiff, “helps us to understand the gospel that the liturgy offers us”, where the protagonist is Nicodemus“One of the leaders of the Jews, a straight person with an open mind, who comes to meet Jesus. He needs light, of guide: he seeks God and asks for help from the master of Nazareth, because in him he recognizes a prophet, a man who performs extraordinary signs».
Talking to Nicodemusunderlines the Pope, Jesus recalls the episode of the Old Testament that tells of the Israelites in the desert attacked by poisonous snakes, saved “looking at the bronze snake that Moses, obeying the command of God, had made and placed above an auction”, and specifies, then, that God “loved the world so much to give his son, because whoever believes in him should not be lost, eternal. God saved us by showing himself to us, offering himself as our companion, teacher, doctor, friend, until he made for us bread broken in the Eucharist. And to do this work he used one of the most cruel death tools that man has ever invented: the cross ».
Celebrate the exaltation of the cross, then, means to remember “of the immense love with which God “embraced the cross” for our salvation and transformed it from medium of death to a life instrument, Teaching us that nothing can separate us from him and that his charity is greater than our own sin, “explained the Pope.
Hence the invitation to ask, “by intercession of Mary”, that “in we radice and grow the love of Christ who saves, and that we too know how to give us to each other, as he gave himself everything to allthe”.
After Angelus, in addition to thanking for their birthday, Pope Leone recalled that “Tomorrow the 60th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops occurs, A prophetic intuition of Saint Paul VI so that the bishops could even more and better exercise communion with Peter’s successor, “he said. Recalling the initiative of Paul VI of 15 September 1965, the Pope finally hoped for “that this anniversary arouses a renewed commitment to unity, for the synodality and for the mission of the Church “ And he then addressed his greetings to the various groups in St. Peter’s Square.
The Synod of the Bishops was established by Pope Paul VI as a response to an application expressed by Fathers of the Vatican Council II to keep the spirit of the conciliar experience alive, inaugurated on 11 October 1962 by Pope John XXIII, and continued, after his death, which took place on June 3, 1963, by Pope Montini who continued and chaired it until the closure, on December 8, 1965.
