AGI – One of the most touching moments of Pope Francis’s lightning visit (about 9 hours) to Verona was when on the Arena stage, during the “Arena of Peace – Justice and Peace will kiss” event, the Israeli Maoz Inon, whose parents Hamas killed on October 7, and the Palestinian Aziz Sarah, whose brother was killed by the Israeli army. After giving their testimonies alongside each other, they embraced each other and then embraced the Pontiff. A long round of applause erupted from the Arena and everyone (around 12,500) stood up.
“Nothing can be said in the face of the suffering of these two brothers, which is the suffering of two peoples”, commented Francis off the cuff. “They had the courage to hug each other. And this is not only courage and testimony of wanting peace but also a project for the future. Hugging each other.” “Peace will never be the fruit of mistrust, the fruit of walls, of weapons pointed at each other”, underlined the Pope who urged everyone to be sowers of hope. “Our civilizations at this moment are sowing death, destruction, fear. Let us sow, brothers and sisters, hope! We are sowers of hope! Everyone is looking for a way to do it, but sowers of hope, always” and “do not become spectators of the so-called war ‘unavoidable'”.
“You, weavers of dialogue in the Holy Land, please ask world leaders to listen to your voice, to involve you in the negotiation processes, so that agreements arise from reality and not from ideologies”, he added. As soon as he arrived in the city of Verona, Francis met the priests and consecrated persons in the Basilica of San Zeno.
“If Shakespeare’s genius was inspired by the beauty of this place to tell us the tormented stories of two lovers, hindered by the hatred of their respective families, we Christians, inspired by the Gospel, commit ourselves to sowing love everywhere: where there is hate, that I put love, where there is hate, that I am capable of sowing love. A love stronger than hatred – today there is so much hate in the world -, sowing a love stronger than hatred and more strong of death. Dream of it like this, Verona, as the city of love, not only in literature, but in life”. Then, the dialogue with the approximately 7,000 young people and children who were waiting for him in the churchyard of the Basilica. And then another very heartfelt appointment for the Pope: the meeting and subsequent lunch with the inmates of the Montorio prison.
Here the Pontiff expressed his sorrow for those who in their cells, “in an extreme gesture, gave up on living”. “Life is always worth living, always!”, he said, inviting us not to give in to despair: “There is always hope for the future, even when everything seems to be dying out. Our existence, that of each of us, is importantly, we are not waste material.”
Last appointment, the Bentegodi stadium. Around 32 thousand young people, families, associations and parish communities await him. Francis presided over the mass on the eve of Pentecost and delivered the entire homily off the cuff. A homily on the Holy Spirit, “the protagonist of our life”, who “opens our hearts”, “gives us courage to live Christianly” so as not to be like many “Christians who are like warm water, neither hot nor cold” . The Holy Spirit, “who creates harmony”, whose opposite is war.
