This empty square and the shepherd is in harmony with the world

Andrea Tornelli

Five years have passed since Pope Francis, alone, went up to Esplanade from Basilica San Pedro. It rains that afternoon. The box was largely empty, despite the fact that millions of people around the world were harmonious with it, and they were attached to their TV screens, and it is still closed in the long quarantine of isolation, for fear of the invisible virus that accused many of the victims who took them in intensive care units in hospitals, without their relatives being able to see them, or even celebrate pleasure.

With this gesture, with that prayer and with the daily mass of the Santa Marta chapel, Pedro Khalifa approached everyone. Everyone included in the embrace of the empty square, in the blessing with the blessed secrets, in a simple gesture to kiss the feet of the cross that seemed to be crying because of its exposure to the afternoon in early spring. “I was in contact with people. I was not alone at any time, “he was telling the Pope later. But not only, not only. Prayer for a lost world. A strong, unforgettable image was distinguished by Pontevity.

On that occasion, Francisco said, adding to God: “You invite us to take this time of trial as a moment of choice. It was not the right time for your judgment, but from our rule: the time to choose between what really matters and what is happening, to separate what is necessary for what is otherwise. It is time to restore the course of life towards you, O Lord, and towards others. ” In the following months, I repeat that “the crisis does not get the same way: either we leave better or leave worse.”

Five years later, looking at those around us, it is impossible to say that we have walked better, with a world of torn the violence of war princes, who think about Reazame rather than fighting hunger.

We are no longer in quarantine, and now the situation has been invested: the square is filled with people who celebrate the jubilee, who is not now the bishop of Rome, who is praying for us and peace from his room in Santa Marta, and is a combination of dangerous pneumonia. But this melody was not broken. And his words at that time are more modern than ever: Today, too, especially today, it is time to choose between what he really care about and what is happening. “