Pope Leo in Acerra: 'Let us take responsiblity and serve life'

During his pastoral visit to Acerra, Italy, Pope Leo XIV addressed mayors and local residents of the town in the 9;Land of Fires,9; urging everyone to join together to correct course, and saying the principal meaning of his presence there was 9;to confirm and encourage that stirring of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life springs forth and is immediately threatened by death.9;

Pope Leo XIV makes pastoral visit to Acerra (@Vatican Media)

“This, dear friends, is the principal meaning of my presence in Acerra today: to confirm and encourage that stirring of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life springs forth and is immediately threatened by death.”

Pope Leo XIV expressed this when addressing mayors and local residents of Acerra during his pastoral visit on Saturday to the southern Italian town in the “Land of Fires.”

He said he was pleased to spend this Saturday morning among them, and 'to visit once again a region whose beauty no injustice can erase.'

'In life we come to understand,' he highlighted, 'that the more fragile a beauty is, the more it calls for care and responsibility.”

The Holy Father said the principal meaning of the pastoral visit was 'to confirm and encourage that stirring of dignity and responsibility that every honest heart feels when life springs forth and is immediately threatened by death,” a stirring that he said comes from God the Creator.

‘The Land of Fires’

The Pope recalled that, a short while earlier in the Cathedral, he had met with some family members of the victims of the pollution that, over recent decades, has caused the area to become sadly known as the “Land of Fires.”

He said that expression 'does not do justice to the good that exists and endures,” but “has certainly helped bring about a widespread awareness of the gravity of criminal wrongdoing and of the indifference that has left room for crime.”

Warning against desertification of consciences

Pope Leo thanked the Bishops, priests, deacons, religious sisters, religious brothers, and laypeople who promptly embraced the message of the Encyclical Laudato si’ and Pope Francis’ constant invitation to be an outward-looking, missionary, synodal Church.

“Walking together, overcoming self-referentiality, daring prophecy despite resistance and threats,” Pope Leo said, “is what the Lord asks of us and what His Spirit inspires.”

The Pope insisted that, in this territory, “life exists and opposes death; justice exists and will prevail.”

Yet, he said, “one must choose life,' warning against the temptation to accept resignation, compromise, or postponing necessary and courageous decisions.

“Fatalism, complaining, and shifting blame onto others,” Pope Leo warned, “are the breeding ground of illegality and the beginning of the desertification of consciences.

Suffering of innocents and children

'For this reason I would like to say to all of you,' he appealed, 'let each of us take responsibility, let us choose justice, let us serve life! The common good comes before the business interests of a few, before sectional interests, whether small or great.”

Pope Leo recognized that this land “has paid a high price, has buried many of its children, has witnessed the suffering of children and innocents.”

“The value and weight of that suffering,” he continued, “compel us to try together to become witnesses to a new covenant. You are journeying toward a time of rebirth, which is not a time of removal or denial, but of ethical action and active remembrance.”

The Pope stated that “it is the moment for a contemplative gaze,” the one to which the Encyclical Laudato si’ called all human beings, each beginning from his or her own responsibilities.

Pope Leo recalled that Pope Francis stressed in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato si’, that “‘ecological culture’ cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the problems appearing around environmental degradation, the depletion of natural reserves and pollution. It should be a different way of looking at things.”

Need for education

Pope Leo observed that, according to some, leaving a better world to our children “has become too lofty an ambition.” Yet, he stressed, “the mission of leaving the world better sons and daughters must not become so. Educational commitment is within our reach and it is a priority.”

The Pope called for the education “of the young, certainly, but also of adults; of children, but also of the elderly; of citizens and their leaders; of workers and employers; of the faithful and of pastors: we all still have something to learn.”

“Everyone has something to give,” the Holy Father said, “but first one must learn how to receive. It is not easy to admit this; nevertheless, this is the beginning of the future: it is like a door opening onto what until now we have neither thought, nor believed, nor loved enough. To keep learning: this is what makes us a community.”

True change and healing

“For Christians,” Pope Leo said, “it is to ‘walk the road’ with Jesus: to become, at every age, more and more fully His disciples.”

The Pope stressed that what “will build the good capable of healing their land and the entire planet” will be “a true change in economic, civic, and even religious mentality.”

Pope Leo called on people, institutions, and public and private organizations to strengthen and broaden the covenant that is already bearing its first fruits on the educational and social level.

“It will not only oppose and dismantle criminal alliances,” he said, “but positively connect and multiply the best forces and the great ideas already present in your hearts.”

The Pope thanked those “pioneers” who, through their courageous commitment, were the first to denounce the evils of this land.'

He called on everyone 'to watch over the health of creation as one watches over the door of one’s own home, rejecting temptations of power and enrichment linked to practices that pollute the earth, the water, the air, and human coexistence.'

Pope Leo decried “how much waste, squandering, and poison have come from a model of growth that has almost bewitched us, leaving us sicker and poorer.”

Building good community practices

“Let us therefore,” the Holy Father said, “learn to be rich in a different way: more attentive to relationships, more committed to valuing the common good, more attached to the land, more grateful in welcoming and integrating those who come to live among us.”

Pope Leo said the path to be traveled “is narrow, because it begins with us, from where we are.”

“The problems of this home are our problems; its beauty is our beauty,” the Pope continued, adding, “We have the task of keeping watch like sentinels in the night. We can be among those who will behold the new dawn.”

Deborah Castellano Lubov
Source: vaticannews.va/en