Pray, do penance, everything possible for peace, pope says at audience

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — People were born to help communities thrive, not to kill others, Pope Francis said.

“Please let’s pray for peace, let’s do penance for peace,” he said during his general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall Feb. 12, launching an appeal for Catholics to ask for a peaceful resolution to the world’s conflicts.

Reflecting on the many countries at war, such as Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar, North Kivu in Congo and South Sudan, the pope said, “Let’s pray for peace, let’s do our all for peace. Don’t forget that war is always a defeat.”

“We are not born to kill but to help people thrive. May we find paths of peace, please in your daily prayers, ask for peace,” he said.

The pope made his appeal for peace himself and read his prepared greetings to Italian visitors as well as the short summary of his catechesis in Spanish, but his breathing sounded labored and congested. The pope had an aide, Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli, read his main talk and greetings to different language groups in Italian.

He apologized for not delivering the main talk himself, saying it was “because I still can’t with my bronchitis. I hope next time I can.”

In his prepared text, the pope focused on the birth of Jesus, the messianic king, in a humble stable.

“The Son of God is not born in a royal palace, but at the back of a house, in the space where the animals are kept,” the text said. “God does not come into the world with resounding proclamations; he does not manifest himself with noise but begins his journey in humility.”

This is the humility of “a God who comes into history and does not dismantle the structures of the world but wants to illuminate them and recreate them from within,” the pope’s text said.

Then, the first witnesses of this joyous, momentous event are shepherds: “men of little culture, malodorous from constant contact with animals, they live on the margins of society,” the pope wrote.

“The place to meet the Messiah is a manger,” the text said.

The shepherds discover that the long-awaited Messiah is born “for them, to be their savior, their shepherd. This news opens their hearts to wonder, praise and joyful proclamation,” it said.

Most people are too busy to see the most essential thing of all — the gift of salvation, the pope’s text said. “It is the humble and the poor who greet the event of the Incarnation.”

The pope asked the faithful to ask for “the grace of being, like the shepherds, capable of wonder and praise before God, and capable of cherishing what he has entrusted to us: the talents, charisms, our vocation and the people he places beside us.”

“Let us ask the Lord to be able to discern in weakness the extraordinary strength of the child God, who comes to renew the world and transform our lives with his plan full of hope for all humanity,” he wrote in his text.