“A child is always a blessing,» affirms Pope Francis.
It’s what the Holy Father said in his conversation with Don Marco Pozza, theologian and chaplain of a prison in the nothern Italian city of Padua, during the fourth episode of the Ave Maria (“Hail Mary”) program of the Italian Catholic television channel TV2000, which will be screened on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 9 p.m. states a TV2000 press release.
Born from the collaboration between the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication and TV2000, the program is structured in 11 broadcasts, in the course of which Don Marco talks with Pope Francis on the Hail Mary prayer and meets with people of the world of culture. The guests of the fourth broadcast are actress Carla Signoris, as well as Luisa Velluti, a young woman abandoned at birth by her mother.
“A mother can’t be understood without tenderness, one cannot understand Mary without tenderness,” said the Pontiff.
The Holy Father recalled in the southern Italian town of Bari where he saw “in the Cathedral,” an icon of the Virgin and Child: “It was the first time that I saw the child half naked covered by Mary. Mary covers our nakedness,” explained the Pope.
“A mother is the only one who can understand her child, because she knows it nude from her womb, in her womb; she brings it into the world nude,” continued Pope Francis. “And then Mary received Him bare at the foot of the Cross and covered Him again.”
“A child is never a curse. It can be a cross for the mother. A young Roman woman [Chiara Corbella Petrillo, ndr] died at 23 because she refused care for her health,” he added. “She was pregnant and didn’t want to lose her son and, to keep her son until birth, it was she who died. But a child is always a blessing,” he stressed.
“Mary isn’t almighty; She is a normal woman, full of grace, but normal. And the strength of that grace comes from the Holy Spirit, who accompanied Mary during her whole life,” pointed out the Pontiff.
The Holy Father also reflected on the love of God for His people, a paternal and maternal love: “God Himself said it. He presented Himself — read Isaiah and the other prophets — as a mother. ‘I protect you as a mother, a mother cannot forget her child, and even if she does, I cannot, I could not do so.” It’s beautiful” And, “when I read that passage, my mother comes to mind. We are debtors of life to a mother — all of us.
«And when we say ”Hail Mary,” we connect to the Virgin Mary and also with our mothers,” continued the Pope.
Pope Francis recalled the story of the Prodigal Son: “We think of the father of the prodigal son; he talks with his two sons . . . both are far from the father’s love. And God risks, like that father who waited every day for the return of his younger son and, the Gospel tells us, saw him arrive from afar. And then, when he realized that his eldest son was not taking part in the feast, he goes out to call him. That father staked everything on his sons.»
«The mystics speak of divine folly; and the love of God for his people is such: ‘I didn’t choose you because you are intelligent, the greatest, the strongest; you are the littlest in the world. It is in this way that God loves,” the Pope concluded.
