GENERAL AUDIENCE 3 DECEMBER 2014
General audience Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Vatican City, 3
December 2014 (VIS) – Pope Francis dedicated the catechesis of this Wednesday's
general audience to his recent visit to Turkey, a land dear to many Christians
for being the birthplace of the apostle Paul, hosting the first seven councils,
and for the presence, near Ephesus, of the “House of Mary”. In the same way as
he asked the faithful, before his journey, to accompany him in prayer, today he
asked them to give thanks to the Lord for the success of the trip and to pray
that it might bear the fruit of dialogue in our relationship with our Orthodox
and Muslim brothers, and in the path towards peace among peoples.
Francis spoke
first of his meeting with the authorities on Friday 29, thanking them for the
care and respect with which they greeted him. In a constitutionally secular
country with a Muslim majority, the Pope noted that it is oblivion to God and
not His glorification that engenders violence, and insisted before the leaders
of the nation on the importance of concerted efforts between Christians and
Muslims for solidarity, peace and justice, reaffirming the need for States to
guarantee real freedom of worship to citizens and religious communities.
On the second day,
the Pope visited the Museum of Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Catholic
Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, highly symbolic places for the different religions
that co-exist in Turkey. “I did so, feeling within my heart the wish to invoke
the Lord, God of Heaven and Earth, merciful Father of all humanity”. The
central event of the day was the Mass held in the Cathedral, attended by
pastors and faithful of the various Catholic rites in Turkey, along with
representatives of other confessions, to invoke together the Holy Spirit, “who
builds the unity of the Church: unity in faith, unity in charity, unity in
internal cohesion”, so that the People of God, “in the richness of their
traditions”, may grow in openness and obedience to His divine action”.
The feast of St.
Andrew the Apostle, patron of the Church of Constantinople, on 30 November,
offered the ideal context for consolidating the fraternal relations between the
Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I, who renewed their
joint commitment to the path of re-establishing full communion between
Catholics and Orthodox, and signed a Joint Declaration which represents a
significant step along the way. Francis expressed his joy at having
participated in the Divine Liturgy and for the dual blessing imparted by the
Pope and the Patriarch at the end. “Prayer is the foundation of any fruitful
ecumenical dialogue under the guidance of the Holy Spirit”.
The Holy Father's
final meeting, of which he spoke with emotion, was with a group of young
refugees from the war zones of the Middle East, under the care of the
Salesians. “It was very important for me to meet them”, he said, “both to
express my closeness and that of the Church, and to highlight the importance of
hospitality; a value to which Turkey is committed”. The Pope again thanked the
country for its work in this field, praised the Salesians for their work with
the young refugees, and concluded by again asking all those present to pray for
refugees and internally displaced people, and for the removal of the causes of
this “painful scourge”.
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