“We are witnessing in Sicily behaviors and gestures marked by great virtues as well as cruel hatred,” he said. “Furthermore, alongside masterpieces of extraordinary artistic beauty, we see scenes of mortifying neglect.”
He noted the deterioration of the social situation, in particular the fall in the population due to a low birth rate and the exodus of young people in search of work.
“We need to understand how and in what direction Sicily is experiencing the change of age and what paths it could take, in order to proclaim, in the fractures and joints of this change, the Gospel of Christ”, he said. declared.
“This task, although entrusted to the whole people of God, demands of us, priests and bishops, a full, total and exclusive service,” commented Pope Francis.
“Please don’t stand in the middle of the road,” he urged. “Faced with the awareness of our weaknesses, we know that the will of Christ places us at the heart of this challenge.
“The key to everything is in his call, he underlines, on which we rely to go back to sea and cast our nets again. We do not even know each other, but if we return to the call, we cannot ignore this Face which has met us and drawn us behind it, even united us to it, as our tradition teaches when it declares that in the liturgy we even act ‘in persona Christi’.
“This full unity, this identification, we cannot limit to celebration, but we must live it fully in every moment of life, keeping in mind the words of the Apostle Paul: “I no longer live , but Christ lives in me,” he said.
