Dear brothers in the Episcopate,
Mr. President of the Junta de Andalucía
Distinguished authorities, ladies and gentlemen,

I am very pleased to welcome you as pilgrims in this Jubilee year. You have come to give thanks to God for the last International Congress of Confraternities and Popular Piety. When they told me you were coming, I was a bit worried, because in the message [sent to me on that occasion, ed.], I called you “crazy”, and perhaps this was why you were interested in meeting me. But Msgr. Saiz Meneses tells me that this initiative was a grace the echoes of which can still be heard, and so I am calmer.

In my message, if I remember correctly, I proposed living this event as if it were a prayer of praise that accompanied our earthly journey, like a pilgrimage towards God and towards our brothers. I thus asked you to be witnesses to an overflowing love, to the point of seeming “crazy”, crazy with love.

How much good it would do us, at the conclusion of this event, if the first of these echoes were to be heard above all within the family. As if it could be heard like the deafening silence of a prayer that brings us to tears, because it comes from the heart; whether before the image of the patron of your Confraternity, who presides over your homes, or before the Tabernacle of your parish or your temple, or at the bedside of the sick or in the company of an elderly person.

Your archbishop told me that another of these echoes, already realized, is a home for the homeless, the fruit of that hidden charity to which I referred in my message. In this work, may the beat of a loving heart always be heard. Let us ensure that, through the “respect, affection and care” in this house, society and those who are welcomed may newly recognize the unique dignity of every person (cf. Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos, no. 169).

May Jesus bless you and Mary, Mother of the Church, keep you. And do not forget to pray for me. I will pray for you too.

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 8 February 2025