Pope pleads for Gaza'a children and families: ‘What do they have to do with the war?

Today's general audience recalled the 150 innocent people ‘gunned down’ yesterday in northern Gaza by Israeli raids. Reiterated several times the appeal to pray for peace in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar and North Kivu: ‘In war nobody wins’. Catechesis on Confirmation: ‘Let it not be a sacrament of farewell, but of active participation in the Church’.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - ‘150 innocent people’. It is to the ‘first victims’ of wars that Pope Francis incredulously dedicated a remembrance - ‘yesterday I saw them being machine-gunned’ - at the end of today's general audience, from the parvis of Saint Peter's in Rome.

‘What do children have to do with war? Families?’ he asked.

Yesterday alone, at least 143 people were killed in Gaza, especially in the city of Beit Lahiy, by Israeli raids. Yet another massacre that is taking place while Israel's banning of Unrwa actually puts the provision of humanitarian aid in extreme difficulty. In just five weeks even in Lebanese territory, Save the Children reports, more than 100 children have been killed.

‘Let us pray for peace’, is the untiring invitation of the Pontiff addressed to the numerous faithful gathered in the evocative setting enclosed by the Bernini colonnade, but also in connection from all over the world. ‘War is growing. Let us think of the countries that suffer so much. The tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar, North Kivu, and so many countries that are at war.’ ‘Let us pray for peace,’ he repeated again.

‘Peace is a gift of the Spirit and war always, always, is a defeat. In war no one wins, everyone loses,’ he said on the last Wednesday of October, a clear and sunny Roman day - “I apologise for reading so badly but the sun in your eyes is not an easy thing,” Pope Francis said as he looked up from the sheets with the text of the catechesis.

‘Let us pray for peace, brothers and sisters,’ was again the inexhaustible litany repeated.

During the greetings dedicated to the Italian-speaking faithful and pilgrims, Bergoglio as usual dedicated a thought to the young, the elderly, the sick and the newlyweds.

Addressing them, in view of the Solemnity of All Saints which falls on Friday 1 November, he said: ‘I invite you to live this recurrence of the liturgical year in which the Church wants to remind us of an aspect of her reality: the heavenly glory of the brothers and sisters who have preceded us on the path of life and who now in the Father's vision want to be in communion with us to help us reach the goal that awaits us’.

At the opening of the audience the catechesis entitled ‘He has anointed us and imprinted us with the seal’ shared with those listening - after the reading in various languages of a passage from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8:14-17) - continued the cycle of teachings on the relationship between the Holy Spirit who guides the people of God and the Church.

The Holy Father spoke of the Sacrament of Confirmation that the this morning, as ‘it is, par excellence, the Sacrament of the Holy Spirit’. And the latter ‘comes to us first of all through two channels: the Word of God and the Sacraments’.

The passage from Acts presents a ‘significant episode’. That is, Peter and John travelling from Jerusalem to Samaria to meet those who had accepted the Word of God. ‘Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit,’ says the reading. It is an action that gives the Spirit the meaning of a ‘royal seal with which Christ marks his sheep’.

The anointing over time has become established as a sacrament in its own right. ‘If therefore baptism is the sacrament of birth, confirmation is the sacrament of growth,’ Pope Francis explained.

The risk today is that this stage in the journey of faith is transformed into a ‘sacrament of departure’. ‘It is said to be the sacrament of farewell, because once young people do it they leave, and they will then return for marriage, so people say, but we must make it the sacrament of a participation, an active participation in the life of the Church.’

A goal that seems impossible, but we must not stop trying. In fact, ‘it will not be so for all confirmands, children or adults, but it is important that it be so at least for some who will then be the animators of the community,’ said Bergoglio. Confirmation is a passage that concerns not only the boys, but also their companions - ‘all of us and at all times’. In addition to the anointing, the ‘deposit of the Spirit’ is also handed over.

‘We must spend this deposit, taste these firstfruits, not bury the charisms and talents received under the ground,’ said the Holy Father. And looking ahead to the opening of the Holy Door in the Vatican next 24 December, which will inaugurate the Ordinary Jubilee, he concluded: ‘Here is a beautiful goal for the Jubilee year! To remove the ashes of habit and disengagement, to become, like the torchbearers at the Olympics, bearers of the flame of the Spirit. May the Spirit help us to take a few steps in this direction!’.