Prisoners

The message that God’s word wants to bring us today is surely that of hope, the hope that does not disappoint.

One of the seven brothers condemned to death by King Antiochus Epiphanes speaks of “the hope God gives of being raised again by him” (2 Macc 7:14). These words demonstrate the faith of those martyrs who, despite suffering and torture, were steadfast in looking to the future. Theirs was a faith that, in acknowledging God as the source of their hope, reflected the desire to attain a new life.

In the Gospel, we have heard how Jesus, with a simple yet complete answer, demolishes the banal casuistry that the Sadducees had set before him. His response – “He is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him” (Lk 20:38) – reveals the true face of God, who desires only life for all his children. The hope of being born to a new life, then, is what we must make our own, if we are to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus.

Hope is a gift of God. We must ask for it. It is placed deep within each human heart in order to shed light on this life, so often troubled and clouded by so many situations that bring sadness and pain. We need to nourish the roots of our hope so that they can bear fruit; primarily, the certainty of God’s closeness and compassion, despite whatever evil we have done. There is no corner of our heart that cannot be touched by God’s love. Whenever someone makes a mistake, the Father’s mercy is all the more present, awakening repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.

Today we celebrate the Jubilee of Mercy for you and with you, our brothers and sisters who are imprisoned. Mercy, as the expression of God’s love, is something we need to think about more deeply. Certainly, breaking the law involves paying the price, and losing one’s freedom is the worst part of serving time, because it affects us so deeply. All the same, hope must not falter. Paying for the wrong we have done is one thing, but another thing entirely is the “breath” of hope, which cannot be stifled by anyone or anything. Our heart always yearns for goodness. We are in debt to the mercy that God constantly shows us, for he never abandons us (cf. Augustine, Sermo 254:1).

In his Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul speaks of God as “the God of hope” (15:13). It is as if Paul wants to say also to us: “God hopes”. While this may seem paradoxical, it is true: God hopes! His mercy gives him no rest. He is like that Father in the parable, who keeps hoping for the return of his son who has fallen by the wayside (Lk 15:11-32). God does not rest until he finds the sheep that was lost (Lk 15:5). So if God hopes, then no one should lose hope. For hope is the strength to keep moving forward. It is the power to press on towards the future and a changed life. It is the incentive to look to tomorrow, so that the love we have known, for all our failings, can show us a new path. In a word, hope is the proof, lying deep in our hearts, of the power of God’s mercy. That mercy invites us to keep looking ahead and to overcome our attachment to evil and sin through faith and abandonment in him.

Dear friends, today is your Jubilee! Today, in God’s sight, may your hope be kindled anew. A Jubilee, by its very nature, always brings with it a proclamation of freedom (Lev 25:39-46). It does not depend on me to grant this, but the Church’s duty, one she cannot renounce, is to awaken within you the desire for true freedom. Sometimes, a certain hypocrisy leads to people considering you only as wrongdoers, for whom prison is the sole answer. I want to tell you, every time I visit a prison I ask myself: “Why them and not me?”. We can all make mistakes: all of us. And in one way or another we have made mistakes. Hypocrisy leads us to overlook the possibility that people can change their lives; we put little trust in rehabilitation, rehabilitation into society. But in this way we forget that we are all sinners and often, without being aware of it, we too are prisoners. At times we are locked up within our own prejudices or enslaved to the idols of a false sense of wellbeing. At times we get stuck in our own ideologies or absolutize the laws of the market even as they crush other people. At such times, we imprison ourselves behind the walls of individualism and self-sufficiency, deprived of the truth that sets us free. Pointing the finger against someone who has made mistakes cannot become an alibi for concealing our own contradictions.

We know that in God’s eyes no one can consider himself just (cf. Rom 2:1-11). But no one can live without the certainty of finding forgiveness! The repentant thief, crucified at Jesus’ side, accompanied him into paradise (cf. Lk 23:43). So may none of you allow yourselves to be held captive by the past! True enough, even if we wanted to, we can never rewrite the past. But the history that starts today, and looks to the future, has yet to be written, by the grace of God and your personal responsibility. By learning from past mistakes, you can open a new chapter of your lives. Let us never yield to the temptation of thinking that we cannot be forgiven. Whatever our hearts may accuse us of, small or great, “God is greater than our hearts” (1 Jn 3:20). We need but entrust ourselves to his mercy.

