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Catholics will never be effective evangelizers if they are squabbling among themselves, and they cannot show the world how faith in Christ responds to the human yearning for freedom and peace if they are divided, Pope Francis said at a Mass in Quito, Ecuador.
The pope’s Mass July 7 at Quito’s Bicentennial Park was billed as a Mass for evangelization, but the pope insisted Christians would convince no one of the power of the Gospel if they could not demonstrate in their lives and behaviors that faith pushes a person beyond self-interest to concern for others.
Pope Francis celebrated the Quito Mass on the second day of his July 5-12 visit to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
Christians do not look at the world through rose-colored glasses, the pope said, but they can dream. Like Jesus, they see the world’s flaws, but also like Jesus, they love the world God created.
“It is precisely into this troubled world that Jesus sends us,” he said. “We must not pretend not to see or claim we do not have the needed resources or that the problems are too big.
“Instead we must respond by taking up the cry of Jesus and accepting the grace and challenge of being builders of unity,” he said.
To evangelize is to live as brothers and sisters with all people, he said. “This is the new revolution—for our faith is always revolutionary—this is our deepest and most enduring cry.”
Society needs people committed to unity, the pope said, and so does the Church.
Local Church officials said more than 800,000 people gathered at the park, a former airport, for the Mass.
The previous day, the pope celebrated a Mass July 6 in Guayaquil on the theme of encouraging and celebrating family life, saying even if a pastoral proposal for helping a Catholic family with problems seems scandalous at first, it is possible God could use that proposal to bring healing and holiness.
The pope asked people to pray for the October Synod of Bishops on the family, and he tied the synod to the Jubilee of Mercy, a yearlong celebration that will begin in December.
The synod will be a time for the Church to “deepen her spiritual discernment and consider concrete solutions to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time,” he said.
Celebrating Mass with as many as 1 million people gathered under the hot sun in Los Samanes Park, Pope Francis asked them “to pray fervently for this intention, so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it—by making it part of his ‘hour’—into a miracle. Families today need this miracle!”
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters Pope Francis was not referring to any specific proposal discussed in anticipation of the synod; one of the most common—and most debated pastoral suggestions—was to develop a process or “penitential path” for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion but have not received an annulment.
The pope, Father Lombardi said, hopes the synod “will find a way to help people move from a situation of sin to a situation of grace.”
Pope Francis acknowledged the suffering and hope of young people who do not experience happiness and love at home, the “many women, sad and lonely,” who wonder how their love “slipped away,” and the elderly who feel cast aside.
In a family, “no one is rejected; all have the same value,” he said, telling the crowd that when he asked his own mother which of her five children she loved best, she would say that they were like her five fingers: all were important and if one finger was hurt, the pain would be the same as if another finger was hurt.
At the July 7 Mass in Quito, Ecuador’s status as the world’s third-largest exporter of cut flowers—with roses as queen—became evident from the rose petals strewn along the pope’s path, the flower-petal carpets on the altar platform and the colorful arrangements that decorated even the walkway to the makeshift sacristy behind the stage.
The congregation gathered for the Mass was just as varied; members of different indigenous groups and visitors from other South American countries risked a forecast of rain to pray with each other and with the pope. Pope Francis wore a chasuble with an indigenous design, and the second reading at the Mass was in the Kichwa language.
Margarita Maria Jaramillo Escobar, 58, came with a group of 80 people from Medellin, Colombia, to pray with the pope.
“This is a pilgrimage for us,” said Ms. Jaramillo, a retired judge who has been blind since birth. “I came to hear the Holy Father’s message of love, peace and mercy.” —CNS
