Cardinal Parolin visits Holy See pavilion at Milan Expo
(Vatican Radio) The Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, visited the 2015 World’s Fair exposition in Milan, Italy, on Wednesday, Sept. 30th, touring the pavilion of the Holy See and the Caritas Internationalis exhibit therein.
Speaking of the pavilion, Cardinal Parolin said, “It is almost a ‘translation into plastic’ of the invitation that the Holy Father addressed to the UN,” just a few days earlier in New York, during the course of his Apostolic Journey to Cuba and the United States. In that address, the Pope spoke of issues related to the environment and care for creation, and how those issues are linked to the social exclusion of the poorest of the poor. “This pavilion has a special dimension,” he said, “because it is an invitation to reflect on humanity’s great problems and on the responses that the Church gives to these problems.”
Particularly significant to the Cardinal Secretary of State was the exhibit’s insistence on showing and telling the stories of real, flesh-and-blood people. “This gallery of faces, the insistence on the concrete, on people and not on abstract topics, on the difficulties experienced by each person, by entire populations, was most striking,” he said.
The 2015 Expo Milan opened on May 1st, and closes on October 31st.