(Vatican Radio) Asked to pick out one of the events of Pope Francis’ first full day in the Filipino capital Manila, Father Federico Lombardi SJ immediately focused on the meeting between the Pope and poorest of the poor: Manila’s street-children.
Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Sean Patrick Lovett at the close of an eventful day, the Director of the Vatican Press Office had no hesitation in choosing the event that had not been scheduled according to the official programme…
Listen to the interview :
Pope Francis arrived in Manila on the second leg of his Asian journey on Thursday evening, but Friday was his first full day in the Philippines and saw him engaged in a series of events including the meeting with the President, the Mass in the Cathedral and the Meeting with Families.
But Father Lombardi chooses to describe the deep emotion arising from Pope Francis’s unscheduled meeting with street children which he explains, took place in a home for street children run by the ANAK-Tnk charitable foundation.
The home, he says, normally hosts some 20 little girls but present to meet with the Pope there were
“Also many other children of different ages” looked after by the same foundation that hosts them in different homes in Manila – of which there are over 300.
Lombardi described the meeting as “very spontaneous,” a meeting in which the Pope “felt these children’s need for affection and love” but also “the hope that is in their heart if they feel that someone loves them”.
Lombardi also comments on the short speech with which a French priest addressed the Pope explaining the suffering of these children which is impossible to express but “you can see in their eyes the joy of meeting the Pope and their hope for the future”.
“I think the Pope desired very much this meeting because (these children) are the concrete sign of what he would do in his life – he would meet all the street children in Manila! This of course is not possible, but being with this representative group is, a way to manifest what is at the center of his attention, of his heart” he says.
Lombardi also points out that the Pope added a sentence in his homily during the Mass for members of the Church in which he says: “The poor are at the center of the Gospel. If you take away the poor from the Gospel you lose its entire sense and the message of Jesus Christ is void”.
In this sense – Lombardi says – the little children abandoned on the street are the poorest of all because they are so poor and weak, that if they are not taken into a home they die.
In this sense – Lombardi concludes – this meeting was “very expressive of the entire sense of the mission of the Pope here, a mission that speaks of poverty, inequality in this society but also in many other societies as well, and of our responsibility to build a different kind of society where love is the criteria for our choices”.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met with families in the Philippines on Friday 16th of January on the second day of his five day trip to Asia Pope at the “Mall of Asia Arena,” Manila’s principle sports arena. On this occasion the Pope said “the Philippines needs holy and loving families to protect the beauty and…
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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met with families in the Philippines on Friday 16th of January on the second day of his five day trip to Asia Pope at the “Mall of Asia Arena,” Manila’s principle sports arena. On this occasion the Pope said “the Philippines needs holy and loving families to protect the beauty and…
Read more
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met with families in the Philippines on Friday 16th of January on the second day of his five day trip to Asia Pope at the “Mall of Asia Arena,” Manila’s principle sports arena. On this occasion the Pope said “the Philippines needs holy and loving families to protect the beauty and…
Read more
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met with families in the Philippines on Friday 16th of January on the second day of his five day trip to Asia Pope at the “Mall of Asia Arena,” Manila’s principle sports arena. On this occasion the Pope said “the Philippines needs holy and loving families to protect the beauty and truth of the family in God’s plan.” The head of the English Programme at Vatican Radio, Seàn-Patrick Lovett is with the Pope in Manila and filed this report:
Listen to Seàn-Patrick Lovett’s report :
Three families, three stories. Stories of sacrifice and sorrow, but also strength and survival. Pope Francis listened intently to them all: to the Dizon Family with their 40 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren; to the Pumarada Family who manage to stay united even at a distance while their father is a migrant worker in Singapore; and to the Cruz Family with their five children, and parents who are both hearing impaired. In fact, their presentation was made using sign language.
But it was Pope Francis’ own story that made the event so unique.
Repeating a technique he had experimented with last year during the trip to South Korea, the Pope frequently departed from his prepared speech in English and, with the help of his personal translator, spoke off the cuff in Spanish. The result was another unexpected and intimate glimpse into the mind and heart of Jorge Bergoglio.
After reading just a few lines of the formal discourse dedicated, obviously, to the family and, particularly, to the figure of St Joseph, the Pope remarked how it made him remember his own family. Picking up on how St Joseph is often depicted sleeping while an Angel reveals God’s will to him in a dream, Pope Francis began reflecting on the importance of “dreaming in the family”.
“All fathers and mothers dream of their sons and daughters in the womb for nine months”, he said. “They dream of what they will be like”. “When you lose the ability to dream, you lose the ability to love”, he added. How many solutions could be found to problems in the family if only we took the time to reflect, “to dream about the good qualities” of our wives or husbands? “And never forget about when you were still boyfriend and girlfriend. That’s very important”, he added – to the obvious delight of his audience.
Then he revealed what he called “something very personal”. He told the story of his devotion to St Joseph and how he keeps a statue of the sleeping St Joseph on his desk. But that’s not all. Whenever he has a problem, he writes it down on a piece of paper and slips it behind the statue so the Saint can sleep on it and “dream” up a solution.
The Pope also had words of great esteem and affection for Blessed Paul VI, praising what he called his “strength to defend openness to life” and his “courage to warn his sheep about the wolves that were approaching”. Those “wolves” are, of course, individuals and institutions that continue to try and destroy the family through attacks Pope Francis described as “ideological colonization”.
Finally, the Pope mentioned how moved he was earlier in the day when he visited the shelter for street kids and abandoned children near Manila Cathedral. “How many people in the Church work to make a house a home”, he remarked.
That too, means Family.
With the Pope in the Philippines – I’m Seàn-Patrick Lovett
(from Vatican Radio)…