Pope in Colombia at Mass: ‘Peace requires healing of
sins’
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated
Mass in Cartagena’s port area on Sunday at the conclusion of his Apostolic
Visit to Colombia.
The Holy Father reflected on the peace that Jesus brings
through the community and how necessary it is for Colombian society.
“For decades Colombia has yearned for peace”, he said, “but,
as Jesus teaches, two sides approaching each other to dialogue is not enough;
it has also been necessary to involve many more actors in this dialogue aimed
at healing sins.”
He said people cannot be ignored when making peace, in
placing reason above revenge, and in respecting “the delicate harmony between
politics and law”.
“Peace is not achieved by normative frameworks and
institutional arrangements between well-intentioned political or economic
groups. Jesus finds the solution to the harm inflicted through a personal
encounter between the parties,” he said.
Please find below the official English translation of
the Pope’s prepared homily:
Homily: “The Dignity of the Person and Human Rights.”
Cartagena de Indias
Sunday, 10 September 2017
In this city, which has been called “heroic” for its
tenacity in defending freedom two hundred years ago, I celebrate the concluding
Mass of my Visit to Colombia. For the past thirty-two years Cartagena de
Indias is also the headquarters in Colombia for Human Rights. For here
the people cherish the fact that, “thanks to the missionary team formed by the
Jesuit priests Peter Claver y Corberó, Alonso de Sandoval and Brother Nicolás
González, accompanied by many citizens of the city of Cartagena de Indias in
the seventeenth century, the desire was born to alleviate the situation of the
oppressed of that time, especially of slaves, of those who implored fair
treatment and freedom” (Congress of Colombia 1985, law 95, art. 1).
Here, in the Sanctuary of Saint Peter Claver, where the
progress and application of human rights in Colombia continue to be studied and
monitored in a systematic way, the Word of God speaks to us of forgiveness,
correction, community and prayer.
In the fourth sermon of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to
us, who have decided to support the community, to us, who value life together
and dream of a project that includes everyone. The preceding text is that
of the good shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go after the one that
is lost. This fact pervades the entire text: there is no one too lost to
deserve our care, our closeness and our forgiveness. From this
perspective, we can see that a fault or a sin committed by one person
challenges us all, but involves, primarily, the victim of someone’s sin.
He or she is called to take the initiative so that whoever has caused the harm
is not lost.
During these past few days I have heard many testimonies
from those who have reached out to people who had harmed them; terrible wounds
that I could see in their own bodies; irreparable losses that still bring
tears. Yet they have reached out, have taken a first step on a different
path to the one already travelled. For decades Colombia has yearned for
peace but, as Jesus teaches, two sides approaching each other to dialogue is
not enough; it has also been necessary to involve many more actors in this
dialogue aimed at healing sins. The Lord tells us in the Gospel: “If your
brother does not listen to you, take one or two others along with you” (Mt 18:16).
We have learned that these ways of making peace, of placing
reason above revenge, of the delicate harmony between politics and law, cannot
ignore the involvement of the people. Peace is not achieved by normative
frameworks and institutional arrangements between well-intentioned political or
economic groups. Jesus finds the solution to the harm inflicted through a
personal encounter between the parties. It is always helpful, moreover,
to incorporate into our peace processes the experience of those sectors that
have often been overlooked, so that communities themselves can influence the
development of collective memory. “The principal author, the historic
subject of this process, is the people as a whole and their culture, and not a
single class, minority, group or elite. We do not need plans drawn up by a few
for the few, or an enlightened or outspoken minority which claims to speak for
everyone. It is about agreeing to live together, a social and cultural pact”
(cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 239).
We can contribution greatly to this new step that Colombia
wants to take. Jesus tells us that this path of reintegration into the
community begins with a dialogue of two persons. Nothing can replace that
healing encounter; no collective process excuses us from the challenge of
meeting, clarifying, forgiving. Deep historic wounds necessarily require
moments where justice is done, where victims are given the opportunity to know
the truth, where damage is adequately repaired and clear commitments are made
to avoid repeating those crimes. But that is only the beginning of the
Christian response. We are required to generate “from below” a change in
culture: so that we respond to the culture of death and violence, with the
culture of life and encounter. We have already learned this from your own
beloved author whom we all benefit from: “This cultural disaster is not
remedied with lead or silver, but with an education for peace, built lovingly
on the rubble of an angry country where we rise early to continue killing each
other... a legitimate revolution of peace which channels towards life an
immense creative energy that for almost two centuries we have used to destroy
us and that vindicates and exalts the predominance of the imagination” (Gabriel
García Márquez, Message About Peace, 1998).
