A displaced person due to the violence in Lebanon (AFP
or licensors)
Pope: May Jubilee offer opportunity for ceasefire on all
war fronts
Pope Francis writes the foreword to a book by Italian
journalist Francesco Antonio Grana who covers the Vatican, entitled
"Jubilee of Hope." The Pope writes: "I hope this time truly
becomes an opportunity for conversion and for looking at one's life in the
light of the Gospel."
Vatican News
The Holy Year and the Pope's dream look with hope to a world
marked by peace, where weapons are locked away in arsenals, those who manufacture
them have stopped profiting from the deaths of others, the death penalty has no
executions scheduled, and prisoners are granted "forms of amnesty or
pardon." Pope Francis underscores these points in the foreword of a new
book entitled, "Jubilee of Hope," written by Italian journalist
Francesco Antonio Grana who covers the Vatican, a book for release by the
publisher Elledici.
A Jubilee lived fully
"I truly hope that the upcoming Jubilee marks an
opportunity for a ceasefire in all the countries where war is being
waged!" the Pope emphasises, as he has in many of his appeals. "From
war, from every conflict, this must be clear, everyone always comes out
defeated, everyone!" and "there are no winners and losers, only the
defeated!" he stresses, recalling what he said in the Bull
of Indiction for the Holy Year "Spes non confundit" ("Hope
does not disappoint").
He explains that hope is not "optimism, nor a vague
positive feeling about the future," but "something else":
"It is not an illusion or an emotion. It is a concrete virtue, a way of
life, and it involves concrete choices. Hope is nourished by each person's
commitment to good." "Nourishing hope," Pope Francis continues,
has the value of "a social, intellectual, spiritual, artistic, and
political action in the highest sense of the word. It is putting one's
abilities and resources at the service of the common good."
An instrument of grace
This means focusing on the common good, as it relates to
migrants who experience the paradox of odysseys called "journeys of
hope," which often "turn into true journeys of despair," with
the Mediterranean becoming a "great cemetery." Or the good for those
imprisoned, as the Pope has called for "dignified living conditions"
alongside the abolition of the death penalty, judged "unacceptable because
it violates the inviolability and dignity of the person."
The Holy Year, Pope Francis writes in a passage from the
foreword, "is not exclusively an event dictated by a calendar, but a true
pastoral instrument that the popes, since 1300, have used according to the
needs of the times in which they were called to lead the Church."
A time of rebirth
The forthcoming Holy Year in 2025 will see millions of
pilgrims crossing the threshold of the Holy Door of St. Peter's and the other
three Papal Basilicas. The Pope hopes, however, that this pilgrimage is not
simply a touristic visit or the achievement of a goal, as in the Olympics.
"I hope it is truly an occasion for conversion, for looking at one's life
in light of the Gospel," and that "this pilgrimage is always
accompanied by a charitable act carried out in secret."
The book also remembers Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo
Acutis, two young people who will be canonised during the Jubilee. The Pope
recalls their examples and words, urging us not to "waste away" on
the couch of our lives, but to embody, with Jesus in our hearts, the beauty of
love that turns into service.
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