Faith, even when it is as tiny as a grain of mustard seed, can move mountains (cf. Mt 17:20). How many times has the power of faith enabled us to utter the word pardon in humanly impossible situations. People who have suffered violence and abuse, either themselves, or in the person of their loved ones, or their property… there are some wounds that only God’s power, his mercy, can heal. But when violence is met with forgiveness, even the hearts of those who have done wrong can be conquered by the love that triumphs over every form of evil. In this way, among the victims and among those who wronged them, God raises up true witnesses and workers of mercy.

Today we venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary in this statue, which represents her as a Mother who holds Jesus in her arms, together with a broken chain; it is the chain of slavery and imprisonment. May Our Lady look upon each of you with a Mother’s love. May she intercede for you, so that your hearts can experience the power of hope for a new life, one worthy of being lived in complete freedom and in service to your neighbour.

06.11.16

“He receives sinners and eats with them”. We just heard this in the Gospel reading (Lk 15:2). They are the words muttered by some of the Pharisees and scribes, doctors of the law, who were greatly upset and scandalized by the way Jesus was behaving.

With those words, they tried to discredit and dismiss Jesus in the eyes of everyone. But all they managed to do was point out one of his most ordinary, most distinctive, most beautiful ways of relating to others: “He receives sinners and eats with them”. Now we are all sinners, all of us, and for that reason Jesus receives with care all of us who are here, and if anyone does not feel that they are sinners – among all of us who are here – they should know that Jesus is not going to receive them, and they would miss out on the best part.

Jesus is not afraid to approach those who, for countless reasons, were the object of social hatred, like the publicans – we know that tax collectors grew rich by exploiting their own people and they caused great resentment –or those on the receiving end of social hatred because they had made an error in their lives, because of their errors and mistakes, some fault, and now they were called sinners. Jesus does this because he knows that in heaven there is more joy for a single one of those who make mistakes, for a single converted sinner, than for ninety-nine righteous people who remain good (Lk 15:7).

And whereas these people were content to grumble or complain because Jesus was meeting people who were marked by some kind of social error, some sin, and closed the doors on conversion, on dialogue with him – Jesus approaches and engages, Jesus puts his reputation at risk. He asks us, as he always does, to lift our eyes to a horizon that can renew our life, that can renew our history. All of us, all have a horizon. All of us. Someone may say: “I do not have one”. Open the window and you will find it, open the window of love which is Jesus and you will find him. We all have a horizon. They are two very different, contrasting approaches, Jesus’ one, and that of the doctors of the law. A sterile, fruitless approach – that of complaining and gossip, the person who is always speaking badly about others and is self-righteous – and another, one that invites us to change and to conversion, which is the Lord’s approach, a new life as you have just said a short while ago [turning to the young man who gave testimony].

The approach of complaining and of gossip

Now this is not something from a long time ago, it is current. Many people do not tolerate this attitude of Jesus; they don’t like it. First by complaining under their breath and then by shouting, they make known their displeasure, seeking to discredit Jesus’ way of acting and that of all those who are with him. They do not accept and they reject this option of drawing near to others and giving them another chance. These people condemn once and for all, they discredit once and for all and forget that in God’s eyes they are disqualified and need tenderness, need love and understanding, but do not wish to accept it. Where people’s lives are concerned, it seems easier to attach signs and labels that petrify and stigmatize not only people’s past but also their present and future. We put labels on people: “this one is like that”, “this one did that thing, and that’s it”, and he has to bear this for the rest of his days. That’s how people are who mutter – the gossips – they are like this. And labels ultimately serve only to divide: good people over here, and bad ones over there; the righteous over here and sinners over there. And this Jesus does not accept; this is the culture of the adjective; we delight in “adjectivizing” people, it gives us delight: “What is your name? My name is ‘good’”. No, that is an adjective. “What is your name?” Go to the person’s name: Who are you? What do you do? What dreams do you have? What does your heart feel? Gossips are not interested in this; they are quickly looking for a label to knock someone down off their pedestal. The culture of the adjective which discredits people. Think about that so as not to fall into what society so easily offers us.

