Photo: VINCENZO PINTO / AFP / Getty Images
For: EFE
Pope Francis affirmed that “the fathers and mothers of so many families who escape from hunger and wars, who are rejected at the borders of Europe” are their “heroes“, in an interview published today by the Vatican media.
On the occasion of the year that has just ended and that the Church has dedicated to Saint Joseph, the Vatican media interviewed the pontiff about fatherhood, both family and spiritual.
Francisco said he felt “ very close to the drama of those families, of those fathers and those mothers who are experiencing a particular difficulty, aggravated above all due to the pandemic ” and considered that it should not be “an easy suffering to face not being able to give bread to their own children and to feel the responsibility for the lives of others”
And he also remembered “so many parents, so So many mothers, so many families that escape wars, that are rejected in the confines of Europe and not only and that live situations of pain, of injustice, and that nobody takes seriously or deliberately ignores”.
“I would like to say to these fathers, these mothers, who for me are heroes, because I find in them the courage of those who risk their own lives for the love of their children, for love for his family,” he said, recalling that “Mary and Joseph also experienced this exile” and that their suffering “closes them precisely to these brothers who today suffer the same trials.”
“The pope always remembers them and as far as possible will continue to give them a voice and will not forget them,” he said.
On fatherhood and motherhood, Francisco stated: “we could say that the children of today who will become the parents of tomorrow should ask themselves what parents they have had and what parents they want to be.”
“No d They should not let their parental role be the result of chance or simply the consequence of past experience, but must consciously decide how to love someone, how to take responsibility for someone”, he added.
He added that “one of the most beautiful characteristics of love, and not only of fatherhood, is, in fact, freedom. Love always generates freedom, love should never become a prison, in possession”.
Therefore, a good father “knows how to withdraw at the right time so that his son can emerge with its beauty, with its uniqueness, with its choices, with its vocation” and “in every good relationship it is necessary to give up the desire to impose an image from above, an expectation, a visibility, a way of completely and constantly filling the scene with excessive protagonism”.
“Our young people are very often afraid to decide, to choose, to put themselves at stake”, he said, before adding that “a true father does not say that everything will always be fine”, but that when things do not work out “you will be able to face and live with dignity those moments, those failures”.
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