Pope ‘determined’ to visit Ireland in 2018

It follows the news that Dublin is to host the World Meeting of Families that year – an event which usually means a papal visit.

The culmination of Saturday’s Festival was a nationally broadcast main stage program of music and spectacular visual arts performances by world renowned artists. Performers included the band The Fray, singer Marie Miller and the Pennsylvania Ballet.

However, official confirmation of a visit to Ireland by Pope Francis may be some time, due to his age.

“But”, the pope added, “in families, there is always light”.

His address ranged over several themes including migration, helping the poor, climate change and the death penalty. Thank you all those who have offered their witness. Beauty brings us to God. It brings us to God. Because God is good, God is handsome, God is the truth.

“Do you want to hear a good story?” he asked me. I can tell you that it was hard for me to come up with an answer. “I’m just really happy that I did”. Before creating the world, God loved, because God is love. So as to share that love with those out of himself. They passed on the faith, they transmitted the faith, to us. “We’re taking back with us a real sense of renewal and commitment to our families”. Philadelphia was the eighth conference and its theme was “Love Is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive”.

Of course we should not and can not rely on the autocratic ruler of an antiquated and deeply problematic religious institution, with numberless piles of skeletons in its closet, to save us from the profiteers and the plutocrats, the warmongers and the apostles of hatred. Men, because of the devil’s astuteness, learned to have divisions among themselves. Because God is love.

In a little period of time – the first crime. A brother kills another brother: war.

And the Pope’s message has helped give all of them strength. And between those: we walk ahead. We have to decide. We have turned our society into a huge multicultural showcase tied only to the tastes of certain consumers, while so many others only “eat the crumbs which fall from their masters” table’. That is why a man leaves his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24).

The pope spoke in Spanish, the language in which he is most comfortable; his talk was translated by Msgr.

And His Son, where did He send Him? To a palace? To a city?

It would be wrong to think that this “culture” of today’s world simply aversion to marriage and family, in terms of pure and simple selfishness. Let’s think of Joseph, full of dreams to form a household. He accepts. He obeys. He obeys. In Mary and Joseph, there is a family in which Jesus is born. Where the family works, society is much stronger.

The spontaneous talk, however, also reflected his prepared speech, which highlighted the challenges families face as they try to do their best, even when they falter. “I would even say that it is stuck in a vicious circle”. In families, there are difficulties. “Families – we quarrel, sometimes plates can fly, and children bring headaches. I won’t speak about mother-in-laws”, he quipped. God opened this path, this possibility.

Then I just soaked in this lovely, inspired speech on the family. “And they are also the cause of work and worry”.

“I would be absolutely delighted for everybody if he could come up north during this visit”. I will pray for you and your families, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. And they say I couldn’t sleep, Holiness, because they were crying all night. Hatred is not capable of doing away with difficulties. Love is a festival.

He said there is “a need to address the bad things” and then to “move forward” in a “more humble” way. I speak Castilian because I was told that everyone knows Castilian. They are the ones in which we place our hope.

Grandparents are the living memory of the family. Families which, when faced with medical problems, especially those of their younger or older members, are dependent on a system which fails to meet their needs, is insensitive to their pain, and forces them to make great sacrifices to receive adequate treatment. I advise one thing: Never end the day without making peace in the family.

May God bless you. Families which lack the basics to be able to build bonds of closeness, security and protection from troubles of any kind. Let us defend the family, because there, there, our future is in play.

“Naturally, experiencing the spirit of this joyful familiarity with God, and spreading its powerful evangelical fruitfulness, has to be the primary feature of our lifestyle as bishops; a lifestyle of prayer and preaching the Gospel”.