This attitude spoils everything, because it erects an invisible wall that makes people think that, if we marginalize, separate and isolate others, all our problems will magically be solved. When a society or community allows this, and does nothing more than complain, gossip and backbite, it enters into a vicious circle of division, blame and condemnation. Strange that these people who do not accept Jesus, and what Jesus is teaching us, are people who are always on bad terms with each other, among those who call themselves righteous. And what’s more, it is an attitude of discrimination and exclusion, of confrontation leading people to say irresponsibly, like Caiaphas: “It is better that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish” (Jn 11:50). Better that they should all be kept over there, so that they will not give trouble; we want to live in peace. This is hard-hearted, and Jesus had to confront this; and we are also confronted with this today. Normally the thread is cut at the thinnest part: that of the poor and the defenceless. And it is they who suffer the most from this social disapproval that does allow them to raise themselves up.

How painful it is to see a society concentrate its energies more on complaining and backbiting than on fighting tirelessly to create opportunities and change.

The approach of conversion: the other approach

The Gospel, on the other hand, is completely characterized by this other approach, which is nothing more or less than that of God’s own heart. God never chases you away, God never chases anyone away; God says to you: “Come”. God waits for you and embraces you, and if you do not know the way, he is going to show you, as this shepherd did with the sheep. The other approach, however, excludes. The Lord wants to celebrate when he sees his children returning home (Lk 15:11-31). And Jesus testified to this by showing to the very end the merciful love of the Father. We have a Father – you said it yourself – I enjoyed your testimony: we have a Father. I have a Father who loves me, a beautiful thing. A love, Jesus’ love, that has no time for complaining, but seeks to break the circle of useless, needless, cold and sterile criticism. “I give you thanks, Lord – said that doctor of the law – that I am not like that one, I am not like him. The ones who believe they have a soul ten times purified in the illusion of a sterile life that is no good for anything. I once heard a country farmer saying something that struck me: “What is the purest water? Yes, distilled water”, he said; “You know, Father, that when I drink it, it has no flavour at all”. This is how life is for those who criticize and gossip and separate themselves from others: they feel so pure, so sterile, that they have no flavour at all; they are incapable of inviting someone; they live to take care of themselves, to have cosmetic surgery done on their souls and not to hold out their hand to others and help them to grow, which is what Jesus does; he accepts the complexity of life and of every situation. The love of Jesus, the love of God, the love of God our Father – as you said to us – is a love that initiates a process capable of inventing ways, offering means for integration and transformation, healing, forgiveness and salvation. By eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus shatters the mentality that separates, that excludes, that isolates, that falsely separates “the good and the bad”. He does not do this by decree, or simply with good intentions, or with slogans or sentimentality. How does Jesus do it? By creating bonds, relationships capable of enabling new processes; investing in and celebrating every possible step forward. That’s why Jesus does not say to Matthew when he converts – you will see it in the Gospel: “Well, this is good, I congratulate you, come with me”. No, he says to him: “Let us celebrate in your home”, and he invites all his friends, who with Matthew had been condemned by the society, to celebrate. The gossipmonger, the one who separates, does not know how to celebrate because he has an embittered heart.

Creating relationships, celebrating. This is what Jesus does, and that way he breaks with another form of complaining, one even harder to detect, one that “stifles dreams” because it keeps whispering: “you can’t do it, you can’t do it”. How many times you have heard this: “you can’t do it”. Watch out! This is like a woodworm that eats you from the inside out. Watch out when you feel “you can’t do it”, give yourself a slap: “Yes, I can and I will show you”. The whisper, the interior whisper that haunts those who repent of their sin and acknowledge their mistakes, but don’t think that they can change. And this happens when they think that those who are born publicans will always die publicans; and that is not true. The Gospel tell us quite the opposite. Eleven of the twelve disciples were bad sinners, because they committed the worst sin: they abandoned their Master, others disowned him, others ran far away. The Apostles betrayed him, and Jesus went to look for them one by one, and they are the ones who changed the whole world. It did not occur to any of them to say: “you can’t do it”, because having seen Jesus’ love after their betrayal, “I am going to be able to do it, because you give me the strength”. Watch out for the “you-can’t-do-it” woodworm, be very careful.

Friends, each of us is much more than our labels which people attach to us; each is much more than the adjectives that they want to give us, each is much more than the condemnation foisted on us. And that is what Jesus teaches us and asks us to believe. Jesus’ approach challenges us to ask and seek help when setting out on the path of improvement. There are times when complaining seems to have the upper hand, but don’t believe it, don’t listen to it. Seek out and listen to the voices that encourage you to look ahead, not those that pull you down. Listen to the voices that open the window for you and let you see the horizon: “Yes, but it’s far off”. “But you can do it. Focus on it carefully and you will be able to do it”. And every time the woodworm comes with “you can’t do it”, answer it from within: “I can do it”, and focus on the horizon.

