Pope Francis received at the Vatican the participants in the General Chapter of the Brothers of Christian Instruction of Ploërmel, whom he reminded that “everything is possible for those who trust completely in the Lord.”
Founded by the Venerable Jean-Marie de La Mennais and Gabriel Deshayes in 1819, this congregation was born to train Catholic teachers and open schools to evangelize children and young people through education.
When remembering its founders, the Holy Father noted that they believed that “everything is possible for those who completely trust in the Lord and put themselves at the service of the integral human development of each person.”
“We must never forget where we come from and always keep in mind the motivations for our actions,” he continued.
Pope Francis exhorted them to be “fathers to those to whom you are sent, fathers who reflect the loving and compassionate face of God.”
He also highlighted that their vocation drives them “to go where others do not go, to the peripheries, to the people who form the category of the rejected, those wounded by life and the victims.”
He urged them that their presence “be a source of hope for many” and that in their spirit of fraternity and welcome “they can recognize another face of humanity disfigured by wars, indifference and the discarding of the weakest.”
“Those children, those young people, those people also have dreams, but today, for so many reasons, they are broken dreams. “May they help them to revive their dreams, to believe in them and to realize them!” exclaimed the Pontiff.
He also noted that “children play, even under bombs, in countries at war. When we see photographs of these countries, children are playing.”
“But there is something that catches my attention: when children from Ukraine come to Rome, who have moved here and live here, those children do not smile: they have lost their smile,” he lamented.
For Pope Francis, war makes “children lose their smile.” “Work so that they recover the ability to smile!” He asked the members of this French congregation.
“The Church is a family and all of us, in the variety of charismas and vocations, cooperate for the salvation of humanity. In this wonderful mystery of communion, I count on your filial trust and adherence to the ministry of the Successor of Peter” he expressed.
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today: As on previous occasions, he stressed that “gossiping does a lot of damage to religious communities” and assured that “a good goal for a religious man and woman would be to bite their tongue every time they feel like speaking badly about others.”