As millions remained displaced, hungry, and in hope that a bomb would not find them in conflict zones across the world, including in Palestinian territories where Jesus Christ was born, Pope Francis in his message on the Christmas Eve called for hope and courage to right the many wrongs in the world.
At St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, Francis urged Christians across the world to think of “the wars, of the machine-gunned children, of the bombs on schools or hospitals”. The remarks came as Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, next door to Jesus’s birthplace of Bethlehem in West Bank, continue to kill many just like Russian bombs zero in on Ukrainian civilians on a near-daily basis.
Recalling Jesus’s story, whose father Joseph was a carpenter, Francis said that you do not need to be of high birth to make a difference in the world.
The hope is not a “happy ending” but rather a promise to be welcomed amid suffering and sighs and a summon “not to tarry, to be kept back by our old habits, or to wallow in mediocrity or laziness” but to right the wrongs, said Francis.
“Hope calls us, as Saint Augustine would say, to be upset with things that are wrong and to find the courage to change them. Hope calls us to become pilgrims in search of truth, dreamers who never tire, women and men open to being challenged by God’s dream of a new world where peace and justice reign,” said Francis.
Stressing that everyone has the means to make a change, Francis said it is people’s duty of “bringing hope wherever hope has been lost, lives broken, promises unkept, dreams shattered and hearts overwhelmed by adversity”.
Francis further said, “We are called to bring hope to the weary who have no strength to carry on, the lonely oppressed by the bitterness of failure, and all those who are broken-hearted. To bring hope to the interminable, dreary days of prisoners, to the cold and dismal lodgings of the poor, and to all those places desecrated by war and violence.”
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