Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, appointed Dean of the College of Cardinals just days ago, lent his voice this morning to the homily prepared by Leo XIV in the Mass that brought to an end the gathering of Eastern Church leaders and presidents of bishops' conferences marking the tenth anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
The Philippine cardinal led the Eucharistic celebration in St Peter's Square, while the pontiff was starting his post-operative recovery following the removal of a "localised lung nodule" yesterday afternoon.
The Holy See Press Office reported that the pope spent a “peaceful night” convalescing after he was hospitalised yesterday at the Gemelli Policlinic in Rome, where he arrived in the late morning.
During the Sunday Angelus, the pope had announced that he was going to undergo chest surgery.
In a statement, the medical team said that the “lobe of the right lung was removed using a video-assisted technique." The diagnosis had been pulmonary adenocarcinoma. The 90-minute operation proceeded without complications.
The pope’s homily for the 10th anniversary of Amoris Laetitia
While the pontiff rested on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Policlinic, the homily he had prepared for the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia resonated among Bernini’s colonnade and the thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square.
The service marked the end of a series of activities attended by 187 delegates from around the world – days full of meetings and reflections aimed at taking stock of family pastoral care and many related themes, such as youth, love, and marriage.
Leo XIV’s homily began with Pope Francis’s very words from his second exhortation (the first was Evangelii Gaudium, in 2013), which opens with: “The joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church”.
Through Cardinal Tagle, Leo mentioned the reasons for today’s celebration, namely to “offer to the Lord the fruits of the work we have carried out on this document, and [. . .] to take its riches to heart and put its pastoral guidance into practice.”
Starting from the passages in today's liturgy, such as the famous "hymn to love" by Paul of Tarsus, the pope stressed how “the true joy of love is a gradual deepening of union, in which each person’s uniqueness blossoms through the gift of self and the presence of the other.”
The Apostle of the Nations reminds us that humanity is not meant to be “a voice without love, unable to speak to the heart, cut off from others, distant, cold and impenetrable.” Instead, it is a “people” who belong to “a Lord who loves without ever holding back, without ever ceasing to seek us out, to place His trust in us, and to renew His friendship with us.”
Charity in the home, the first school of affection
This is the form of charity that the exhortation Amoris Laetitia “invites us to make the foundation of our families,” starting with the journeys for young people preparing for marriage offered in parishes and pastoral areas.
“Yet such courses alone are insufficient, for they must be preceded and supported by an education in love that accompanies a person’s growth from childhood,” he noted.
Thus, “love lived within the family, with its moments of struggle, mistakes and failures, yet also with the marvel of its unpredictable, everyday life, becomes the first school of human affection, the first precious and irreplaceable apprenticeship in the ‘joy of love’,” the pontiff said.
“For this reason, we should recognize and support the efforts of so many families who live out their vocation and mission day by day, without fanfare, yet at times with heroic fidelity.”
Without families the world has no future
Tagle mentioned a “simple and clear instruction,” reported by the Evangelist John: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). Let us put it into practice, so that we may grow as a Church that is a ‘family of families’,” Leo said, “in an atmosphere of reciprocal care that will benefit us all.”
Young couples “will feel encouraged as they begin their married life; parents will find support as they face the demanding challenges of raising their children and managing family life; and older people will be recognized and valued in their role as witnesses to wisdom and virtue, even as their physical strength wanes.”
“The values of openness to life and respect for life, from conception to natural death, are also rooted in this charity,” Leo said. It “is fundamental to our existence and to our life together as human beings. The family is the foremost guardian of these values, a beacon for the good of humanity.”
Indeed, “The world has no future without strong families open to the gift of children and attentive to their education and growth.” At the same time, “the family is a privileged place of prayer.”
Tagle spoke to Polis III Nona saying that communion is not “a mere formality, but a living reality”
After reading the pontiff's homily, Card Luis Antonio Tagle said he was honoured at presiding over the celebration with a "special mandate" from Leo XIV, that is, “to manifest publicly the ecclesiastical communion he has granted to His Beatitude Paul III Nona,[*] Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, who is participating in this Eucharist.”
Such communion does not represent “a mere formality, but [is] a living reality that draws its very reason from Eucharistic communion, the source and summit of the Church’s unity in Christ.”
“We assure you of the affection and prayers of the entire Catholic Church for the faithful entrusted to your pastoral care, who have long been tested but remain steadfast and often heroic in bearing witness to their faith in Jesus amid many adversities,” said the dean of the College of Cardinals, in his address to Polis III Nona.
[*] He replaced Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako.
