Scottish Catholic Observer

Pope Francis told a million-strong congregation in Ecuador yesterday that October’s Synod of Bishops on the family needs their prayers.

Celebrating Mass with as many as one million people gathered in Los Samanes Park, Guayaquil, the Pope said Catholics needed to pray ‘so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it— by making it part of his ‘hour’—into a miracle.

“Families today need this miracle!” he added.

The synod will be a time for the Church to ‘deepen her spiritual discernment and consider concrete solutions to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time,’ the Pope said.

Fr Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, told reporters Pope Francis was not referring to any specific proposal discussed in anticipation of the synod. One of the most common—and most debated pastoral suggestions—was to develop a process or ‘penitential path’ for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion but have not received an annulment.

The Pope, Fr Lombardi said, hopes the synod ‘will find a way to help people move from a situation of sin to a situation of grace.’

During the Mass the Holy Father also acknowledged the suffering and hope of young people who do not experience happiness and love at home, the ‘many women, sad and lonely,’ who wonder how their love ‘slipped away,’ and the elderly who feel cast aside.

In a family, ‘no one is rejected; all have the same value,’ he said, telling the crowd that when he asked his own mother which of her five children she loved best, she would say that they were like her five fingers: all were important and if one finger was hurt, the pain would be the same as if another finger was hurt.

Strong families, he said, help build strong individuals and strong societies. They are the place where ‘our hearts find rest in strong, fruitful and joyful love.’ Families teach people to be attentive to the needs of others and to place those needs ahead of one’s own.

Before the Mass, he visited the city’s Divine Mercy shrine where he spent a minute praying at the shrine and told the crowd he would pray for them.

He arrived in Ecuador on Sunday for the first leg of his three-country trip to South America, which will also take him to Bolivia on Wednesday and Paraguay on Friday.

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