How much have we worked for an encounter, for peace? How
much have we neglected, allowing barbarity to become enfleshed in the life of
our people? Jesus commands us to confront those types of behaviour, those
ways of living that damage society and destroy the community. How many
times have we “normalized” the logic of violence and social exclusion, without
prophetically raising our hands or voices! Alongside Saint Peter Claver
were thousands of Christians, many of them consecrated… but only a handful
started a counter-cultural movement of encounter. Saint Peter was able to
restore the dignity and hope of hundreds of thousands of black people and
slaves arriving in absolutely inhuman conditions, full of dread, with all their
hopes lost. He did not have prestigious academic qualifications, and he
even said of himself that he was “mediocre” in terms of intelligence, but he
had the genius to live the Gospel to the full, to meet those whom others
considered merely as waste material. Centuries later, the footsteps of
this missionary and apostle of the Society of Jesus were followed by Saint
María Bernarda Bütler, who dedicated her life to serving the poor and
marginalized in this same city of Cartagena.[1]
In the encounter between us we rediscover our rights, and we
recreate our lives so that they re-emerge as authentically human. “The
common home of all men and women must continue to rise on the foundations of a
right understanding of universal fraternity and respect for the sacredness of
every human life, of every man and every woman, the poor, the elderly,
children, the infirm, the unborn, the unemployed, the abandoned, those
considered disposable because they are only considered as part of a statistic.
This common home of all men and women must also be built on the understanding
of a certain sacredness of created nature” (Address to the United Nations, 25
September 2015).
Jesus also shows us the possibility that the other may
remain closed, refusing to change, persisting in evil. We cannot deny
that there are people who persist in sins that damage the fabric of our
coexistence and community: “I also think of the heart-breaking drama of drug
abuse, which reaps profits in contempt of the moral and civil laws. I
think of the devastation of natural resources and ongoing pollution, and the
tragedy of the exploitation of labour. I think too of illicit money trafficking
and financial speculation, which often prove both predatory and harmful for
entire economic and social systems, exposing millions of men and women to
poverty. I think of prostitution, which every day reaps innocent victims,
especially the young, robbing them of their future. I think of the abomination
of human trafficking, crimes and abuses against minors, the horror of slavery
still present in many parts of the world; the frequently overlooked tragedy of
migrants, who are often victims of disgraceful and illegal manipulation”
(Message for the World Day of Peace, 2014, 8), and even with a pacifist
“sterile legality” that ignores the flesh of our brothers and sisters, the
flesh of Christ. We must also be prepared for this, and solidly base
ourselves upon principles of justice that in no way diminish charity. It
is only possible to live peacefully by avoiding actions that corrupt or harm
life. In this context, we remember all those who, bravely and tirelessly,
have worked and even lost their lives in defending and protecting the rights
and the dignity of the human person. History asks us to embrace a
definitive commitment to defending human rights, here in Cartagena de Indias,
the place that you have chosen as the national seat of their defence.
Finally, Jesus asks us to pray together, so that our prayer,
even with its personal nuances and different emphases, becomes symphonic and
arises as one single cry. I am sure that today we pray together for the
rescue of those who were wrong and not for their destruction, for justice and
not revenge, for healing in truth and not for oblivion. We pray to fulfil
the theme of this visit: “Let us take the first step!” And may this first step
be in a common direction.
To “take the first step” is, above all, to go out and meet
others with Christ the Lord. And he always asks us to take a determined
and sure step towards our brothers and sisters, and to renounce our claim to be
forgiven without showing forgiveness, to be loved without showing love.
If Colombia wants a stable and lasting peace, it must urgently take a step in
this direction, which is that of the common good, of equity, of justice, of
respect for human nature and its demands. Only if we help to untie the
knots of violence, will we unravel the complex threads of disagreements.
We are asked to take the step of meeting with our brothers and sisters, and to
risk a correction that does not want to expel but to integrate. And we
are asked to be charitably firm in that which is not negotiable. In
short, the demand is to build peace, “speaking not with the tongue but with
hands and works” (Saint Peter Claver), and to lift up our eyes to heaven
together. The Lord is able to untie that which seems impossible to us,
and he has promised to accompany us to the end of time, and will bring to
fruition all our efforts.
[1] She also had the wisdom of charity and knew how to
find God in her neighbour; nor was she paralyzed by injustice and challenges,
because “when conflict arises, some people simply look at it and go their way
as if nothing happened; they wash their hands of it and get on with their
lives. Others embrace it in such a way that they become its prisoners; they
lose their bearings, project onto institutions their own confusion and
dissatisfaction and thus make unity impossible. But there is also a third way,
and it is the best way to deal with conflict. It is the willingness to face
conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new
process” (Evangelii Gaudium, 227).
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