Pope Francis has put the finishing touch to his trip to Lisbon this Sunday with a huge mass in the open air for some 1.5 million people. The attendees did not hesitate to camp overnight -in sleeping bags along the esplanade on the banks of the Tagus, in the Tagus Park, just after the Vasco de Gama bridge- to be able to hear the words of the Pontiff at the grand finale. of the World Youth Day (WYD). The head of the Church told the young people that “they are the hope for a different world”. In addition, he announced that the next WYD will take place in Seoul, in 2027. He also had words, once again, for peace in Ukraine.
“With the Angelus we place the future of humanity in the hands of Mary, Queen of Peace,” the Pope said. “You are the hope of a different world,” Francis told them at the end of the last mass of World Youth Day. It was a sunny and windy day, there was a party at the vigil on Saturday night, but now the young people listen attentively to the Pope who, as in Fatima, once again prays for the world in danger: “In particular, we accompany with our thoughts and I pray to those who have not been able to come because of conflicts and wars. There are many in the world. Thinking of this continent, I feel great pain for dear Ukraine, which continues to suffer a lot,” he continued.
And then he looked up at the young people who fill the park along the mouth of the river as far as the eye can see: “Friends, allow me, old man, to share with you, young people, a dream that I carry inside: it is the dream of the peace, the dream of young people who pray for peace, live in peace and build a future of peace”. Francis entrusts the future of humanity to Mary and concludes: “On the way home, keep praying for peace. You are a sign of peace to the world, a testimony to how nationalities, languages and histories can unite instead to divide”.
After the Angelus, the Pope announced that the next World Youth Day will be in 2027 in Seoul (South Korea), again in Asia after WYD in the Philippines in 1995: “Thus, from the western border of Europe we will go to the Far East. It is a beautiful sign of the universality of the Church and of the dream of unity of which you are all witnesses”.
In the meantime, “I hope to see you in Rome in 2025 to celebrate the Youth Jubilee together!” he exclaimed. For Francis, who returns to Rome this Sunday evening, it has been an important journey. “Young people are the future”, he repeated to himself during the five days he spent in Lisbon. During the Mass, in his homily, he invited young people “not to be afraid” and to fight to change the world: “To you, young people, who cultivate great dreams but are often clouded by the fear of not seeing them come true; to you , young people, who sometimes think that you cannot achieve it, that you are not capable, with a little pessimism; to you, young people, tempted at this time to become discouraged, to judge yourselves inadequate or to hide your pain by masking it with a smile; to you, young people, who want to change the world, and it is good that you want to change the world, and you fight for justice and peace; to you, young people, who put effort and imagination but it seems to you that they are not enough; to you, young people, who The Church and the world need like the land of rain; you, young people, who are the present and the future; yes, to you, young people, Jesus tells you: do not be afraid! “.
Before the massive closure, the Pope was on Saturday at the sanctuary of Fatima. There, as soon as he arrived, Francisco prayed for a long time in silence, with his eyes closed and his head bowed, before the statue of the Virgin. The pope prayed “with pain, for peace,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said later. Since the pope’s return to Fatima was the most anticipated moment of the trip, a solemn prayer was expected to implore help and consecrate to Mary the world in danger of conflict, what he repeatedly called “the third world war in pieces.”
Francis had everyone repeat a Hail Mary and prayed the Rosary with the faithful: “Let us pray for peace, so that the Blessed Virgin who asked in Fatima: ‘I want you to say the Rosary to obtain peace, present our prayers to the Lord and be grant the world a lasting time of peace”. The Bishop of Fatima, José Ornelas Carvalho, also spoke about this when greeting Francis: “We also associate ourselves with Your Holiness’s prayer for peace, with which this sanctuary is deeply identified, thinking in particular of the war in Ukraine and in so many other sources of conflict in the world”. Then, remaining in his wheelchair, he greeted the moved faithful at length, before leaving for Lisbon, where on Saturday night he presided over a vigil with young people in the Tagus Park.
Bergoglio had already been to Fatima in 2017, on the centenary of the apparitions. Three children had taken their sheep to graze and told that they had seen “a beautiful lady” who appeared in an oak tree. It was May 13, 1917 and, according to his account, the first apparition was followed by five others, one per month, until October 13 and the phenomenon of the “dance of the sun” before 70,000 people. That day, Bergoglio proclaimed the brothers Francisco and Jacinta Mart saints, the first children in two thousand years to be canonized without having suffered martyrdom. They died from the Spanish flu pandemic, Francisco in 1919 and his sister the following year. The third pastor, Lucía Dos Santos, their cousin, became a nun and lived in the monastery until her death in 2005, at the age of 97. The transcription of the account of the apparitions and the words they said they heard from the Virgin is attributed to her.
Francis recited a prayer in which he spoke of himself as a “bishop dressed in white”, words that recalled the text of the “third secret” made public in 2000, the vision of a “bishop dressed in white” tottering among ruins and corpses until he is assassinated by a group of soldiers, in front of a Cross, while bishops, priests, religious, faithful die like him. In the prayer, Bergoglio also spoke of the “Church dressed in white”, as if echoing the symbolic interpretation given by Joseph Ratzinger, the image of the bishop dressed in white recalling the “different Popes” who shared the sufferings of a “century of martyrs”, of “sufferings and persecutions of the Church”, of the two world wars and “of many local wars”.
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