Standing late this afternoon in a deserted St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis prayed to the Lord to put an end to this terrible ordeal.
Next to the Pope were the Byzantine icon of Maria Salus Populi Romani and a 14th-century wooden crucifix, which Catholics consider miraculous because it is believed to have helped end the plague epidemic in 1522 in Rome.
“Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities. It has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by.
We feel it in the air, we notice it in people’s gestures, their glances give them away,” he emphasized.
He prayed to the Lord to bless the world just like a consoling embrace. “We are on the same boat and we must comfort each other,” the Pope emphasized because “we understood that no one can move alone, but only together.”
“It is the moment when we have to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not,” concluded the Pontiff.
Source: ANA-MPA
