Here, before this altar dedicated to Mary Queen of Peace, on this mountain from which we can see the city and the sea beyond, we are part of a great multitude, a sea of faces come from Mauritius and other islands of this Indian Ocean region to hear Jesus preach the Beatitudes. We have come to hear that same word of life that today, as two thousand years ago, has the power and the fire able to warm the coldest of hearts. Together we can say to the Lord: We believe in you, and with the light of faith and every beat of our hearts, we know the truth of the words of the prophet Isaiah: Proclaim peace and salvation, bring the good news… that our God already reigns. The Beatitudes “are like a Christian’s identity card. So if anyone asks: ‘What must one do to be a good Christian?’, the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 63). So it was with the “apostle of Mauritian unity”, Blessed Jacques-Désiré Laval, so greatly venerated in these lands. Love for Christ and for the poor so marked his life that he could not conceive of an “aloof and sanitized” preaching of the Gospel. He knew that evangelization entails becoming all things to all people (cf. 1 Cor 9:19-22), and so he learned the language of the recently freed slaves and taught them the Good News of salvation in simple language. He was able to gather the faithful, to train them for mission and to establish small Christian communities in the neighbourhoods, towns and nearby villages: small communities, many of which gave rise to present-day parishes. His pastoral solicitude earned the trust of the poor and outcast, and made them the first to come together and find responses to their sufferings. Through his missionary outreach and his love, Father Laval gave to the Mauritian Church a new youth, a new life, that today we are asked to carry forward. We need to foster this missionary momentum, because it can happen that, as the Church of Christ, we can yield to the temptation to lose our enthusiasm for evangelization by taking refuge in worldly securities that slowly but surely not only affect the mission but actually hamper it and prevent it from drawing people together (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 26). Missionary momentum always has a young and invigorating face. For it is the young who, by their vitality and generosity, can give it the beauty and freshness of youth, when they challenge the Christian community to renewal and urge us to strike out in new directions (cf. Christus Vivit, 37). This is not always easy. It means learning to acknowledge the presence of the young and to make room for them in our communities and in our society.Full text of the homily given by Pope Francis during Mass at the monument to Mary, Queen of Peace in Port Louis, Mauritius on September 9, 2019:
Pope Francis continued his cycle of catechesis on "Jesus Christ our Hope," as part of the Jubilee 2025. This week, he reflected on the mystery of the Presentation of the Lord and how Mary and Joseph obeyed "the Law of the Lord and [...] all its prescriptions."
We begin our annual pilgrimage of Lent in faith and hope with the penitential rite of the imposition of ashes.
Pope Francis continued his cycle of catechesis on "Jesus Christ our Hope," as part of the Jubilee 2025. This week he reflected on the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, writing that the Magi "are men who do not stay still but, like the great chosen ones of biblical history, feel the need to move, to go forth. They are men who are able to look beyond themselves, who know how to look upwards."
In his Wednesday General Audience, Pope Francis continued this cycle of catechesis on "Jesus Christ our Hope," as part of the Jubilee 2025. This week he reflected on the birth of Christ and the visit of the shepherds, saying that "God, who comes into history, does not dismantle the structures of the world, but wants to illuminate them and recreate them from within."
Pope Francis invites us to pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, that the ecclesial community might welcome the desires and doubts of those young people who feel a call to serve Christ’s mission in the priesthood and religious life.