Pope Francis's words

[ancianita]

Last edited Mon Apr 21, 2025, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

taken from the last pages of his autobiography, Hope (2025).

"...The Church needs everyone -- every man, every woman -- and we all need one another.
None of us is an island, an autonomous and independent self, and the future is something we can only build together, excluding no one.
We have the duty to be diligent and mindful, overcoming the temptation of indifference.
True love is restless.
It is commonly said that the opposite of love is hate, and this is true, but in many people there is no conscious hate.
The more everyday opposite of God's love, God's compassion, God's mercy, is indifference.
To eliminate a man or a woman, just ignore them. Indifference is aggression.
We cannot remain with our arms folded, indifferent, or shrug our shoulders fatalistically.
We Christians hold out our hands.

Today more than ever, all is connected, and today we need more than ever to reconnect: that harsh judgment that I carry in my heart against my brother or my sister, that wound unhealed, that wrong unpardoned, that deaf prejudice, that angry suspicion, that resentment that only harms me, is a small piece of war that I carry within, is a smoldering ember that needs to be extinguished before it catches fire and ends up leaving nothing but ash. And we need to match the growth of scientific and technological innovation with the ever greater equity and social inclusion. As we discover new distant planets, we need to discover the needs of our brothers and sisters who orbit around us. Only education toward fraternity and concrete solidarity can overcome the culture of "wastage," which doesn't relate just to food and possessions, but first of all to human wastage, those humans marginalized from techno-economic systems that, without us even noticing it, are no longer centered on humanity but on its products.

Many people today...seem not to believe that a happy future is possible. These fears are to be taken seriously but are not invincible. They can be overcome only if we stop closing ourselves up. In front of the iniquity and shame that our time reserves for us, we too are tempted to abandon our dream of freedom...hole ourselves up in our fragile human security, in our reassuring routines, in our familiar fears. And in the end, we abandon our journey toward the happiness of the Promised Land to return to the slavery of Egypt.
Fear is the origin of slavery, and it is the origin of every form of dictatorship, because it is on the exploitation of popular fears that indifference and violence grow.
Fear is a cage that excludes us from happiness and snatches away the future.
But one single man, one single woman is enough for hope to exist, and that man and that woman can be you. Then there is another "you" and yet another "you, and then we become "we."
For us Christians, the future has a name and this name is hope.
To have hope doesn't mean being naive optimists who ignore the tragedy of human evil. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn't close itself in the dark, doesn't stop at the past, doesn't scrape along in the present, but can clearly see tomorrow.
Restless and joyous, this is how we Christians must be.
Happiness is always an encounter with others, and those others are always a concrete opportunity to encounter Christ himself. Evangelization, in our time, will be possible through an infection of joy and hope.
When there is "us," does hope exist? No, hope already began with "you." When there is "us," a revolution starts.
When the Gospel truly exists -- not a display of it, not an exploitation of it, but its concrete presence -- there is always a revolution. A revolution in tenderness.
Tenderness means nothing other than this: It means love that becomes close and concrete. It means using your eyes to see the other, using your ears to hear the other, to hear the cry of the young, of the poor, of those who fear the future: to listen also to the silent cry of our common home, of the sick and contaminated earth.
And after seeing, after listening, there is no saying. There is doing.

A young university student once asked me: "I have many university friends who are agnostic or atheist. What must I say to make them become Christians?" Nothing, I said. The last thing you must do is speak. First you must do, and then someone will see how you live, how you conduct your life, and will ask: Why are you doing it? At that point you can speak.
With my eyes. With my ears. With my hands. Only after with speech. In testimony of a life, speech comes after, it is a consequence. Also leave space for doubt -- this too is an important key.
It is no good a person saying with total certainty that they have met God. If someone has answers to all the questions, this is proof that God is not with them. It means that they are a false prophet, someone who exploits religion, who uses it for themselves. The great guides of God's people, like Moses, always left space for doubt.
We need to be humble, to leave space for the Lord, not for our false securities.
Tenderness is not weakness. It is a true force.
It is the road that the strongest and bravest men and women have taken. Let us take it, let us fight with tenderness and with courage.
May you take it, may you fight with tenderness and with courage... I am just one step."

[Irish_Dem]

1. Pope Francis was truly like St. Francis of Assisi.

[ancianita]

5. Yes. He named himself after him.

[Irish_Dem]

12. Yes and he lived the philosophy of St. Francis.

He believed in actions, not just words.

[ancianita]

14. He did.

To this day all those of the Franciscan Order live in poverty like St. Francis.

Francis was the first Jesuit pope, but more like the Franciscans in that he never lived in the papal palace or rode in the papal limo, but only lived in the nearby apartment and drove a used Ford Focus. He loved his enemies and has made sure that, more than any government, the Church is the biggest giver to the world's poor. Besides going to confession at least once a week, sometimes more, Francis went to every continent where Jesus' Church has sinned, fell down on his knees and repented as Jesus would expect.

[Ocelot II]

2. Wise words.

Unfortunately the people who need this wisdom the most will never read it, or will reject it as "woke" if they do.

[ancianita]

6. Agree. And from the Holy Spirit and heart to heart.

Although Francis doesn't count sales, his Hope has done well, and is available in 80 languages in 80 countries.

[Clouds Passing]

3. Pope Francis will become a Saint, The Saint of Tenderness and Courage.

[Ping Tung]

4. A true humanitarian. He was a portrait of compassion and stood up for the people of all faiths or no faith.

[Martin68]

7. Wise and encouraging words. I'm an agnostic, but I respect the man for working towards treating all people the way

Jesus said we should treat them: as we should treat ourselves.

[Martin Eden]

8. Humanity just lost a great, wise, compassionate man.

Our civilization would be a much better place if everyone -- including those who profess to be Christians -- truly embraced and lived the message of Pope Francis.

For one thing, Donald Trump could NEVER be president. Christians would not vote for the money changers in the temple.

[ancianita]

9. Amen.

To all that you say. May Francis's passing be the occasion of opening the hearts of humanity to hope and to greater doing for others.
As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, "Not all of us can Do great things. But we can do small Things with Great Love."

[Martin Eden]

11. Hatred & Indifference, or Love & Kindness can be amplified

By the choices billions of people make every day.

No man or woman is an island.

[ancianita]

13. Yes.

Pope Francis is right. Hope is the anchor of the soul. All humans have hope.

The more we use our God-given free will to choose to DO good and kind things, the softer other humans' hearts become, both those of the recipient(s) and the witnesses, and the more gratitude is then passed on in more kind acts, and the more awakened and hopeful others become.

[Martin Eden]

18. I agree, even though I'm agnostic

I'll just replace "God-given" with nature.

Sometimes I have to remind myself how blessed I am for being born to my parents in this country, and still healthy at age 67.

[Michiblue]

10. Thank you for sharing these beautiful words! nt

[Hekate]

15. A good man has left this world

[ancianita]

16. There's so much more than meets the eye

about Pope Francis.

May Jorge Mario Bergoglio be in heaven, and with all the angels, Saints, and faithfully departed, singing the Glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, Amen.

[ancianita]

17. No matter what your faith path or whether you're agnostic or atheist, I highly recommend you read his

memoir, Hope, a book for all people.

[B.See]

19. K&R