The joy and hope of every Christian – of all of us, and the Pope too – comes from having experienced this approach of God, who looks at us and says, “You are part of my family and I cannot leave you at the mercy of the elements”; this is what God says to each one of us, because God is Father – you said it yourself: “You are part of my family and I am not going to leave you to the mercy of the elements, I am not going to leave you lying in the ditch, no, I cannot lose you along the way – God says to us, to each of us, by name and surname – I am here at your side”. Here? Yes, Lord. It is that feeling that you, Luis, described at those times when it seemed it was all over, yet something said: “No! It is not all over”, because you have a bigger purpose that lets you see that God our Father is always with us. He gives us people with whom we can walk, people to help us achieve new goals.

So Jesus turns complaining into celebration, and tells us: “Rejoice with me, we are going to celebrate!” In the parable of the prodigal son – I like a translation I found once – it says that the father said, when he saw his son who had returned home: “We are going to celebrate”, and then the feast began. And one translation said: “And then the dance began”. The joy, the joy with which God receives us, with the Father’s embrace; the dance began.

Brothers and sisters: You are part of the family; you have a lot to share with others. Help us to discern how best to live and to accompany one another along the path of change that we, as a family, all need.

A society grows sick when it is unable to celebrate change in its sons and daughters. A community grows sick when it lives off relentless, negative and heartless complaining, gossip. But a society is fruitful when it is able to generate processes of inclusion and integration, of caring and trying to create opportunities and alternatives that can offer new possibilities to the young, to build a future through community, education and employment. Such a community is healthy. Even though it may feel the frustration of not knowing how to do so, it does not give up, it keeps trying. We all have to help each other to learn, as a community, to find these ways, to try again and again. It is a covenant that we have to encourage one another to keep: you, young men and women, those responsible for your custody and the authorities of the Centre and the Ministry, and all your families, as well as your pastoral assistants. Keep fighting, all of you – but not among yourselves, please –fighting for what? – to seek and find the paths of integration and transformation. And this the Lord blesses, this the Lord sustains and this the Lord accompanies.

Shortly we will continue with the penitential service, where we will all be able to experience the Lord’s gaze, which never looks at adjectives, but looks at a name, looks into our eyes, looks at our heart; he does not look at labels and condemnation, but at his sons and daughters. That is God’s approach, his way of seeing things, which rejects exclusion and gives us the strength to build the covenants needed to help us all to reject complaining: those fraternal covenants that enable our lives to be a constant invitation to the joy of salvation, to the joy of keeping a horizon open before us, to the joy of the son’s feast. Let us go this way. Thank you. 

25.01.19

I am pleased to meet you and I greet you all cordially, starting from the chaplain, Fr. Vittorio Trani, and the director, Dr. Silvana Servi, whom I thank for their words. You represent the working community that places itself at the service of the detainees in the Roman “Regina Coeli” Prison. guards, administrative personnel, doctors, educators, chaplains and volunteers, accompanied by your family members. I express to each one of you my acknowledgement and that of the Church for your work alongside the detainees: this requires inner strength, perseverance and awareness of the specific mission to which you are called. And another thing. It takes prayer every day, that the Lord may give you good sense: good sense in the different situations in which you will find yourselves.

The prison is a place of pain in the dual sense of punishment and suffering, and has a great need for attention and humanity. It is a place where all, Penitentiary Police, chaplains, educators and volunteers, are called to perform the difficult task of tending to the wounds of those who, on account of the errors they have made, find themselves deprived of their personal freedom. It is well known that good collaboration between the different prison services provides an action of great support in the re-education of detainees. However, due to a lack of personnel and chronic overcrowding, this painstaking and delicate work risks being in part in vain. Workplace stress caused by pressing shifts and often distance from families are factors that weigh down a job that already involves a certain psychological burden. Therefore, professional figures such as yours need personal balance and valid motivations, continually renewed; indeed, you are called not only to guarantee the protection, order and security of the institute, but also very often to bind the wounds of men and women you meet on a daily basis in their sections.

