Pope Francis has prayed at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Lagiewniki as he begins a day of religious ceremonies during a visit to Poland.
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Pope Francis continued his address by warning the pilgrims to not fall into a “paralysis that comes from confusing happiness with a sofa”.
“This year – he says – because of the theme of Mercy, there is a strong call for the young people to be protagonists in constructing a world that is destroyed by a lack of mercy, to take their vocation seriously”.
Responding to hours of calls of “Papa Francesco!” and “Come to us!” from a crowd gathered in the street, Francis appeared in the “papal window” on Sunday.
In the final homily, Pope Francis said God “demands of us real courage, the courage to be more powerful than evil, by loving everyone, even our enemies”.
Pope Francis has slammed the unhealthy lifestyles of young people and urged them to ditch their computers and smartphones.
“Jesus is not the Lord of comfort, security and ease”.
He challenged his sea of listeners, spread out on blankets, to make their mark on the world by becoming engaged as “politicians, thinkers, social activists” and to help build a world economy that is “inspired by solidarity”.
In a nod to today’s internet-dominated world, Francis urged the congregation, who had traveled to Poland from all over the world, to “download the best link of all, that of a heart which sees and transmits goodness without growing tired”.
‘You want to fight for your future?’ he asked.
Citing torture and overcrowded prisons, the pope said, “We say, yes, there we saw the cruelty of 70 years ago, how people died being shot or hanged or with gas”.
– The weaker we are, the more God’s mercy can transform our lives. At the same time, both at home and overseas, “we seek to give a transparent witness of the Gospel” and try “to convert ourselves continually to a more evangelical style of life and service, paying attention to your words, Holy Father”. “Last night, I gave a lift to some foreign pilgrims who missed their bus – so I think the pope’s presence is working”.
Embedded in a gray memorial stone, a story below the altar where Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Saturday in a shrine dedicated to St. John Paul II, is a glass bubble filled with blood drawn from the Polish pontiff shortly before his death in 2005.
The Pope also visited the nearby Birkenau camp, known as Auschwitz II, where he met with dozens of people who housed Jews or risked their lives to protect them from the Nazis.
A year after John Paul II was elected pope in 1978, he returned to his homeland, urging millions of his beleaguered Poles behind the Iron Curtain – in nuanced and coded words – to oppose communism.
Our response to a world at war has a name: “its name is fraternity, its name is brotherhood, its name is communion, its name is family”.
Francis’ visit is also different in that it had a private character with no speeches. Numerous devotions relating to the feast of Divine Mercy, established on the first Sunday of Easter by St. John Paul II, were inspired by her writings.
Catholic priests and nuns should strive to overcome any “resistance and weariness” and be “living writers of the Gospel”, he said.
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“People may judge you to be dreamers, because you believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers and can cherish its own traditions without being self-centered or small-minded”, Francis told his flock before him, many of them in their late teens, 20s or 30s. “We sinners, too, are children; let us look for our mother and pray to Our Lady together”, he said.
