L’AQUILA, Italy –
Making a pilgrimage to an Italian mountain town, Pope Francis on Sunday praised the humility of a 13th-century pontiff who gave up living a hermit’s life, praising him for using his brief papacy to highlight the value of mercy and the sorry.
Francis paid a four-hour visit to L’Aquila in the central Apennine mountains, which was hit by an earthquake in 2009, killing 305 people and destroying much of the city. It is still being rebuilt.
The pontiff came to give a boost to a late-summer tradition started by Pope Celestine V 728 years ago to encourage the faithful to seek forgiveness of sins.
L’Aquila’s Collemaggio basilica contains the remains of Celestine, who resigned in 1294 after only several months in the papacy. As pontiff, Celestino initiated the August practice in which the faithful could pass through the Holy Door of the basilica. After meeting certain religious requirements, they can receive a plenary indulgence, which removes the penalty for sin.
Helpers wheeled Francis to the austere brown wooden door of the basilica. After helping Francis, who has a painful knee problem, to his feet, he used a sturdy olive branch to knock three times on the door, which then swung open. With a ramp installed, Francis limped into the basilica and then prayed silently before the mausoleum containing the remains of Celestine, whose face is covered in a silver mask.
Celestine was ridiculed by Dante in the “Divine Comedy” for cowardice in abdicating her papal role.
“The humble appear in the eyes of men as weak and losers, but in reality they are the true winners because they are the only ones who completely trust in the Lord and know his will,” Francis said.
“Humility does not consist in devaluing oneself but in that healthy realism that makes us recognize our potential and also our misery,” Francis said. He saluted the “brave” Celestine V because “no logic of power was able to imprison or handle him.”
Celestine reminded everyone that mercy and forgiveness help people move from “anguish and guilt to freedom and joy,” Francis said.
As the helicopter that took him from the Vatican to L’Aquila on Sunday morning continued to circle over the city, the pilot trying to find a gap in the thick fog so he could land, Francis said he was inspired to reflect on the courage of mercy.
“Finally, there was a little opening (in the fog), and he zoomed through,” Francis said, encouraging people, when their lives are clouded by trouble, to similarly take advantage of an “opening” when the possibility presents itself. of mercy. .
Before Francis, the last pope to visit L’Aquila was his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who came to comfort earthquake survivors in 2009 and paid tribute to Celestine. Benedict would resign in 2013, the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to do so. He now lives in a monastery on Vatican grounds.
Francis, 85, called resignation an acceptable option for pontiffs who feel they can no longer adequately lead the world’s more than 1.3 billion Catholics.
He greeted townspeople outside the city’s Duomo, or cathedral, which is still undergoing repairs from earthquake damage, and visited relatives of some of the victims.
Francis noted that inmates from area prisons were among the supporters outside the cathedral. “In you, I greet a sign of hope, because in prisons there are so many, too many victims,” Francis said.