The Vatican inaugurated the 2024 Nativity scene and Christmas tree on Saturday, 7 December, in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. It was the same day that Pope Francis created 21 new cardinals and on the eve of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
The large 29-metre-high natural fir tree was illuminated in a ceremony held in the evening. According to Pope Francis, when he received a delegation from the Italian towns of Grado and Ledro, which were in charge of the tree and the nativity scene this year, “it was cut down in accordance with the ecological principles of natural forest renewal .”
Andrea de Walderstein, architect, designer and construction manager of the Nativity scene, told CNA a few days ago that they were also “the first to bring water to St. Peter’s Square,” highlighting that the scene is set in the lagoon of Grado , a town of about 8,000 inhabitants located on an island in the Adriatic Sea, between Venice and Trieste.
The traditional Christmas figures of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus are inside one of the fishermen’s huts, called “casone”.
This morning, receiving the delegation from Grado and Ledro, and the envoys from “martyred Palestine” – who this year brought some Nativity scenes to the Vatican – the Holy Father said that the Christmas tree can be “a beautiful image of the Church, people and body”, which is around Jesus, its origin and center.
The “casone” where fishermen spend their daily life, Pope Francis continued, can also be “a symbol that speaks to us of Christmas, in which God becomes man to share our poverty, coming to build his Kingdom on earth not with powerful means, but through the weak resources of our humanity, purified and strengthened by his grace.”
The Pope then said that in the Church, even at Christmas, “there is room for everyone”, including sinners, who “are the first, the privileged, because Jesus came for sinners, for all of us, not for saints. For everyone. Don’t forget this. For everyone, for everyone.”
Meditating on the nativity scenes from Bethlehem (Palestine), Pope Francis wished to remember “our brothers and sisters who, there and in other parts of the world, suffer the tragedy of war.”
In conclusion, the Holy Father expressed his hope that there would be no more wars and “that there would be peace throughout the world and for all men whom God loves.”