Pope Francis to child travelers: do all the good you
can
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis
on Saturday received some four hundred children of different ethnicities,
cultures and religions – many of them migrants and refugees – who had traveled
to Rome from Calabria in southern Italy aboard the “Children’s Train” – theTreno
dei Bambini – an annual initiative of the Pontifical Council for
Culture, which this year has as its theme, “Carried by waves”: a theme that is
designed at once to invoke the often deadly danger of migration, and the hope
in the promise of a better future that drives people – along with the threat of
torture, slavery and death – to flee their homelands and seek a better life on
strange and distant shores.
The children arrived Saturday
at St. Peter’s railway station in the Vatican: their conveyance brining also
the pain of the experience of its young passengers – their undeniable
suffering, weaved together with the care and affection offered the children by
the John XXIII Association, and the work of the “Quattrocanti” Children’s
Orchestra of Palermo (in which boys and girls of eight different ethnicities
are involved), as well as the initiative of Mary Salvia, principal of a school
in Vibo Marina, who brought to Pope Francis the money from her school’s
collection for the children of Lesbos and a letter signed by her pupils, which
Cardinal Ravasi read to the Pope. “We children promise that we will welcome
anyone who arrives in our country: we shall never consider anyone who has a
different skin color, or who speaks a different language, or who professes a
different religion from ours, a dangerous enemy.”
In an unscripted exchange
with the young travelers, Pope Francis focused on the human cost of
indifference to the plight of migrants, recounting the story and sharing the
words of a rescue worker who brought the Holy Father the life vest of a young
migrant who drowned at sea. “He brought me this jacket,” said Pope Francis, “and
with tears in his eyes he said to me, ‘Father, I couldn’t do it – there was a
little girl on the waves, and I did all I could, but I couldn’t save her: only
her life vest was left.’” Then, indicating the Jacket, the Holy Father said, “I
do not [tell you this because I] want you to be sad, but [because] you are
brave and you [should] know the truth: they are in danger – many boys and
girls, small children, men, women – they are in danger,” he said. “Let us think
of this little girl: what was her name? I do not know: a little girl with no
name. Each of you give her the name you would like, each in his heart. She is
in heaven, she is looking on us.”
A teachable moment among many
afforded by the occasion, as was the moment in which one of the Pope’s young visitors
asked him what it means “to be Pope”: The Holy Father replied, “[to do] the
good that I can do.” He went on to say, “I feel that Jesus called me to this:
Jesus wanted me to be a Christian, and a Christian must do [the good he can];
and Jesus also wanted me to be a priest, and a bishop – and a priest and a
bishop must do [the good they can]; I feel that Jesus is calling me to do this
– that’s what I feel,” he said.
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