No-one may condemn another for the errors he has committed, nor inflict suffering that offends human dignity. Prisons need to be increasingly humanized, and it is painful instead to hear that very often they are considered to be places of violence and illegality, where human evil rages. At the same time, we must not forget that many detainees are poor people, without points of reference, they have no security, they have no family, they have no means to defend their own rights, they are marginalized and abandoned to their destiny. For society, detainees are uncomfortable individuals, they are rejects, a burden. This is painful, but the collective subconscious leads us there.

But experience shows that prison, with the help of prison workers, can truly become a place of redemption, of resurrection and of change of life; and everything is possible through paths of faith, work and professional formation, but above all with spiritual closeness and compassion, following the example of the Good Samaritan, who stooped to care for his wounded brother. This attitude of closeness, that finds its root in Christ’s love, may favour in many detainees the trust, awareness and certainty of being loved.

In addition, a punishment, any punishment, must not be closed; it must always have “the window open” to hope, on the part of both the prison and of each person. Everyone must always have the hope of partial rehabilitation. Let us think of those serving life sentences, even for them: “With my work in prison…”. Give, do work… Always the hope of rehabilitation. A penalty without hope is useless, it does not help, it provokes in the heart feelings of rancour, very often of revenge, and the person leaves worse than when they entered. No. It is always necessary to ensure that there is hope and to help to see beyond the window, hoping in rehabilitation. I know that you work hard, looking to this future to rehabilitate each one of those who are in prison.

I encourage you to carry out your important work with sentiments of harmony and unity. All together, Directorate, Penitentiary Police, Chaplains, educational sector, volunteers and external community are called to march in a single direction, to help raise up and nurture in hope those who, unfortunately, have fallen into the trap of evil.

For my part, I accompany you with my affection, which is sincere. I have great closeness to prisoners and those who work in prisons. My affection and my prayer, that you may be able to contribute, with your work, to ensuring that prison, a place of pain and suffering, may also be a laboratory of humanity and hope. In the other diocese [Buenos Aires], I often went to the prison; and now every fortnight, on Sunday, I make a telephone call to a group of prisoners in a prison I visited frequently. I am close. And I have always had a sensation when entering a prison: “Why them and not me?” This thought has done me great good. Why them and not me? I could have been there, and instead no, the Lord gave me a grace that my sins and my shortcomings were forgiven and not seen, I don’t know. But that question helps greatly: why them and not me?

I heartily bless all of you and your loved ones, and I ask you, please, to pray for me, as I am in need. Thank you! 

07.02.19

“Where is your brother?” This is the question that God asks each one of us in our hearts regarding our brother who is sick, in prison or hungry.

Mankind, like Cain, often attempts to reply to God’s uncomfortable and embarrassing questions with regard to our neighbours. “What have I got to do with my brother's life? Am I his keeper? I wash my hands of him….” Cain, who killed his brother, tries to escape the gaze of God.

Jesus also asked such uncomfortable questions. He asked Peter three times whether he loved Him. He asked his disciples what people said about Him and what they themselves thought about Him.

Today the Lord asks each one of us some personal questions such as these:

"Where is your brother who is hungry?" the Lord asks us. And to save our skin, we answer, “Surely he is at lunch with the parish Caritas group that is feeding him.”  

“What about the other, the sick…?" “Oh well, he is in the hospital!" "But there's no place in the hospital! And did you give him any medicine? " "But, that’s his business, I cannot meddle in the life of others ... and besides, he will have relatives who give him medicine ". And so I wash my hands of him.

"Where is your brother, the prisoner?" "Ah, he deserves and is paying for it.  We are tired of seeing so many criminals on the street."

Perhaps you never hear such answers from the Lord. “Where is your brother, your exploited brother, the one who works illegally, nine months a year… with no security, no holiday ...?"

Each one of us should put a name to each one of those that the Lord mentions in Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel - the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, without clothes, the little one who cannot go to school, the drug addict, the prisoner ... where is he?

Questions are constantly being asked of us. “Where is your brother in your heart? Is there room for these people in our hearts? Or do we try to calm our conscience by giving some alms?” 

We are accustomed to giving compromising answers in order to escape from the problem, not to see the problem, not to touch the problem.

Unless we put names to the list in Matthew’s Gospel Chapter 25, we will create “a dark life” for us with sin crouching at our door, waiting to enter and destroy us.

