• Pope in Santa Marta: think of those who are hungry
  • The Pope's invocation against the pandemic: "Lord, do not leave us at the mercy of the storm"
  • Pope: Italy have trust and generosity. In time of pandemic revive 'gospel life'
  • Pope Francis praying in St. Peter's Square: "God looks at our painful condition"

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March 29, 2020 - The Pope asks to stop all wars in this time of pandemic and to create corridors for humanitarian aid. Francis thus relaunches the appeal of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a "global and immediate ceasefire in all corners of the world". "The current emergency for Covid-19 - the Pope underlined at Angelus - knows no frontiers. I join all those who have accepted this appeal and I invite everyone to follow up by stopping all forms of war hostility".

Pope: avoiding a tragedy in prisons
"My thoughts go in a special way to all people who suffer from vulnerability to be forced to live in a group" as in the case of "rest homes or barracks". "In a special way I would like to mention people in prisons. I read an official memo from the Human Rights Commission that talks about the problem of overcrowded prisons" which with the coronavirus pandemic "could become a tragedy." The Pope said this at the Angelus asking to "take the necessary measures to avoid" these tragedies.

Pope: God gives life but takes on the drama of death
"God is life and life, but takes on the drama of death". The Pope said this at the Angelus, streamed from the Library of the Apostolic Palace. "We are called to remove the stones - added Pope Francis - of everything that tastes of death: for example the hypocrisy with which faith is often lived, it is death; the destructive criticism of others is death; the offense, slander, is death; the marginalization of the poor is death. The Lord asks us to remove these stones from the heart, and then life will still bloom around us ". "Each of us is close to those who are in the trial, becoming for them a reflection of the love and tenderness of God, who frees us from death and makes life win".

The Pope dedicates the day today to all the people who are crying because of the pandemic and invited: "Today is the Sunday of tears for all of us".

"I think of so many people - the Pope said in the Mass in Santa Marta - who cry, isolated people, people in quarantine, lonely elderly people, hospitalized people, people in therapies, parents who see that there is no salary and they won't be able to feed their children. So many people cry. We too will accompany them from our hearts and it won't hurt to cry a little with the Lord's tears for all his people. " Then he added: "Today in front of a world that suffers so much from the consequences of this pandemic, I ask myself: am I able to cry as Jesus would have done, as Jesus now does?" We must "ask this Lord for this grace: I cry with you" "Today is Sunday for tears for all of us," concluded Pope Francis.



The reading of today's Gospel is among those that underline with particular force the humanity of Christ: the death of Lazarus, his friend, to whom he reacts with total humanity before performing one of his greatest miracles, his resurrection. Bergoglio underlines in his homily, affirms and recalls an almost elementary fact in its theological complexity: "Jesus felt pain". Pain of man and pain of God at the same time.

In other moments of the Gospel narration we witness the tears of Christ: in the moment of the solitude of Gethsemane, in front of the marked destiny of Jerusalem that only he knows at that moment. But here there is a particular "tenderness", the mood of those who "cry with love, with their children who cry". Concludes the Pontiff