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“I will pray for you, that the Lord will accompany you at every step, particularly on the journey of ecumenism.”
With these words, spoken at the close of the liturgy with 30,000 people in the convention hall of Palexpo, Pope Francis ended his daylong Ecumenical Pilgrimage to Geneva and offered a strong encouragement to the Catholic community in Switzerland to live ecumenically with the faithful of other denominations.
The entire Catholic family gathered to celebrate the Holy Mass with the pope in Palexpo on 21 June. The huge assembly came from Catholic communities all around Switzerland, including Portuguese, Italian and Filipino communities of Geneva, to name just a few, as well as neighbouring France.
Public authorities from the Swiss cantons as well as federal councilor Doris Leuthard also took part in the celebration.
Pilgrims began arriving at Palexpo early in the morning, long before the liturgy. During the day, the ecumenical celebrations with the World Council of Churches were projected on huge screens as the faithful awaited the pope patiently for many hours.
Before the arrival of the Holy Father, Msgr. Alain de Raemy, auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Lausanne, Fribourg and Geneva, reminded the Catholic community that the Holy Father came to Geneva not primarily for them but for their separated brothers and sisters. The Holy Father does not want to meet Christians just from the Catholic community but from other communities as well. “Christ wants to unite all of us,” he said.
Then the vibrant atmosphere ignites at the arrival of the Pope: “Viva il papa!” Applause, joyful screaming, people standing on chairs: enthusiasm is at its peak when the Holy Father goes down the corridors in his temporary popemobile. Half an hour later, the Holy Father reaches the altar placed in front of a depiction of the Swiss Alps and the Jet d’eau de Genève.
With many songs from Taizé, a modest choir of 50 singers and just a few instruments leads the faithful into prayer. The liturgy begins, and the gospel reading of the day, from Matt, 6:7-15, is read. In his homily, the Holy Father illuminates three words of the Lords’ Prayer: “father,” “bread” and “forgiveness.”
“The words ‘Our Father’ reveal our identity, our life’s meaning: we are God’s beloved sons and daughters. They show us what we have to do: love God, our Father, and others, our brothers and sisters,” he says. “Our Father makes us one large family.”
Bread: The pope continues, “We need to choose a sober lifestyle, free of unnecessary hassles,” he says. “It should involve giving up all those things that fill our lives but empty our hearts…. Let us choose the simplicity of bread and so rediscover the courage of silence and of prayer, the leaven of a truly human life.”
The Holy Father finally emphasizes the necessity for forgiveness. “God frees our hearts of all sin, he forgives every last thing. Yet he asks only one thing of us: that we in turn never tire of forgiving.” He explains: “Forgiveness turns evil into good…. We see it in the history of Christianity. Forgiving one another, rediscovering after centuries of disagreements and conflicts that we are brothers and sisters, how much good this has done us and continues to do!”
His homily was a very strong message delivered to the Catholic community while echoing the purpose of the Holy Father’s visit to the World Council of Churches that day.
In his official salutation, the Holy Father thanked the many organizers of his ecumenical pilgrimage and recalled the importance “the journey of ecumenism.”
Before leaving Palexpo, the Holy Father blessed a mosaic to be placed in the chapel of the prison of Champ-Dollon—a concrete act of love for the one human family: “Where the Father is present, no one is excluded.”