When God asked Adam in the Book of Genesis, “Adam, where are you?" - Adam hid himself out of shame. Perhaps we don’t notice these things, these sufferings, these pains. Let us as Christians not hide from reality but answer openly, faithfully and joyfully to the questions that the Lord asks us about our brothers.

18.02.19

In this moment of the Supper, two episodes attract our attention. Jesus’ washing of the feet: Jesus humbles himself, and with this gesture he lets us understand what he had said: “I came not to be served but to serve” (cf. Mk 10:45). He teaches us the path of service.

The other — sad — episode is the betrayal of Judas, who is not capable of pursuing love, and then money and selfishness lead him to this bad thing. But Jesus forgives everything. Jesus always forgives. He asks only that we ask for forgiveness.

Once, I heard an elderly woman, wise, an elderly grandmother, of the people… She said, “Jesus never tires of forgiving: we are the ones who tire of asking for forgiveness”. Today, let us ask the Lord for the grace not to grow weary.

We all always have small failures, large failures: each person has their own story. But the Lord awaits us always, with open arms, and he never tires of forgiving.

Now we will make the same gesture Jesus made: the washing of the feet. It is a gesture that draws attention to the vocation of service. Let us ask the Lord to make us grow, all of us, in the vocation to service.

Thank you.

28.03.24 pm

Dear sisters, dear brothers! We are all brothers and sisters, all of us, and no-one can disown the other, no-one!

I greet you all affectionately, especially you sisters, detainees in the Giudecca Women’s Prison. I very much wanted to meet you at the beginning of my visit to Venice to tell you that you have a special place in my heart.

I would like, therefore, for us to experience this moment not so much as an “official visit”, but rather as an encounter in which, thanks be to God, we can give each other time, prayer, closeness and fraternal affection. Today we will all leave this courtyard richer – perhaps I am the one who will leave the richer - and the good we will exchange will be precious.

It is the Lord who wants us to be together at this moment, having arrived by different paths, some very painful, also because of mistakes for which, in various ways, each person bears wounds and scars, every person bears scars. And God wants us together because He knows that each of us, here, today, has something unique to give and to receive, and that we are all in need of it. Each one of us has his or her own uniqueness, he or she has a gift and this is to be offered, to be shared.

Prison is a harsh reality, and problems such as overcrowding, the lack of facilities and resources, and episodes of violence, give rise to a great deal of suffering there. But it can also become a place of rebirth, of moral and material rebirth, where the dignity of women and men is not “placed in isolation”, but promoted through mutual respect and the nurturing of talents and abilities, perhaps dormant or imprisoned by the vicissitudes of life, but which can re-emerge for the good of all and which deserve attention and trust. No-one can take away a person’s dignity, no-one!

So, paradoxically, a stay in prison can mark the beginning of something new, through the rediscovery of the unsuspected beauty in us and in others, as symbolized by the artistic event you are hosting and the project to which you actively contribute; it can become a building site for reconstruction, in which to courageously look at and evaluate one’s own life, remove what is not needed, what is cluttering, harmful or dangerous, draw up a plan, and then start again by digging foundations and going back, in the light of experience, to putting brick upon brick, together, with determination. Therefore, it is fundamental also for the prison system to offer detainees the tools and room for human growth, for spiritual, cultural and professional growth, creating the conditions for their healthy reintegration. Please, do not “isolate dignity”, do not isolate dignity, but give new possibilities!

Let us not forget that we have all made mistakes to be forgiven, and have wounds to heal, myself included; and that we can all become the healed who bring healing, the forgiven who bring forgiveness, the reborn who bring rebirth.

Dear friends, let us renew today, you and I, together, our trust in the future: do not close the window, please; always look at the horizon, always look to the future, with hope. I like to think that hope is like an anchor, you know, which is anchored in the future, and we have the rope in our hands and go forward with the rope anchored in the future. Let us propose to begin each day by saying, “now is the right time”, today, “today is the right day” today, (cf. 2 Cor 6:2), “today I will start again”, always, for the rest of my life!

Thank you for this meeting, and I assure every one of you of my prayer. And you, pray for me, but please, not against me!

And this is the gift I will leave you. Look, it has something of the tenderness of the mother, and Mary has this tenderness with all of us, with all of us, she is the mother of tenderness. Thank you.

And now they are sending me away! Thank you, thank you very much, I will remember you! And keep going forward, bravely, don’t give up – onward with courage!

28.04.24 iv