“We all do wrong in life, but, what is important, is not to stay in the wrong,” said Pope Francis to a group of inmates and former inmates.
The Holy Father received a group of detainees and former detainees in Casa Santa Marta, who are completing or have completed their sentences in the facilities of the Don Benzi Community in Vasto, in the province of Chieti, and in Termoli, near Campobasso, Italy.
According to “Vatican News, “ the Holy Father listened to them and thanked them for their testimonies. Father Benito Giorgetta, parish priest of Saint Timothy’s church in Termoli, who accompanied the group, said that one of them “told him he was ashamed to tell his story but that the Pope encouraged him with his look, with a smile, saying that he shouldn’t be embarrassed because from the things said hope emerged and, therefore, ‘blessed be shame too.’” The Successor of Peter ”listened to what was being said with sacrifice and suffering; he identified empathically with the heart and life of these individuals,” said the priest.
“What Is Important in Life is to Walk”
Afterward, the Bishop of Rome offered them a video for the inmates that weren’t present. In it he reminds them that it’s important to walk alone or to ask for someone’s hand, to call at the door, even if you are lost and don’t know where to go” “It’s the Lord who gives you the opportunity, and makes you take a step,” he said.
“What is important in life is to walk, to be on the way,” stressed the Pontiff. There are those that don’t see the direction or even the way. There are “people that are parked, who must be helped. There are people with a “parked heart” in which the anxiety doesn’t enter that makes one move. “We move, but as though in a labyrinth; we don’t find the exit door, the way and there we are, going round and round inside things, without going out.”
We all do wrong in life, said His Holiness, “but what is important is not to stay in the wrong.” He also mentioned a song of Alpine climbers that invites us not to stay on the ground once we have fallen but to get up again, thanks also to those that help one get up, without ever looking from above to those below that have fallen, because that’s “unworthy.”
“Many times in life we find a helping hand to lift us: we must also do the same with others, with the experience we have, do it with others,” explained the Pontiff.
A “Contagious” and Liberating Experience
According to ”Vatican News,” before saying goodbye the Holy Father invited his listeners to make what they have lived fructify to generate true good. “I hope your experience will be fruitful, that it will be as the seed, which then grows and grows . . . That it will be as a good disease, which is contagious, a contagious experience. And that it will be liberating, that it will open doors to the many people that need to live the experience you all have lived.”
After the meeting with the Pope, Father Benito said: “We lived really intense moments (. . . ). On his arrival, the Pope calmed us and then the emotion — tears for some. To be next to the Pope to have one’s photo taken or receive a Rosary directly from his hands was really an intense emotion because the fellows felt close to “the most important man in the world,” they said.
