Fatima, Portugal, May 13, 2010 / 09:50 am
Following the Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima this morning, the Holy Father greeted pilgrims in seven different languages and delivered a special message of encouragement and hope to all who are ill. In offering their suffering to Jesus, he called them to find “interior peace and even spiritual joy.”
The Holy Father’s words came after Mass and just before he processed through the crowd with the Most Holy Sacrament.
Addressing the “dear brothers and sisters who are sick,” he said that through Christ’s Passion “in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence consolation is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love – and so the star of hope rises.”
He added that it is through hope that one can "leave behind the quicksand of illness and death and stand on the firm rock of divine love.