Italian
“Dearest friends, as you may know, today I turn seventy. I give thanks to the Lord and to my parents; and I thank all those who remembered me in their prayers.”
These were the words of Pope Leo XIV, after the recitation of the Angelus yesterday morning, September 14, as he expressed gratitude to everyone who remembered him in their prayers for his birthday. Pope Prevost was born in Chicago, Illinois (USA), on September 14, 1955.
The Presidency of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), in extending its birthday greetings to the Holy Father, recalled the precious gift of the audience that the Pope “granted to the CEI last June 17. On that occasion, he emphasized the ‘privileged bond’ that unites us, offering four guiding coordinates ‘through which to be a Church that embodies the Gospel and is a sign of the Kingdom of God’: ‘Proclamation of the Gospel, peace, human dignity, dialogue.’ These coordinates chart the course of our communities in the certainty that the Spirit fills our sails.”
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in the message he sent to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, stressed that “in recent years the fear has grown that the world is moving along a dangerous ridge, driven by a widespread logic of oppression and increasingly marked by lacerating conflicts. Every day, an intolerable toll of blood and destruction is paid above all by many thousands of civilian victims. Faced with such anxieties, women and men of goodwill urgently feel the need for peace and justice. From every continent, people look with keen hope to Your pressing appeals, so that hostilities may cease and the path of dialogue may resume, for the common good of peoples.”
In another passage of his message, the President of the Republic highlighted how the Pope “from the very beginning of His high magisterium has delivered to the entire international community and to individual consciences a strong call to that ‘disarmed and disarming peace,’ which opens hearts.”
The full texts of the birthday messages can be read on the respective websites:
Italian Episcopal Conference – www.chiesacattolica.it
Presidency of the Italian Republic – www.quirinale.it
Photo: copyright Vatican Media
