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Pope Francis’ messsage for the Mediterranean Meeting (med24)
on the theme “Pilgrims of Hope and Builders of Peace”
[Tirana, 15-20 September 2024]
Dear young people from Albanians and the Mediterranean,
It is a joy for me to know that you are gathered in Tirana, ten years after my visit to your beloved country in 2014. I don’t forget! I remember that journey in which I was able to meet your people, a people with many faces but united by courage.
As I said to young people at the time, “you are the new generation of Albania” (Angelus below 2014).
I add today, dear young people from the five shores of the Mediterranean: you, the new generation, are the future of the Mediterranean region.
We are all pilgrims of hope, walking in search of the truth and living our faith by building peace.
Peace must be built! God loves all men and does not distinguish between us.
The fraternity between the five shores of the Mediterranean that you are building is the answer – the answer! – the best response we can offer to conflicts and indifference that kill.
Because indifference kills.
Learn together to read the signs of the times.
Contemplate the diversity of your traditions as a richness, a richness willed by God.
Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of our cultural and religious identities is a gift from God.
Unity in diversity. Grow in mutual esteem, as your ancestors testify.
Put the voice of those who are not heard at the center.
I think of the poorest, who suffer from being considered a burden or a nuisance.
I think of those who, often very young, have to leave their country for a better future.
Take care of each one.
It is not a question of numbers but of people, and every person is sacred;
These are faces, whose dignity must be promoted and protected.
Let us renounce the culture of fear to open the door of welcome and friendship.
The Mediterranean
It is like a great Lake of Galilee entrusted to your care, inhabit the shores of this great basin, which unites you: the Mediterranean unites you, unites you like a beautiful garden to be cultivated.
Guard the spirit of service in all circumstances, take care of every creature entrusted to your hands.
Know how to walk in the footsteps of your martyrs.
Their courage is a living testimony that can inspire your commitment to resist all the violence that disfigures our humanity, as Blessed Maria Tuci did when she was only twenty-two years old.
I entrust you to Mary, the Mother of Good Counsel, who has always turned her maternal gaze of love and sorrow to the events of your land. Learn from her Immaculate Heart to be tireless pilgrims of hope and to follow the signs of God, so that the Mediterranean may rediscover its most beautiful face: that of fraternity and peace. And that it is no longer a cemetery.
Footnote:
ANGELUS Tirana Sunday, 21 September 2014. In a particular way, I wish to greet the young!
They say that Albania is the youngest country in Europe and I wish to greet you.
I invite you to build your lives on Jesus Christ, on God: the one who builds on God builds on rock, because he is always faithful, even if we sometimes lack faith (2 Tim. 2:13 – if we are faithless, he remains faithful). Jesus knows us better than anyone else; when we sin, he does not condemn us but rather says to us, “Go and sin no more” (Jn 8:11).
Dear young people, you are the new generation of Albania, the future of the country.
With the power of the Gospel and the example of your ancestors and the martyrs, you know how to say “No” to the idolatry of money , “No” to the false freedom of individualism, “No” to addiction and to violence; you also know how to say “Yes” to a culture of encounter and of solidarity, “Yes” to the beauty that is inseparable from the good and the true; “Yes” to a life lived with great enthusiasm and at the same time faithful in little things.
In this way, you will build a better Albania and a better world, in the footsteps of your ancestors.
Let us turn to the Virgin Mary, whom you venerate above all under her title of “Our Lady of Good Counsel”. I stand before her, spiritually, at her Shrine in Scutari, so dear to you, and to her I entrust the entire Church in Albania and all the people of this country, especially families, children and the elderly, who are the living memory of the people. May Our Lady guide you to walk “together with God towards the hope that does not delude.”
