Baghdad, Iraq, Mar 5, 2021 / 08:30 am
Here is the full text of Pope Francis' address to bishops, priests, religious, consecrated persons, seminarians, and catechists, delivered March 5, 2021, at the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad.
Your Beatitudes, Your Excellencies, Dear Priests and Religious, Dear Brothers and Sisters, I embrace all of you with a father's affection. I am grateful to the Lord who in his providence has made it possible for us to meet today. I thank His Beatitude Patriarch Ignace Youssif Younan and His Beatitude Cardinal Louis Sako for their words of welcome. We are gathered in this Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation, hallowed by the blood of our brothers and sisters who here paid the ultimate price of their fidelity to the Lord and his Church. May the memory of their sacrifice inspire us to renew our own trust in the power of the cross and its saving message of forgiveness, reconciliation and rebirth. For Christians are called to bear witness to the love of Christ in every time and place. This is the Gospel that must be proclaimed and embodied in this beloved country as well.
As bishops and priests, men and women religious, catechists and lay leaders, all of you share in the joys and sufferings, the hopes and anxieties of Christ's faithful. The needs of God's people, and the daunting pastoral challenges that you daily face, have been aggravated in this time of pandemic. What must never be locked down or reduced, however, is our apostolic zeal, drawn in your case from ancient roots, from the unbroken presence of the Church in these lands since earliest times (cf. Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, 5). We know how easy it is to be infected by the virus of discouragement that at times seems to spread all around us. Yet the Lord has given us an effective vaccine against that nasty virus. It is the hope, it is the hope born of persevering prayer and daily fidelity to our apostolates. With this vaccine, we can go forth with renewed strength, to share the joy of the Gospel as missionary disciples and living signs of the presence of God's kingdom of holiness, justice and peace.
How much the world around us needs to hear that message! Let us never forget that Christ is proclaimed above all by the witness of lives transformed by the joy of the Gospel. As we see from the earliest history of the Church in these lands, a living faith in Jesus is "contagious"; it can change the world. The example of the saints shows us that Christian discipleship is "not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of great difficulties" (Evangelii gaudium, 167).