Pope Leo XIV while visiting the southern Italian town of Acerra. (Photo from the Vatican News)
During his pastoral visit to Acerra, Italy, Pope Leo XIV stressed the importance of being rich in a different way by being more attentive to relationships, more committed to valuing the common good and more attached to the land while being more grateful in welcoming and integrating those who live with us us.
The pope addressed mayors and local residents of the town in the ‘Land of Fires’, urging everyone to join together to correct course and saying the principal meaning of his presence that was ‘to confirm and encourage that stirring of dignity and responsibility in every honest heart when life springs forth and is immediately threatened by death.
“This, dear friends, is the principal meaning of my presence in Acerra today: to confirm and encourage that stirring of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life springs forth and is immediately threatened by death,” he announced.
The American pontiff expressed his pleasure in spending his day among the people of the southern Italian town in Campania where he noted the region’s beauty and claimed “no injustice can erase.”
“In life we come to understand,” he highlighted, “the more fragile a beauty is, the more it calls for care and responsibility.”
In addition, the leader of the Catholic Church spelled out the principal meaning of the pastoral visit—that of confirming and encouraging the stirring of dignity and responsibility which comes from God the Creator.
The Holy Father recalled that, a short while earlier in the Cathedral, he had met with some family members of the victims of the pollution that, over recent decades, has caused the area to become sadly known as the ‘Land of Fires’.
“(Expression) does not do justice to the good that exists and endures, but (it) has certainly helped bring about a widespread awareness of the gravity of criminal wrongdoing and of the indifference that has left room for crime,” he enthused.
He likewise warned against desertification of consciences: “Walking together, overcoming self-referentiality, daring prophecy despite resistance and threats is what the Lord asks of us and what His Spirit inspires.”
The 70-year-old pontiff insisted that “life exists and opposes death; justice exists and will prevail” even as he advised that “one must choose life while warning against the temptation to accept resignation, compromise or postponing necessary and courageous decisions.”
“Fatalism, complaining and shifting blame onto others are the breeding ground of illegality and the beginning of the desertification of consciences. For this reason I would like to say to all of you, let each of us take responsibility, let us choose justice, let us serve life! The he appea common good comes before the business interests of a few, before sectional interests, whether small or great,” he appealed.
Leo observed that, according to some, leaving a better world to our children “has become too lofty an ambition,” (and) yet, he stressed that “the mission of leaving the world better sons and daughters must not become so (because) educational commitment is within reach and it is a priority.”
The Pope called for the education “of the young, certainly, but also of adults; of children, but also of the elderly; of citizens and their leaders; of workers and employers; of the faithful and of pastors: we all still have something to learn.”
“Everyone has something to give but first one must learn how to receive. It is not easy to admit this; nevertheless, this is the beginning of the future: it is like a door opening onto what until now we have neither thought, nor believed, nor loved enough. To keep learning: this is what makes us a community,” he stressed.
In ending, Pope Leo asserted how true change and healing can help the faithful remain in the path of God: “For Christians, it is to ‘walk the road’ with Jesus: to become, at every age, more and more fully His disciples.”
“Watch over the health of creation as one watches over the door of one’s own home, rejecting temptations of power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the earth, the water, the air and human coexistence.
“Let us therefore learn to be rich in a different way . . . The path to be traveled is narrow, because it begins with us, from where we are . . . We have the task of keeping watch like sentinels in the night. We can be among those who will behold the new dawn,” he concluded.